The Story of Wayne Arrow, Part 1
It is 30 years after Trump the First
had revamped all of America. The East Bay area had grown like a cat
with too much tuna. Houses and condos covered hills where the cattle
used to roam.
There were no more dead end streets,
everything was connected. The self driving cars had sort of taken
off and the freeways that split the Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore
towns had not needed to grow past their 5 lanes in every direction.
The traffic noise was still there. The electric car revolution was
still 20 years off for the 20th year. The death of Tesla
in 2020 had cooled everyone's interest in them. Of course the state
government was using the telemetry of the cars to apply road taxes to
the e-cars. Even if they didn't pay gas taxes they were going to pay
something.
A midst all of this modernity lay a
small jewel in the form of a golf course.
Of course most golf in these days was
played in Asia or on line. The property values were such that no one
was willing to pass on those kind of riches.
But the city of Livermore found that
they had to. As all the land areas got paved over and the run off to
the arroyos allowed for no rain to soak in, the spring floods would
fill the arroyos and then climb the banks like a toddler with a gleam
in his eye would climb a crib. And that's where the golf course came
in. It was a couple hundred acres of land that had been flooding
forever. Before the natives lived in the area and certainly ever
since.
The early missionaries who farmed the
valleys never touched the one where the course lay.
It had been a golf course since the
1960s. The tract had been reworked a number of times as the land use
around the course changed. Holes dropped, rerouted, the "links"
course added, it just went on and on.
There was always a long time player
who, still in his 90s, would play every day. The current one, a Jack
Smythe, mid 90s, no hair but a bad beard, no longer played but could
always be found on the practice chipping area. He would occasionally
watch the groups coming off the 18th green and greet the
many players he knew.
Like a lot of old guys he liked to talk
and had stories going back over the decades. He had retired in 2010
and played the course three times a week since then. It was a lot of
rounds and shoes and balls and tees.
One day recently, while Jack was
watching at the 18th a young man named Billy Bristol came
through. He was playing with his usual foursome.
The 18th is a par 5 with a
double dogleg. The second shots would show up between a couple of
bunkers about 100 yards out.
Jack watched Billy's approach shot and
it landed satisfactorily in the middle of the green.
Billy and his pals showed up and
proceeded to putt out.
Billy lined his up and spent some time
walking around his lie. This is not something that Billy usually did
– Billy was a “just hit it, then hit it again” type putter.
Jack's eyebrow, all snowy white and a bit droopy, rose a smidgen at
this unusual behavior.
Like most putts from 12 feet this one
didn't go in. Billy addressed the heavens and cried out his
unhappiness.
“Hmm,” thought Jack.
Billy scraped the ball into the hole
and waited for the rest of his group to finish. Hands were shaken
and promises of future games announced and then they wandered off the
green and moved toward the bridge and parking lot.
Billy waved to Jack and Jack waved him
over.
“It must have been an important
putt?” asked Jack.
“Yes, it was a chance to break 90. I
was so close and then pulled that putt. If I could only break 90
once, I'd be a happy golfer,” Billy replied.
“Hmm, not so fast there, young man,”
said Jack. “Have I ever told you the story of Wayne Arrow?”
Billy looked at his watch. Some of
there stories can be pretty long and while they could also be
interesting, it's not something you want to leap at every time.
To be continued....
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A note to the reader... Yes, I'm going to try some fiction. I've been going through some of the P.G. Wodehouse with a pencil and I'll see if I can whip up something similar. No promises mind you. As one wag put it, being an author is grand, it's just the writing that's such a pain.
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