Third Time Is a Charm

by Ed Nelson

  They have valet parking at the front of the Spanish style club house. There is a really neat fountain in the front. All in all a classy looking place.

  I managed to arrive with enough time to check in at the pro shop and then to put my shoes on and gather my gear. I walked up to the tee box with two minutes to spare.

  There is nothing like having time to warm up.

  I was going out in a twosome. The other golfer was Steve Whitney the assistant golf pro. He had been assigned to introduce me to the course. I guess they were serious about wanting our family’s presence in their club.

  Steve was a nice guy and I felt at ease immediately. That was the last time I felt at ease until the round was complete. That course was tough!

  We teed up on the black tees. The first hole was a par five 503 yard hole. It was a straight hole. There were two enormous bunkers guarding the green. The tee was elevated and the fairway narrow. The green was M shaped.

  Today the pin was close to the furthest bunker so while I had a nice drive that left me in what appeared to be good position it set me up for failure. My second shot needed a precision iron to clear the bunker, then immediately stop to be near the pin. It cleared the bunker okay, and then rolled past the hole by thirty feet. I felt lucky to three putt it.

  That was the story of the day.

  When we rounded the club house turn we passed a couple of tennis courts. There were two lovely looking young ladies, maybe mid-twenties playing.

  “Not very nice are they,” asked Steve.

  “They look very nice to me.”

  He did a double take.

  “Oh the young women, yes very nice, but I was talking about the tennis courts.”

  I felt like a fool, a one track mind teenage fool.

  “The club board of directors are considering doing away with the polo grounds and putting in large tennis facilities. They are talking about world class instruction. There aren’t as many polo players as there used to be, and tennis is really picking up.”

  “Nice to know but I don’t play either sport. Well I do own a horse but I don’t think George would care for polo.”

  He laughed at that. “The guys who play will bring a string of seven polo ponies.”

  I can see why that is losing its popularity. It would cost a fortune to maintain that. Besides the seven there would be backups at the stables, and young horses being trained.

  We started the back nine. I had managed to maintain par so far but was a long way from setting any records.

  The back nine threaten to kick my butt. It started with the tenth.

  It was a par four 315 yards from the back tees. It looked very straight forward to me. My drive was to the green but hung to the right. It rolled off the green down a slope. I ended up with a double bogey.

  I managed to finish the back nine one over, so I had a one over par seventy two for the round. Not what it would take to win the qualifying rounds.

  I must have looked very down when we finished because Steve asked me what my problem was. When I told him how disappointed I was with my score he had a look of astonishment.

  “You walked onto a tournament level course for the first time and score a one over? Talk about expectations!”

  That did bring me back down to earth a little.

  “That is egotistical of me isn’t it?”

  “Well I don’t know about egotistical, but I would love to see you play to your expectations.”

  I gave a wry grin. “I’ll have to work on that won’t I?”

  It was a little late for lunch but we hadn’t eaten anything at the turn so we went into the casual restaurant. This is opposed to the formal dining area where a suit and tie were de rigueur.

  We were even allowed to wear our spike shoes here.

  We were seated near a front window. As I studied the menu which seemed to encourage a cheese burger and fries I noticed the two young ladies from tennis earlier.

  Steve noticed them also.

  “I should warn you about them. They are around thirty years old. Both married to physicians, both surgeons. They have a reputation around here.”

  “From my acting career and other events I have learned to be very careful about women. They may look inviting but so does a coral snake.”

  “Oh, you have been burned.”

  As we finished up Steve said, “Let’s see if I can rescue you in advance.”

  He took me over to the ladies and introduced me as Sir Richard Jackson, the teenage movie star who is playing golf here to qualify for the US open.

  I think he thought them knowing I was a teenager would turn them off from the jailbait. If anything it turned them on. They both preened and hand combed their hair as they let me know in no uncertain terms they would like to get to know me.

  It was like looking at two starving piranhas. I mumbled a nice to meet you and moved on as fast as I could.

  As we walked away Steve shook his head. That did not go well at all. I think you are lost.”

  “Wait until they meet Mum and Mary, they will find out then who is lost.”

  This statement caused Steve to ask what I meant. I just told him it appeared my family would be joining the country club and that my Mum and my sister took a very dim view of certain types of women.

  John Jacobs had been with us the entire day. He was learning the course as much as I was. He commented that he was impressed with my first outing.

  “Rick you had a bogey on ten which you can avoid real easy. You have it in you to drive to the left side of the green. It holds better there and depending on the lie a two putt at worse.”

  “I’m going to spend a lot of my time caddying here learning to read the greens. While the fairways can be tricky, mastering the greens here is the answer.”

  “I suspect you are right, and of course that is the weakest part of my game.”

  John snorted then said, “Yeah your weak spot is stronger than most people’s strong spot.”

  “I hope you are right, at least we have time to work on this.”

