BILL BAILEY, RIP

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Saturday nights for some time have been spent with Bill Bailey, the head DJ on the Oldies station out of Grand Rapids. Nothing on TV and it has been a long time since Saturday night meant going out. Bill Bailey would have given E.Rodney Jones a run for his money in mid-60′s Chicago which was the last of the Golden Age of Music in my ears.

Not all ears are the same. I grew up in downriver Detroit in an all-white community and had to tune in to the nearby Inkster station to listen to the music that meant something to me. Now the radio stations mostly come out of whitebread Grand Rapids and Bill Bailey was my local connection with reality.

He died this past week. Interestingly enough, he died on a golf course, and golf was his second love after R&B music from the Golden Age. When I was here as a youth I would tune my radio to the mega-stations out of Ohio and Tennessee which blistered the stratosphere with super, and probably illegal, broadcasting wattage. Hey, it got me here.

It’s Saturday night and I’m tuned in to the Oldies station as usual, which is broadcast over the fourth PBS TV channel. It’s not the same. They have tributes to Bill posted, but you can tell from the music that the people left just don’t really get it. What a loss. I am very grateful for all the Saturday nights that blotted out my difficult situation for a few hours and brought the pleasure of good memories and occasionally a tune I had never heard before, and probably now never will again. At least until I get to the other side. Thanks, Bill, you were a prince among DJ’s.

D-Day

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Actually yesterday was the real D-Day. Today was supposed to be the day when the official transfer of ownership took place and my sister took over sole control of the corporations that own the land and run the golf course which is now in its third year of closure. Not so. Maybe that elusive day should be T-Day for transfer.

When people ask me what is going on, I usually tell them to follow the story here. Except there is no story except that there is no story. No, the deal is not in the toilet, at least as far as I can tell. You would expect that a one-third owner in the corporations would be kept in the loop, wouldn’t you. Different people have different ideas of what proper behavior is and so I can only tell you that I am awaiting the outcome along with anyone else who might be following the drama, or lack of it, here.

A few days ago I was taking out the trash when a young woman who I had never seen before and haven’t seen since stopped to tell me that she had been taking pictures of the clubhouse and she hoped that was all right. Better to ask first, but I didn’t press the point. She asked how things were going and I told her. She had her own story of a family that solved their own distribution problem by setting up some kind of trust so they didn’t have to talk with each other in person. The more people I talk with, the more stories I hear about the breakdown of families over material interests. In one way it is helpful in realizing I am not alone in my bewilderment, but in another way it is distressing in realizing how widespread is the syndrome.

Her name was Molly and she was delightful. She said she would be praying for me. Wow! If there is anything I need right now it is as many people as possible praying for me. Actually I am not so certain that she was a real person. She could have been an angel sent to get me thru another day and a step higher. I suppose I could pass her on the street and not recognize her. Maybe she will be passing by again next Sunday when I’m taking out the trash.

This is my 100th post in this melodrama. I had really hoped that my hundredth post would be the announcement of the transfer of ownership and my rescue from being held hostage after all these years. Well, not total rescue, there still are pages of contingencies to be met. I’m working on that. It’s a big job. I tell people about some of the contingencies and their jaws drop. Then they tell me their own story.

I can do this. All we need to do is get to the point of signing our names on the dotted line and it is a done deal, except for the contingencies of course. But the transfer of ownership includes the transfer of compensation into my pocket, and that will mark the great divide. I am into my 25th year now of being here in the last place in the world where I wanted to be, and I am still responsible for upholding the corporate interests.

So it’s not a done deal yet, but the surveyors were here yesterday and that’s a good sign that things are moving forward. There really isn’t much I can do at this point other than waiting for the other shoe to drop, or not, and meantime doing my best to maintain a peaceful mind and a positive outlook. Some days I do better than others, and it has actually been fairly easy since Molly rolled by. I have a feeling that she really is praying on my behalf, God bless her.

