by Ed Nelson
We finished up and moved onto the driving range where we warmed up for a while, then putted. Next we went into the club house for lunch. This club house was so much nicer than the Bellefontaine club house.
I wondered what the Ohio State club house would be like if I made it that far. We stopped by the pro shop where I picked up some tees which had Stone Ridge printed on them. I decided to start a collection right then and there.
Our tee off was fifteen minutes late. The course officials had kept pushing everyone all day and it was almost a miracle that it was only fifteen minutes. It is amazing when you walk up to a tee and what is in front of you is known.
Except for the Bellefontaine course every time I teed off this year was an adventure. Knowing what club to use; and what the conditions are like where your ball is landing can be a real confidence builder.
It took us five full hours to play eighteen. Sunset was at six fifty three and twilight at seven twenty one so we just barely made it in the last of the daylight. There were two groups behind us, the last one had to quit at the seventeenth hole.
Our draws for the tournament were much better; we had a ten a.m. tee time on Saturday and eleven a.m. on Sunday.
I started out with pars on the first three holes. I managed to sink a fifteen foot putt for a birdie on four. There were another three pars in a row then birdies on eight and nine. I came back with pars on ten and eleven.
On twelve I made an Eagle sinking it from twenty feet. It wasn’t only a good putt it was the best looking. There never was a doubt that it was going in.
I birdied the fourteenth hole, hitting up short rather than going for the long drive. That left me in perfect shape to drop the ball on the green within ten foot of the pin. This must have made me a little over confident.
I bogeyed fifteen, rolling a long drive into a trap on the left at the front of the green. I came back with pars to finish the round at a five under sixty seven. This left me as the leader of the tournament.
John Scott had a seventy one, Gary Matthews a seventy four and Tim Green a seventy five. This gave us an overall team score of two hundred and eighty seven. The next team from Findlay was at two hundred ninety two, so we still had to play at our best to win.
With our ten o’clock start we were finished by three o’clock. Coach accompanied us back to campus where we went to the bookstore and all bought Bowling Green State University sweatshirts.
We then took a walk around the area and saw all the frat houses. They looked neat from a distance but the closer you got to the buildings the rattier they were. I wasn’t impressed. If they looked like that on the outside, what would the inside be like?
I hadn’t given much thought about college until this year as it didn’t seem like we could ever afford it. I had never thought about joining a fraternity, and doubted I would now. The other guys talked about the great parties they must have. So far anything to do with drinking hadn’t ended up well that I could see.
The next day I crushed the course, with seven birdies. I was out at sixty five. a youth course record. It also was enough to pull the team through. Tim went through a rough patch and ended with an eighty one. Gary and John were both at par so our team score was two hundred and ninety. Findlay had a two hundred ninety one so we took the team tournament by four strokes.
It was a little ironic; we were both going to Findlay. The difference was since they lost we got to play on their home course and they didn’t. I had a very brief conversation with a Findlay team member and he seemed puzzled about the District being played at Red Hawk, he didn’t seem to know that course.
He got called away, and I forgot the conversation. At the trophy presentation all of the Findlay team members were real gentlemen about losing. What a difference from those Marysville jerks.
The bus ride home took forever on Sunday evening but it was a tired, but happy bunch that got dropped off at the school. Our parents were all waiting for us so there was a lot of noise. Mary was there with her Pom Poms, she had been allowed to stay up late. Our golf team declared her to be our official cheerleader. To heck with those older pretty girls,...sure.
Chapter 43
Monday didn’t start out well, a cold front had moved in overnight and it was raining. I performed my exercises, but didn’t even think about running. How is it possible to feel great and terrible at the same time?
I was tired; it felt like I had been on the go for weeks. At the same time I felt great; we had won the sectional and would be going to the District this week. I had an offer to be in a movie. I was making progress on my hairdryer. All was good, if I wasn’t so tired and ached so much.
I went down for breakfast. One smell of eggs frying in the kitchen and I was running back to my bathroom to throw up. Mum heard the noise and came to check on me.
She felt my forehead and said, “Off to bed with you boyo, you have the flu.”
I went back to bed and slept most of the day, other than bouts of running to the bathroom. It was both ends. My temperature showed no sign of going down. Mum kept bringing cool rags when I was awake. Tuesday was more of the same so she called Dr. Costin.
He stopped by in the afternoon as a house call and confirmed that I had the flu but that my temperature was down from what Mum had measured. Drink plenty of liquids, and starve the fever was his prescription.
Tuesday night the fever broke. By late Wednesday morning I was feeling good enough to get out of bed for lunch. By this time Denny and Eddie had come down with it. Mary was still okay and Mum was keeping her away from us.
The only good thing was I got all the Nehi grape soda I could drink. For some reason when I had the flu it was the only thing I could keep down. This happened at least once every school year.
When I had the mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, German and three day measles or a common cold I could eat and drink anything. The flu was Nehi only.