  John took my clubs for cleaning while I changed into the shirt and slacks that were in the gym bag I had brought. As soon as possible I had to arrange for a locker.

  With that in mind I stopped at the Pro shop and asked about that. My question resulted into my being handed a locker key. The Pro told me that since I had guest privileges I had the right to use a locker. He was well aware my family was paying for a membership and that we would have full privileges as soon as the board voted.

  Because of that he assigned me to a full member’s locker. These weren’t your high school gym metal lockers. These were wooden full length lockers with adjacent closet racks. There was a padded bench in front of each locker arrangement.

  It was the poshest set up I had ever seen.

  I retrieved the Vette from the valet and headed home.

  At dinner I told everyone about the country club. The building is what was called Spanish revival. It was enormous and could hold events even larger than Jackson House. That got a few laughs.

  I told them how hard the course was and John Jacobs comments about it being a putting course, though the fairways could kill you. I went on to describe the tennis courts and future plans.

  I neglected to mention the two ladies at the club. That would take care of itself one way or the other. Why open a can of worms if you don’t have to?

  I spent the evening with my multi-engine text books. I wanted to do well on those quizzes tomorrow.

  Chapter 17

  The morning was a little brisk for California. It was down to forty eight degrees last night. That was about five degrees colder than normal. It was just breaking daylight when I started running so the temperature hadn’t warmed up yet. Actually it was a perfect day for a run.

  I stayed out longer than usual keeping a sharp eye out for tigers. I didn’t see any. When I was going back to the house I ran into Ben Carpenter. He looked upset.

  “Ben what’s wrong?”

 
; “My grandma Eunice died last night.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “We knew it was coming, she hasn’t recognized me for days.”

  I really did feel bad for Ben. His grandma was his only family left.

  “Have arrangements been made?”

  “The rest home is helping. There is no sense in holding a service as there is no one left of her friends or family. It would be silly to have a chapel open with me the only one there.”

  “If there is anything we can do, let us know.”

  I had the horrible thought on the way into the house that now only Ben, the Wyman’s and our family knew about the sub-basement. Shame on me, his only family had just passed.

  I told the family at breakfast about Mrs. Carpenter passing. We all thought it was sad that Ben wasn’t going to have a service because there would be no one to come. Mum got a determined look and said she was going to make some phone calls.

  Dad also made a call to his newspaper editor and had them get started on an obituary.

  While this was going on, I got ready to drive to the flight center at LAX. I had exams to take.

  The exams were anticlimactic. I’m not that smart really, but my study habits were standing me in good stead. I aced all three quizzes. Hank Smith was impressed that I aced them.

  It was no big deal to me. They were well written multiple choice questions in the standard format. That meant two of the answers were obviously wrong if you knew anything about the subject. A third was the ‘distractor’, which could be misconstrued as correct if you didn’t know the subject, finally the correct answer.

  That meant if you had read the chapter you had a fifty percent chance of guessing the correct answer. I had not only read the chapters several times I had answered the trial questions after the chapter. They were really the same questions worded a little differently. So in effect I had practice on the actual exam.

  I told Mr. Smith I didn’t think it was that hard of a test.

  “If you know the answers it isn’t. History says that half of the current class will fail these, and no one will have a one hundred percent on all three exams.

  “Wow I had no idea.”

  “That’s unfortunately the way it is, people just don’t like to do school work, or they have no aptitude for it. Anyway I have you scheduled for time in a simulator.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  Well it did sound like fun until I faced the reality. I had read about what had to be done to take off, fly and land with two engines. Now I was being thrown to the wolves. I thought I would go on some actual flights as an observer first.

  There was a checklist for a Cessna 310b. The controls were set up in that mode. There really was no interior as such so the simulator could be modified to be one of several aircraft. Since they knew I had a 310 on order that is what was set up for me.

  I even had to mock the walk around using the checklist. When I got to the flaps on a hunch I wiggled them as I would on a real walk around. The ones on the right wing fell off. I passed that test.

  Learning from that, I checked the fuel and oil. The oil was low. Again it was a setup.

  The flap was latched back on and I was assured since the engines didn’t work, oil was not an issue.

  Inside the structure I firmly put it into my mind that I was in a real aircraft. If I acted like it wasn’t real there would be problems.

  I was really surprised when I fired up those motors which didn’t work. My gages said they did as oil pressure and heat indicators rose. The real kicker was the noise and vibration. It didn’t take a lot to imagine I was in the real thing. Well unless you tried to look out the cockpit window. There wasn’t one. It would be all instruments this trip.

  I had been informed this flight was considered local operations so I didn’t have to file a flight plan. Hank Smith was acting as the control tower. I said all the right words, filling the blanks on the checklist, like tail number etc.

  I received permission to take off. That was weird, no taxing to the apron, just take off from where I was at. I suppose they can only simulate so much. It would be great if they had a moving picture screen with the real airport and I could move and see everything as though as it was real. I couldn’t imagine that would ever happen.