So I used up my hundredth post here and we are still waiting. Sorry about that, I really don’t have a lot of control here other than keeping my own self in bounds. I’m getting a lot of practice in that, and perhaps that is the whole point. This is not the first time that I have been in a beyond stressful situation, but it could be the first time that I get a passing grade. If any of you want to join Molly in praying for a successful conclusion, please be my guest.

UPDATE SORT OF

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I have been telling people to check in here to follow the progress of the current situation as far as the sale of this property. That is not totally accurate. In the first place I am pretty much in the dark as to what is actually going on except as I can make end runs around the closely held cards and take a peek and make some guesses. I have made it a lifetime habit to do business with people of integrity who tell you what is what and whose word you can depend on.

This is more a transaction taking place within the world system and I am most uncomfortable with it. But I have no real choice. Yes, I could load up my two dogs and two cats into my little car and there might be room enough left for a sleeping bag for me and some bags of critter food. That’s one of my options, but not my main one. Not even in the top ten.

My sister is in the process of buying out my brother and me in order to take complete control of the whole shebang and fulfill her dreams. More power to her. My brother and I signed contracts with her last week to make this possible. There were pages of contingencies and the main contingency involved securing private beach access for a number of potential buyers of lots carved out of the property.

This should have been a win/win situation for the two parties involved. It was supposed to have been decided two days ago and the final transfer of ownership was to take place on June 7. Not so. I had to call up my private investigator resources in order to find out that it wasn’t so and why. I don’t like doing business like this but there you go, just more opportunity for practicing my main current assignment of letting go.

I am convinced that this is all going to turn out for the highest good of all concerned, and that is my continual prayer. I have been going up north looking for a place to move to without a nickel in my pocket. Okay, I exaggerate, I have enough in my pocket to buy a late breakfast at a terrific restaurant in Reed City called Seven Slot Grille. Nice people, wholesome food, including home made bread.

My thinking is shifting northwards from where it was because my wife is northwards and my lessons probably involve her. My dream farm that I lost was just south of Reed City, and that still remains the high point of my search, but I am now looking toward Leroy and Tustin. I still think Osceola County is a gem set in the middle of nice but lesser stones. It reminds me very much of the West where I had hoped to live out my duration.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone reading this knew of the exact ideal property for sale at a price I could afford that would trump my dream farm which someone else got. That would be nice but not necessary. My main task at this point is letting go, and letting go of that dream farm was certainly the opening salvo in this ongoing assignment of letting go all that has been holding me back from my destiny.

Destiny. There’s a loaded word. I know I have one, but I’m not so sure that it resembles what the word calls to my mind. And I’m sure that each of you have a much different image that comes to mind when that word is invoked. My sister’s image apparently involves her gaining control of this whole property, and that is such a strong image that my destiny and that of my brother depends on the success of her dream. That’s  a strong dream, and at this point the outcome for all of us is hanging in the balance.

If any of you pray, I would much appreciate your prayers for the successful resolution of this ongoing dilemma for the highest good of all concerned. If you don’t pray but you can send out good wishes and vibrations for the same, that would work. I have never in my life been in a situation where I more needed the possible help of people who could actually help, even if by a sincere wish of good luck.

Everyone has a story about family and inheritances and siblings gone off on a tangent. That’s one of the things I’m learning from this. I truly believe that for the most part we are all doing the best we know how to do with what we have been given. I watched a DVD last night with friends which was about learning to deal with this awful mess we have been dealt within the world system of competition and profit and greed.

The bottom line was love. Maybe not as strongly presented as I would have, but there it was. We left there and looked at some exotic trees and bushes, drank some three dollar wine called Winking Owl that got rave reviews, and tossed around solutions to the problems of the world. Life goes on. Please pray or positively empower a successful conclusion to this ongoing dilemma.

LETTING GO

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People ask me if it isn’t hard for me to think about leaving this place that entered my life when I was seven years old. Not really. Yes, there are some good memories and this piece of land has probably influenced my life by far more than any other single thing or person you could point to in this relative world. My father would be a close second, and this land is irretrievably intertwined with my father for good or ill.

