Golf

The place for grass. You cannot have a decent golf course without grass. So if the animals are all fed, the lawns are all turned back to native plants, vegetables and fruits, it is time we clipped the fairways and eighteen greens for a round of golf.

A few years back, we lived in the great state of Delaware, down near the beach in the City of Lewes. It was a great place to live ...charming people (locals) who lived year round in Slower, Lower Delaware or was it Lower, Slower Delaware? ...tolerable part timers who come to the beach towns for the summer or just a few weeks of vacation. The summer visitors, emptied out of Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania; Baltimore and its surrounding suburbs; Washington, DC and its surrounding 'burbs crowded in and around those of us who lived full time at the beach ...locals and transplants (from New York, no less) like us.

All these summer visitors helped me in one very special way ...they provided customers for the many golf courses in lower Delaware and the Ocean City, Maryland area. We had some of the finest golf courses, competitive with most any place in the country, including Florida.

What we didn't have was suitable weather to play year-round. While we oftentimes could expect a balmy round at Christmas time, the winter would extend into the month of May, sometimes beyond. We had little snow, mind you, but in the winter and the spring when it should be time for golf, the wind off the Atlantic and Delaware Bay gusted constantly in the 25 to 35 knot range. Try putting a golf ball over the water onto a small island green in that kind of wind. Maybe it can be done, just not on a consistent basis by a golfer of my limited talent and mediocre skills. I donated enough golf balls to the ponds, lakes, and tidewaters to make golf a very expensive sport ...even though I used cheap balls.

While living in this paradise, with only the one flaw (cold winter winds), the real estate market soared. The house that we purchased in the mid-90's was suddenly valued at four times what we had paid ...this was just after seven short years. So what could we do?

We began to feel the cold of the winters. Suddenly, the freezing temperatures became intolerable (even without thinking of golf). When you added the limitations to year-round golf, the choice became abundantly clear. We needed to sell out and move to a warmer climate. Florida beckoned.

This wasn't a decision to be taken lightly. I had always hated the thoughts of Florida ...too hot, too muggy, the hurricanes, all those snow-birds in winter, death's waiting room. Florida was not my cup of tea.

But golf and the cold's effect on arthritic limbs and backs soon overrode about sixty-five years of good sense that had kept us in the northern environs ...the seasons; crisp, delicious apples picked directly from the trees (beats picking oranges and grapefruit at Christmas time). But, anyhow, off to Florida we go.

No one who owns a set of golf clubs can possibly move from the north to Florida and do so without insisting on buying on a golf course. In our case on the 6th hole, a par 5,, on the left side about 150 yards from the green. It is a lovely place, well protected from misfired golf balls by towering live oaks and loblolly pine trees ...a golfers paradise. And so it was for six plus years ending at the close of March, 2011.

But, on that date, society finally failed us. The number of golfers, members and guests, slowed to a level that failed to sustain our club. It was going broke.

At the end of March my golf club failed. It went bust. Bellied up. Shut down. Closed. No more golf on the fairways out behind my house ...nicht mehr Golf in Turkey Creek. Can this be the omega? Paul Ryan seems to think so. The Reverend Camping with his forecast of doomsday believes it is so. But wait a second, no one but those loony tea-baggers is buying Ryan's crap. Wasn't Camping's prediction of Armageddon scheduled for yesterday? I'm still kicking and have a round of golf scheduled for tomorrow at another course, sadly not at our own, now defunct club.

Alas, maybe there is lots to look forward to in the future.

OK! OK! My whining about the closing of our golf club is not one of the major stories of 2011. Even my moaning about the waste of cultivating grass (crab grass called St. Augustine here in Florida) may be a little trite.

Forgive my venting and maybe in the future, I'll move on to discussing something more serious.