  I successfully flew the aircraft up to fifteen thousand feet when a light came on the panel showed the engine on the right wing was on fire, that and the sounds being made. I quickly grabbed the emergency checklist. I knew that I would have to shut the engine down and activate the built in fire extinguisher.

  While I was doing that I reported to the FAA flight tower that I had an emergency on board. I was asked if I thought I could safely land on one engine. I responded positively.

  It seemed very familiar when I had to fly low and slow while dumping fuel. From there it actually seemed routine as I brought the aircraft into the flight pattern as directed by the tower. My instruments reflected the speed and altitude as though I was flying the aircraft as instructed.

  Other than the plane wanted to crab, because of all the power being on the left wing it seemed like a normal landing.

  I brought the plane down and signed off. Some joker had rigged up a fire siren and set it off as I reported being on the ground.

  When I opened the hood there was a smiling Hank Smith waiting for me.

  “Well Rick we have to get your hours in, in the air but I think you can fly one of these.”

  “Thanks, Hank that was so real working through the fire bit that I had no time to think, I had to follow through on the checklist to make it come out okay. I didn’t have time to worry.”

  “I know, as you were reporting your action you sounded almost bored.”

  “Then why is my shirt wringing wet?”

  He laughed at that and we started to leave the area. All of a sudden there was applause. I looked around and realized that there was an audience of about twenty people. Most from the class I should have been in.

  People seemed pleased that I had performed so well. One guy wasn’t, as we walked towards him I heard him say.

  “Sure the guy performed well in the simulator, put him a real emergency in the air and he would fall apart.”

  The guy who he was talking to whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was it shut him up.

  I couldn’t help it, as I walked past I winked at him. I know it was a cheap shot but I felt so good about things I thought a little fun was in order.

  The guy flushed red and muttered, “Sorry.”

  I heard him say to his buddy, “That’s the kid who landed a 707?”

  Mr. Smith brought me back into the real world as he assigned me more reading on instrument flying with dual engines. It was due next Wednesday.

  It had taken all morning so I headed home for lunch.

  After lunch I drove over to the studio and checked to see if anyone was in the stunt area. There was but I got dragooned into being an extra in some movie. When I say dragooned I mean dragooned. I was sent to makeup where I had to don a British heavy cavalry uniform.

  I tried to argue that Dragoons weren’t heavy cavalry. But wardrobe didn’t care, that was what was ordered, so that is what I would wear if I was going to be in the scene. I realized that it was only a movie and I had seen grosser historical errors.

  I’m not even certain what movie it was. My job was to wave a large sword around and die gloriously. No spoken words, just wave the sword, get stabbed and fall down. Not what you could call a hard day’s work, other than they shot the scene seven times.

  I ran into Mr. Monroe on my way to turn my costume back in. He almost didn’t recognize me when I said, “Hi.”

  “Hello Rick, I’m glad to see you are earning your living.”

  “Yep, thinking of being a Viking next so I can go burning and pillaging.”

  “Oh that is bad.”

  “I’m glad to be doing something to earn the money you pay me.”

  He got a very serious look.


  “Rick you have more than earned the money we pay you. Your ‘extra board’ idea you guided my people to, raised our profits by twenty-five percent last quarter. My bonus this year will be the highest ever given in the industry. If you never did anything else you have earned your money several times over. That said do you want to take a pay cut?”

  “Uh, I think I am happy with things as they are.

  “I thought so, see you later.”

  I was almost late for dinner by the time I got home. A quick trip to the studio turned into a day’s work. I was beat.

  Taking my turn I related my day at flight school and then the trip to the studio. The boys were still on home schooling so they didn’t have much news. Mary was on the outs with Patti again. Must be a little girl thing.

  Mum told us there would be a memorial service for Mrs. Carpenter in the funeral home chapel on Saturday and that we would be attending as a family.

  After dinner I sat in front of the TV for several shows. When I realized I had no idea what I had been watching I went to bed.

  Chapter 18

  It is another wonderful cool morning for running. Every step had a little more snap to it. Steps snap? My other exercises flowed. It was a good day.

  At breakfast we talked of our plans for the day. Nobody had anything urgent. I had made a tee time at Riviera so had to leave in a while. Both Denny and Eddie had a lot of questions about the club so I asked them if they would like to go out to their driving range with me on Sunday morning.

  They were both enthusiastic about it. Denny was tall enough for a regular adult set. Eddie would need something shorter. I even asked Mary if she wanted to go but she had plans with her friend Patti. I think at that moment I truly realized I would never understand women.

  I packed a bag with a change of clothes plus personal items like my favorite deodorant, tooth brush, tooth paste, shaving cream and razor. I would leave these in my locker at the club. On occasion golf can get messy. Try hitting a ball out of an inch of water or buried in a muddy lie.

  It was a nice drive over to the country club. Today I wasn’t running late. I had the top down. It was such a perfect California day.