But with all the huge birds nest of memories, intense lessons, lost loves, hard won victories, miserable defeats, sparkling moments, and tooth-gritting, endless bouts of endurance, there has been a stream of consciousness with direction, with goal, with intention and purpose and ultimate reward as far as I can make out.

A reward that is intangible and unprovable, beyond logic and reason, beyond hope and desire, beyond the goal of leaving here with some measure of compensation for sixty-seven years of captivity. And maybe that won’t happen, it remains to be seen. But my real goal at this point is letting go.

Letting go the tangibles won’t be hard. The beautiful land, the heavy investment in time and energy and money, they have pretty much been left behind already in my mind. It is the intangibles which the ego clings to that give me trouble, and this appears to be the last and most important gift that this land has to offer me.

Letting go of those things most precious to the ego would seem to be my big life lesson, and everything in my life up to now appears to have been geared toward this. It feels like a life crisis as big as any I have ever gone thru before, and it is. But this one is different in that this is the one I have to get right. I had the luxury of youth before when I walked away when things got too rough. This may be my last shot.

Anger, bitterness, pride, fear, these are all luxuries I can no longer afford, and they hang on with tooth and claw, desperate to survive, the very mechanism of survival thruout the evolutionary story from microbe to humankind. They got us here, and they are obsolete in the course of events that are unfolding before us as we speak. Tomorrow is here and I want to be part of it as much as I can. This is a hard lesson. This is the hardest lesson of all.

I have been greatly helped in all this by a man who died recently, David R. Hawkins. He was a doctor, a psychiatrist, a scientist, a philosopher, a mystic, and a teacher. He explored the vistas of spiritual enlightenment and reported back on his journeys in language understandable to Western consciousness. He is not easy to read but I believe he is far ahead of his time and has opened a way thru the apparent hopelessness of modern life, a way that both ordinary science and religion seem incapable of finding or understanding.

His last book is entitled, appropriately enough, Letting Go. It is by far the most accessible of all his books and the one I would most recommend to anyone in search of truth. His other ten books expand on his findings and can be tough going for the less than determined. As with any teacher I would recommend keeping a grain of salt handy, eating the fish and spitting out the bones.

I am convinced that the concept of letting go of the constraints of the ego is the key to success of life on Earth and the reason we are here. It is the hardest thing in the world to do and it is worth whatever it takes. It makes sense of science and religion and the teachings of the mystics thruout the ages. It shows us the way home and helps us to walk in it.

The way is hard. Sometimes I struggle in desperation and I very much need and appreciate your prayers and good thoughts and wishes, any high vibration sent my way. God is good and I intend to finish the course.

 

SEARCHIN’

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You know spring has arrived for real when the motorcycles and dandelions take center stage. The highway running past here is a favorite road for motorcycle riding and I enjoy hearing them going by on warm, sunny days. And the dandelions are so thick you have to scout out the best way ahead to avoid stepping on them. I’m really glad not having to mow them down, something that always bothered me when we were still mowing.

Dandelions are my favorite flower but I recognize that many people regard them as evil forces of darkness and chaos that have to be eradicated. And they don’t really belong on a golf course even tho I always welcomed them and never sprayed to kill them. In the first place there are golfers who would never return to a course that allowed them, and in the second place it is hard to find your ball in the midst of a thousand white golf ball sized dandelion puffs when they go to seed.

I spent some time yesterday talking with a golf course superintendent out in California who really wanted to buy this particular course along with his brother. I told him there were plenty of courses for sale but he wanted this one because of its uniqueness and history. I had to tell him that we were presently negotiating a transfer of ownership with page after page of contingencies but to check back in a month. It’s nice to know that there are people still interested in not chopping up the land, even if they are not being allowed to fulfill their own dream.

