Jungle Golf

Back in the middle years of the 1960’s when we were indestructible adolescents we liked to play jungle golf through the neighborhoods of suburban Philadelphia with nine irons and actual golf balls.  You know . . . from the patch of grass in my front yard, down the street, around the corner, up your street, around Thomas Williams Junior High School, and back to the flower pot on your front porch.  A brilliant shot bounced for some yards along the asphalt and came to rest on a nice playable tuft of Aunt Betty’s lawn.  No fair improving your lie in any way.  If your ball rolled under a car, tough noogies for you, buddy roll.  Belly in under there and use the butt end of your club like a pool cue.  The only exception to this rule was the storm drain at the corner.  If your ball trickled down into the sewers, you took a two-shot penalty drop in the middle of the street.  

How we managed these shenanigans without ever cracking a windshield or denting sheet metal I will never know.

Twenty two years ago my nephew graduated from Marist College in New York State and decided to reward himself with a visit to Sonoma.  David arrived with his best pal, Mike, so I made a deal with these strapping young men.  You two plant these forty-two olive saplings out back and trench in the irrigation system, and I will take you backpacking, with son Tucker and his pal Sean, to my favorite place in the Sierras: Crown Lake.  

What a weasel I was.  Not only did I get a free olive grove, when we got to the trail head I loaded the tents and ropes and tarps and food into their packs and a sleeping bag into mine. 

Happily enough David still loves me and is now a Connecticut cop with a heroism plaque on his wall for wrestling a drunk out of his wrecked car seconds before the gas tank exploded.

Last week I rode our John Deere mower around David’s olive orchard for an hour and noticed when I was done that the alleys between the trees resemble fairways.  So, Jane, Honey, as long as COVID-19 has us stuck here, how about we play a little jungle golf?  

Nowadays we fragile seniors play with bright yellow plastic mush balls so there is no danger of knocking one through the window and into the bath tub, but if you loft one of those lightweights up into the jet stream as you shoot for the flower pot on the back porch, it will fly right over the roof.  Each of us have managed that once so far.  Mine came to rest under the Ford, Jane’s by the front yard olive tree.

Right now Jane is mixing up soup and tuna salad for lunch.  After, we will troop out to the back nine and she will somehow avoid the tree branches and lavender bushes and rock garden.  She will also employ her left handed toe-of-the-club flick to escape an impossible lie up against the pump house to school me yet again.

Tough noogies for me.