Coach Stone called on Wednesday and Mum told him she thought I would be back in school Thursday and able to go to the District golf tournament. I felt a little weak on Wednesday afternoon but was up and about.
Mum had an appointment with Sharon Baily to have her hair done, so I was charged with watching the other kids. The boys were asleep and Mary was playing with her dolls, so I went out to the garage to work with the hairdryer.
The goal was to make a hand held unit. So far I had a cigar box lying on a workbench. It needed a handle. I tried another toilet paper roll (I had emptied several rolls myself in the last two days) as a handle. I slipped the electric power wires through it and taped it to the cigar box. When I tried to pick it up, the paper roll broke.
I threaded the wires through an unbroken roll and then put some short Lincoln Logs inside the roll. I then taped it all together and I had a sturdy handle. Picking the prototype hairdryer up the cigar box lid fell open so I taped it shut.
I updated a drawing in my notebook. I now had a barrel with heating element (toilet paper roll), housing (cigar box with erector set parts), and a handle (toilet paper roll reinforced with Lincoln Logs.
I was keeping all of my notes in a lab workbook Gilbert Chemistry set style, now I only had to find a use for tinker toys and I would have an all American hairdryer.
I could now pick the dryer up and wave it around. The weight felt good at about one pound, not too heavy but some heft to it. I went in and checked on the boys, they were still asleep. Mary was bored so I ended up reading Dr. Seuss to her. I love green ham. Actually she told me the story as she had “read” it so many times. She also was able to sight read some of the words.
Mum got home with a present from Mrs. Baily; she had sent me a bag of hair to test my dryer. She had saved hanks of long hair she had cut. I trapped one end of the hank of hair between two long tinker toy sticks and duct taped the sticks together.
I then used the tinker toys to build a frame work to suspend the hair. I entered a drawing of my test fixture and its components in my notebook.
Mum had to sign for a certified
letter. It was the contract from Warner Brother’s studio for, “The Cowboys.” Dad was switching cars BN yards today, just at the north end of Bellefontaine, it was where the stockyards was so Dad would be all stinky when he got home.
Mum opened the letter and let me read it, from what I could tell it was exactly as Mr. Wayne had described. Dad would still take it to our lawyer.
I wetted the hair in the fixture; then dried it. It dried ok, but had a burnt smell to it. There was also a singed smell to the dryer. When I checked it, the toilet paper roll which comprised the barrel was brown, about ready to catch on fire.
Well at least I knew I could create enough heat. I then disassembled the unit and found that the Popsicle sticks were charred and about to burn.
I asked Mum if I could use the phone, and it was okay. I called Bush Electric and Tom answered the phone. I explained that my device was about to burn up and what would he recommend using.
He told me that they used sheets of asbestos for insulation. It came in a flat sheet that could be cut and even rolled up. I asked him if it could be rolled to fit inside a toilet paper roll and he told me that it definitely could.
They had it in stock at fifty cents a square foot. I told him it would be next Monday at the earliest before I could stop down, but that I needed a sheet.
I watched TV with the kids; The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet followed by The Donna Reed Show, at nine thirty they had to get ready for bed, so I changed the channel and watched Bat Masterson. At ten I had to go to bed.
I was allowed to read as late as I wanted, so long as I got up with no trouble. When I was younger I would read under my covers with a flashlight. I thought I was getting away with something. I didn’t realize that the light could be seen through the covers.
I was reading a real fun book. It has a guy from New England thrown back in time; He becomes known as The Boss. He destroys the tower of a real grouchy magician and changes a lot of things, but in the end can’t change history.
Thursday I was able to go back to school. I skipped all my exercises and running one more day. I didn’t feel that good yet. They handed out report cards in homeroom.
As expected I got all A’s. By doing everything ahead I was feeling less stressed by school than ever. I had yet to run into a problem in the book that I couldn’t sort out myself. If I did all I would have to do is pay attention in class, or even shudder, ask a question.
After lunch we met Coach for our ride to the country club and then (I thought) to Findlay. First Coach asked me how I was feeling. I told him a lot better, still a little weak, but not ill at all. He shook his head slightly accepting my statement. Then Coach made an announcement.
There is a clown working in the Ohio State Boys Golf Tournament office. The letter sent out said we would be playing the District at the Red Hawk golf course in Findlay.
There is no such golf course. It seems the guy’s uncle wants to build one there with that name, and he thought he would get a plug in for him! Well he now has the time to help him as he no longer has a job.
We are going up near Toledo to play at the Inverness Club. That is where they played last year’s open, won by Dick Mayer. This may be the best course you will ever play in your life. That gave the whole team mixed emotions, great we get to play on a world class golf course; oh crap it is going to eat us alive.
Coach continued on, “Ricks slacking off turned out good for him. That map we were sent for Red Hawk was the proposed course so our planning was wasted. I don’t have a current map of Inverness, so we are going to have to take really good notes when we walk the course in the morning.”