Yesterday I went up north for the day around Reed City, which is the center of the area I am most interested in moving to now. I drove past the farm that was my own dream and which was shattered when a previous deal to sell this land fell thru. Someone else got my dream and I got a huge life lesson that I’m still working on. Bittersweet.

I did talk with a local Realtor I liked and drove around for a couple of hours, even looked at one place near my dream farm, but it was only five acres. After all these years of walking with my dogs over close to ninety acres, five acres seems like a postage stamp. In Oregon before I came back here I was living on 240 acres all by myself. In many ways that was the high point of my life tho the life lessons weren’t quite as intense. Part of me would like to take a break from life lessons, but time continues growing short.

So once again I’m looking for a place to move to without any money in my pocket and without any assurance that I’m going to have any. But I can’t afford not to look now because if a deal ever does go thru to let me out of here, I will have to get out much faster than is comfortable or maybe even possible without extreme measures. It’s a stressful, nerve-wracking situation like most life lessons and I’m trying to maintain an attitude of gratitude. Some days I do better at it than others.

JODI

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Jodi was a red dog, actually more like burnt orange, a Spaniel mix from all appearances, a mutt, a rescue, my favorite dog of all my life. My wife found her at one of the nearby shelters, the only dog in the whole room who politely didn’t raise a ruckus when my wife walked in. When we brought her home, she acted like she had grown up with us, not excited, not scared, just calmly checking things out before settling down.

It turned out that she had heartworms. Bad. The vet suggested taking her back to where we got her, said it would be risky treating her they were so bad. Taking her back there was not thinkable. We went ahead with the treatment which basically consisted of poisoning her to the point where the worms died and hopefully she didn’t. And she pulled thru. The vet was a gruff old guy but we could tell he went way out of his way to give her every possible chance.

Don’t let her run for a month, he said. Ha! Tell that to Jodi. She had been cooped up in a cage for a month or more waiting for us to show up, and than back into another cage for treatment that she probably didn’t understand. Boy was she ready to run. And run and run. Around in circles leaning in like a seasoned motorcycle rider. Full bore out after squirrels or other critters a quarter mile away. We tried to keep it down but she was past ready to go.

And ready to follow her nose into the next county. It wasn’t like she was trying to run away. All these new smells were just overpowering and her entire being became concentrated in her nose as she followed this critter and that, and who knows what the next breeze wafting in would bring. We figured that’s how she ended up in the shelter in the first place. Just followed her nose one day so far that she broke the thread back to home. We really tried keeping her somewhat under control but she was intent on making up for lost time.

When she was maybe eight years old, my wife came up with another rescue dog, Ralph, half Black Lab and half Golden Retriever. Rescued dogs come already named if you get them from a shelter, altho obviously if they show up at your door you do it yourself. Jodi’s name was actually Jodici, which was the name of a band as I found out when I saw them on late night TV a week after we got her, and never heard of them again. Ralph was half a year old when we got him and I can still show you gnawed off places on the furniture. He more than made up with a big heart what he lacked in brains.

Jodi had settled down a lot by then but Ralph was ready to go and he would take Jodi with him, disappearing for long enough to bring on high anxiety and clenched fists. They would sometimes come back after dark, trying to slip in as if they had just been out to pee. Ralph would be ready to go again the next day but you could tell Jodi was at her limit. We would get reports of them being seen halfway to Glenn or out on the icebergs in the lake in winter.

Toward the end Jodi was going blind but she would still go out with me on the golf course working. She loved to ride on the golf car and would mostly stay with me, but she still liked to follow her nose and would end up far enough to where she couldn’t see me. She would head toward the nearest golfer in a golf car and I would have to call and call until I got her attention, then pick up a rake or something to wave back and forth until she could spot me.

And Ralph would still take her off on his jaunts. He was in his prime and Jodi was an old lady. He would come home without her and I would have to go out looking for her. Often I would find her up by the barn, lying in the tall grass exhausted, unable to make that last hundred yards. I would pick her up and carry her home. She knew I would find her.

I didn’t get to be with her when she left the planet. It was obvious that it was time and my wife panicked, took her to the vet, and had her put to sleep, something she later regretted. I felt cheated, felt like Jodi was cheated, but water over the dam. I buried her in the back field where she liked to roam, near the pond where the sun could warm her rest.

Ralph is an old man himself now like me. For some time I have been thinking of digging up her bones to take them with me wherever I end up going. Like one last time of making sure she was safe at home. Finally this afternoon I took a shovel and a box and moved the big rock which had marked her grave and started digging. I dug and dug and didn’t find anything. I guess it has been something like ten years and I thought at least there would be a skull and some leg bones. Nothing.

I wasn’t sure what to think, I know it was the right place. I didn’t fill the hole back up since I thought I might dig some more tomorrow, but she just may have returned to the earth from whence she came. I say “she” when obviously it is just her body we are talking about and she has been following her nose in doggie heaven all this time waiting for me to show up, hopefully in a golf car.

Accounts of near death experiences often speak of loved family members appearing on the other side. I don’t expect to go thru that door for awhile, tho you never know. In any case, my hope would be to see a streak of red fur heading toward me at breakneck speed, eyesight fully restored, nose open to roam, ready to go exploring the ever present Now.

 

SPRINGTIME

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Well, sort of. Today was the warmest day since last September and I caught some Vitamin D. The first brave daffodils are starting to wilt a bit, I saw purple violets for the first time today, and maybe a Pileated Woodpecker, tho I’m not sure on that one. Hibiscus and Forsythia, those tiny little white flowers about an eighth of an inch across whose name I never have learned. Everyone is weeks late but making up for lost time. I went barefoot for the first time today and the ground was already getting warm.

It’s like I’m living in two different worlds simultaneously, and I guess in fact that’s what it actually is. On the one hand there is an ongoing offer to buy out my shares in this enterprise and it involves hard feelings and hurt feelings and things that shouldn’t go on in a family situation who supposedly have each others back. But most people I talk to have a similar story to tell. Go figure.

So I’m doing a lot of gritting my teeth, a lot of lying awake for hours in the middle of the night, a lot of unnecessary figuring and consulting and watching my own back. And at the same time I go out every day with my doggies and we take a walk in our yard, a mile, more or less, depending on how we feel and what the weather is like and which way the wind is blowing and how the spirit moves.

We don’t go around and around in a little circle. We make one big circle, and every day it is a different one, and every day is just as beautiful as the day before and the day before that and on back sixty-seven years. I see that the MegaMillions lottery is up over a hundred mill. You could win that and you would have a hard time coming up with a more beautiful yard than the one I get to walk in every day.

I’m trying to enjoy it while I can because I know it is coming to an end. That’s the way in the relative world, everything comes to an end sooner or later. That’s just how it is, and it’s part of the lessons we are intended to learn. I’m giving it my best shot, but it’s hard. It’s my understanding that life on this planet is the hardest school you can enroll in. I don’t really have a lot to compare it to but it resonates with me.

So the home page on this web site still says the property is for sale. The big yellow sign down by the road says it’s for sale. But it ain’t so, or not exactly, check back in a month or so if you are interested. Or sooner. If you stop by or telephone or e-mail I’ll take your name and contact info and tell you to stay tuned.

I found an arrowhead here many years ago down by our pump house, lying right on top of the ground where thousands of people had walked, a really nice one. I still have it somewhere. It was a sign that one or another of the aboriginal people of this land had actually been here somewhere along the way.

It would have been a lot more grown up in natural forest then, but I wonder if whoever that was, maybe out after a deer, didn’t also go up to what I call Doggie Church and just sit there taking in the view across the valley and enjoying the quiet and soaking in the Spirit. Maybe what we are going thru here today is a consequence of the change from that to this.