When we got to the Inverness Club we were taken to a field where tents had been set up. They looked like old army tents. In fact the Ohio National Guard had set them up. They also had put in place a field kitchen, water buffalos and a shower facility and portable latrines. The tents looked like a six sided pyramid. They had plenty of room for four of us to sleep on cots that had been set up with sleeping bags on them.
The club may be posh, but we were camping. There was really no choice since there wasn’t any place to put up thirty two teams of four plus supporting adults.
After getting settled in our team walked over as a group to the clubhouse. We were only allowed to go inside the pro shop. I bought some tees that said, “Inverness Toledo,” on them.
We did peek into the main clubhouse; it was the fanciest place I had ever seen. We also scoped out the practice tees and green, but again weren’t allowed to use them.
It was time for dinner when we got back; we had to line up with a metal tray and were served by the National Guardsmen. They were performing their monthly duty and from the fun they were having this must be good duty.
I mentioned that to one of them, he chuckled and said, “No rain, no mud, no middle of the night drills, good duty.”
I was really glad I had brought that book with knights because there was nothing else to do. They had a lamp in each tent but it wasn’t enough to read by, but I had brought my trusty flashlight.
Chapter 44
We got woken around two a.m. by whistles and commotion over by the National Guard tents. They were going on a night march, not such good duty after all.
In the morning breakfast line I saw the National Guardsman who had told me this was good duty, he didn’t look like he had a lot of sleep. I nodded to him as I went by, but kept my mouth shut.
He surprised me by saying, “You take the good with the bad, it is still good duty.”
Now that is a positive attitude if I ever saw one.
I hadn’t much experience around the military other than the veterans in my own family. They all seemed to look at life the same way. They groused a little, but kept on going. I would try to keep that attitude in mind when things got rough, rather than being what Mum called a whinger.
After breakfast we walked the course. We took many notes as we went. We weren’t allowed to do any putting on the green, but the course marshals keeping an eye on things didn’t get upset if a golf ball fell out of your pocket and rolled towards the hole on a tricky lie.
These greens were like greased lightning. They were also the smallest and had the most breaks I had seen on any course. The bunkers protecting them would have done credit to the Maginot line. Coach pointed out how fourteen and fifteen were at right angles so no matter which way the wind was blowing you would have trouble on one or the other.
Number eight hole would be interesting; it is a par 5 and would require a 250 yard drive to clear the bunkers in the fairway. They should be declared illegal on all golf courses. I could clear the bunkers.
The real problem is that the only way to get a decent putt was to land on the right side of the green below the hole. This would be an accuracy challenge.
The tenth hole was made to cause me problems. It’s a par four, but had a downhill slope with a rough between the 250 yard marker and the green. My normal drive would end up in the rough. I would have to layup and hit the green with an eight iron.
The par four 470 yards seventeenth was a potential problem hole. It was a sharp dog leg left. I could probably position my drive okay, but if my second shot was long it was a bogey at best if not a double. It was below the hole or be in trouble.
The good news was that most of the sand traps and creek crossings were designed to cause problems for the golfer who drove 225 yards or less. I could drive past most of the problems.
After walking the course we spent time on the driving range to loosen up, but most of our time on the practice greens. There was no question that I had to be below the hole on every green to have a chance of one putting. They were just too fast going downhill.
We had a one o’clock tee time, so we stopped at an outdoor hotdog stand to get a bite to eat. We had just sat down at the outdoor picnic benches when I noticed a girl who seemed to be having problems. She had her hands at her throat and seemed to have trouble breathing. As a matter of fact she was choking.
I took
the four steps to get to her and asked her if she was okay. She couldn’t say anything just trying to draw air but not succeeding. Her mouth was open and I could see part of a hot dog wedged in her throat.
I tried to reach in with my fingers and almost had them bitten off. Not knowing what to do, I slapped her hard in the middle of her back. She spit the hotdog across the table.
She immediately started taking great whoops of air. By that time other people had noticed what was going on. One gentleman came running over and asked, “Judy, are you okay?”
He then turned to me and said, “I don’t know why you hit my daughter young man but I’m calling the sheriff.”
Lucky for me he didn’t have far to go because a deputy sheriff was standing right there and had seen the whole event.
The deputy explained that he saw that Judy was having problems and was on his way to help her but I got there first. He explained that it was lucky I was the first one there because he hadn’t any idea how to dislodge a hotdog like that.
Both Judy’s father and the deputy looked at me like they wanted me to explain how I knew what to do.
I explained, “I found out real quick I couldn’t get it out of her mouth from the front, so I applied force from behind. I hadn’t a clue if it would work but had to do something before she suffocated.”
Her father who looked extremely emotional held out his hand and said,” I’m so sorry I snapped at you, I only saw you hit Judy, now I know you saved her life I feel like a fool.”
I replied, “That is a natural reaction when ones daughter is hit. No apology is necessary.”
By that time the young lady had recovered her breath. She turned to me and gave me a simple, “Thank you.”
I got my first look at her; she was a head shorter than me with dark brown hair and brown eyes. A full very nice figure, meaning well develop breasts. She looked about my age and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