SUPERINTENDENTS

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Superintendents, that’s what you call the job I did here for, what, some twenty-two years before we closed. This time. I did it for ten years starting when I was fourteen years old until I couldn’t stand it one more minute. Back then we were called greenskeepers. The little sign on the door of the office I never got to use says my name with “Superintendent” underneath. I should remember to take that with me if I ever get out of here.

Superintendents are like calling garbage collectors sanitation workers. I remembered how to spell the word when I came back by thinking that “dent”, the end of the word, is what you get in your head when  a golf ball hits it. It didn’t take me a long time to figure out that what I really was was a greenskeeper, just like when I had left some twenty-some years previously. A keeper of the greens.

Actually, superintendents are picking up on my distinction lately, but they prefer to keep it somewhat hoity-toity by calling it “greenkeeper”, which is what the Brits call it, and after all this whole industry was started out with British shepherds bored out of their skulls and looking for diversion. I say British, but the Scots might quibble. By the time of Queen Elizabeth the Original, it had become a pastime of the rich and famous.

When I came back this time, back in 1989, I determined to make the best of a bad situation and give it my best shot as a golf course superintendent, the last thing in the world I wanted to be. Fair enough. I joined a regional superintendent’s association and started attending meetings. Slowly it became apparent that they weren’t really concerned about the things I was concerned about, like my greens dying every summer when it got hot.

And slowly it became apparent that what they were concerned about was making the job of greenskeeper, excuse me, superintendent, more “professional”. Translation, more able to sit at a desk all day while other people did the grunt work and eventually be able to wear a tie and command a big bucks salary.

Not at Glenn Shores. I never did make near the average income for the state, and my workers weren’t working for minimum wage, but close enough. Meantime my greens were dying every summer when it got hot and the top honcho at the top university in the state for the golf industry couldn’t figure out why.

The last time I went to a meeting of the golf course superintendents was at a fancy golf course in Grand Rapids where they have local minor league tournaments. I put on my best blue jeans for the occasion. I figured it would be held in the maintenance building but, lo, it was in the clubhouse, and, lo, my blue jeans were an international crisis.

I never went back.

We always got a truckload of golf industry magazines while the golf course was open, and I never read them. It was just too depressing reading about the latest methods and products and equipment that we simply couldn’t afford as we kept things together with baling wire and duct tape and borrowed money.

But since we have closed they still keep coming and I have started reading the Superintendents magazine. It is amazing. The rest of the industry has caught up with Glenn Shores in the meantime. This so called recession started off in Michigan, and in Michigan it started off with the golf industry, and in the golf industry it started off with Glenn Shores. I had a ten years heads up on the whole shebang and everyone else thought I was crazy. A prophet of doom.

And now the Superintendents are lying awake at night trying to figure out how to keep things going with far less money and much more expectation, just like I was ten years ago. Do I feel vindicated? Not really. Most people don’t see what’s coming down the road. They are too busy trying to make their dreams come true, People are who they are. I just want out of here.

DID I SAY FLOOD?

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A bit ago I posted about our first flood in over a year. That was before this last one, which made the first one look like a puddle. Grand Rapids, the nearest metro area, is having the highest water in over a century. We weren’t that bad here but bad enough. Took out one bridge, but amazingly not any others. And that one bridge washed out according to the design which left the culverts intact and only needs a dump truck load of crushed rock plus some road gravel to bring it back. Do I need to tell you how happy I am that I’m not out there struggling with fixing it so that golfers could cross the creek again?

If you went far enough back in these musings, you would see that we aren’t that far away from two years since I started jotting these down. Actually I didn’t really pick up steam until something like a year and a half ago, which is when we gave up on our first realtor, who we hung in there with for three years. We went with a commercial realtor after that. She assured us that her church was looking for a campground facility which was almost a slam dunk but we needed to sign up right now to get in the latest brochure being printed.

We stayed with her for half a year. In that half year she brought out one prospect, and I did the selling. Afterward she asked me if I would continue to do the selling with people she brought out. Okay, I just want out of here. As it turned out, that was the only one she rustled up. I showed the property to half a dozen more who stopped by because of her sign, which was big and yellow. Really big. That’s what I learned from our half year stint with her. A big yellow sign works. Oh yeah, the church? Seems they had changed their mind.

So we went to For Sale By Owner. To her credit, that realtor left her sign posts in the ground for us when she took her sign. That made up for the client we spent days getting ready for and who never showed up. We put up our own sign on her posts. A big, even brighter yellow one. We got a lot of hits off that sign, more than all the previous three and a half years combined. And I learned that a lot of people don’t like dealing with realtors.

Actually we considered listing with one realtor in particular before we stepped out on our own. He specializes in property like this, unique, highly desirable, for the discerning person of way above average taste and intelligence. He had driven by it a hundred times, he said when I showed him around, and had no idea what an extraordinary treasure it was. He really wanted us to list with him, but he, too, wanted me to do the selling. Hmmm. We ended up telling him we would pay him a commission if he brought us a buyer, but we were going to go it ourselves. He never did. Nice guy, tho.

Am I tooting my own horn? Maybe. You must realize that all these musings are not just because I have too much time on my hands. We have been trying to sell this place. Desperately, if you want to know the truth. And I had it sold a few weeks back. The whole property to someone who wanted to keep it intact and would probably have bought two of our three lots in the subdivision. My sister wanted the third. Might have bought some of our equipment too, I dunno. Full price, no dickering, absolutely aware that he was getting a steal.

It never got that far. Our corporate decisions of this nature take a majority of the three of us who have joint ownership. As you may have discovered in your own family, people do not always agree. To make a long story short, the buyer found out that there were contingencies which would have left him not in control of his own property, and that lawyers might be necessary to sort it out, and he headed for the hills.

That is a sad story, people. Our home page on this web site still says that the property is for sale, as does our big yellow sign, but if you come to buy waving a fist full of dollars, you will find it ain’t so. I took the answering machine message describing the sale off the phone today. I will probably be shutting down this web site this coming week since the whole point of it was to sell the property. If I do, I hope to continue the saga elsewhere.

I am told that an offer to buy me out has been sent to my lawyer. I will wait to see what it has to say. The last holdout against development from Milwaukee down thru Chicago and on up to the bridge is most likely going to be chopped up and sold to enable private dreams. And I have to hire a lawyer. This is how the world works, people. I just want out of here. I am working very hard on letting it go. Stay tuned.

THE MASTERS

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I just finished watching the Masters Golf Tournament, arguably the most important tournament in the world tho it is near the start of the season. I was rooting for the old man, being one myself, but the kid won at the last with a masterful putt. He deserved it and was gracious in victory. The old man appeared to agree and was most gracious himself in defeat. In spite of the occasional one who doesn’t quite get it, golf still seems to be a game for ladies and gentlemen of whatever background.

The tournament is played at the Augusta course in Georgia. Those who understand the ins and outs of golf realize that this particular time of year when the tournament is played is when a golf course down there is at its prime. It is a world class ritzy private course to start with, and they spend vast amounts of time and money getting the course ready to be picture perfect shown on television all around the world.

This has resulted in something called the Augusta Syndrome which golf course superintendents at the better courses now have to contend with every year at this time. It consists of the players at their own course wanting to know why their course doesn’t look as perfectly manicured as the one they have spent days watching on TV.

Truth to be known, the Augusta course won’t look that good any other time of the year. They actually shut it down in the summer when the heat and humidity make playing golf and maintaining the course too difficult. And ritzy as they are, they don’t have the money to maintain it at that level except when they are making money off the crowds and the television coverage.

That doesn’t stop your average bozo golfer who probably learned to play golf watching TV from making their superintendent’s life miserable. Demands for perfection with a probably declining budget. Such is life today. One of the skills superintendents now need is the grace to answer those demands intelligently and with good humor. We never had that problem at old low budget Glenn Shores, but it’s one more reason why I”m glad I’m out of the game.