My First Golf Adventure

1961

During the summer of 1961, after grade 8, I had nothing planned. I wasn't going to let a lack of strategy hold me back.

I wasn't a golfer yet. That would happen in the future. There was a nice private golf course on the outskirts of the neighborhood where I lived. A few of my boys decided to try our luck at caddying.  There was no barrier like a job application. The deal was to simply show up and wait in the caddy pen. It was on the job learning as I recall. The only teaching was from someone more experienced waiting in the pen with you.

The caddy pen was bona fide pen. Pigs would have flown to get a spot. Hidden between the clubhouse and the first tee, chicken wire walls held up a corrugated tin roof which covered a dirt floor. The only amenity was bench seats painted with fast peeling green paint. The members of the club must have been embarrassed by it.

There wasn't a caddy manager. If a golfer wanted a caddy they simply wandered over the pen to see who was available. It was like a scene out of the slave movie Spartacus which was a recent award winner.

I didn't go every day.  And I didn't go at 7 a.m. when the keenest golfers teed off. I was most likely to show up about 10 a couple of days a week. My logic was that golfers played all day long and I'd only want to do one loop. That's the technical term for carrying a bag for one 18 hole round of golf. Ten a.m. was plenty early. We earned something like two bucks per loop including tip.

Early in July when I was still a newbie, I was in the pen with my buddy Irv waiting to get picked. We were the only caddies in the pen just then. Slim pickings for the golfers. Lots of opportunity for us.

Suddenly a big white and blue Oldsmobile convertible pulls up to the pen. A nice looking man wearing a fedora, sporting a Clark Gable thin mustache and smoking a cigar leans over and yells at us “can you guys pack doubles at Aurora this afternoon”.

We barely understood what he meant but notwithstanding that we jumped in the car and were on our way.

Packing doubles in Aurora meant we were both going to carry two golf bags for a loop at the Aurora Golf and Country Club a private course about 40 kilometers north.

The afternoon wasn't a total success. First of all it was very hot and carrying two bags made it a struggle. Secondly we didn't know what we were doing. We were not great at following the flight of balls. We often were in the wrong place and getting in way. Needless to say we were no help with club selection or reading greens.

The man who picked us up used his 8 iron for most of his shots. It was the one club he had confidence in. Now that I'm an experienced golfer I understand what a good lesson that was. One’s feelings for the club in his hands can be as important as any other part of the swing.

Eight iron man was Wally Crouter who at the time was the morning host on a major local radio station. He kept that esteemed position for 34 more years ending on exactly his 50th anniversary at the station in 1996.

The round ended at about 5 o'clock.  We were exhausted.  Mr. Crouter handed us $15 each and left us to get home on our own. We walked out to Yonge St and took a cab back to our hood for $4 each. When we arrived at our strip mall hang out with $11 in our pockets we were the richest kids on the block and I'm sure we treated everyone to a coke at least.

As that day started my world view was pretty limited. But 10 hours later I had travelled a great distance, met a celebrity, drove in a convertible, packed doubles, learned an important golf lesson and took a cab all for possibly the first time in my life. Two more days like that and I would have been ready for anything.

My Dad Died Young. Still Got the Job Done.

1957           

As grade 4 ended in June 1957 I was starting on my journey to becoming the best kind of man; comfortable with masculinity, owning good adult relationships with men and women and able to teach his children the codes that lead to success. 

 But by the first day of grade 5 my tour guide  Morris Shore, my father, the man whose job it was to guide me to manhood, died, aged 48.

 I've been wondering since then about what kind of man he was and what I lost. Even though, I've been told, he was a mess of a husband and away from home way too much he had role model qualities. He had pulled himself up from one of the dark places in Europe to be a success in Canada. He was on third base because he actually had hit a triple.

 He owned a business, one he had worked at for years and bought two years before his death. He had a big personality and he was high strung. I remember him coming home with a red Buick convertible when I was eight and having a road rage incident in front of our house. These are visions with incomplete context.

He died from a head injury when he collapsed into a radiator, at home, recuperating from heart disease. Hard work and high strung killed him.

At that moment I was lucky enough to be at Camp Northland in Haliburton. Acres of fun. Waterfront. Baseball fields. Cookout areas. Giant rec halls.

I was retrieved from some activity by my sister Sima. She was a counsellor at the attached girl’s camp, B’nai Brith. Andy Schaefer, a camp administrator and a cousin was with her. Without saying why, Andy drove us back to Toronto in an early 1950s sedan. A Rubenesque car from the time before fins.  

When we got home my eldest sister, Dolores, took me aside in the crowded house. She sat in a chair that in my memory looked like a throne. She held my hands, one in each of hers and said “your father has died”. Many relatives gave me warm hugs and declared "oy vey". I remember the squeezing not the faces. I told my mother that I would quit school and go to work. 

The funeral was big. (Here's a pro tip. Die young if you want a crowded funeral.) I wish I had a memory of the eulogy or a copy. I was driven back to camp the next day. 

 That was too soon. It would have been better if I had stayed in Toronto and had a chance to mourn for the traditional week. I would have grown by honouring my dad and from the consoling conversations about my father. One outcome is that I’m now not naturally sad when people die. I have to work to show sympathy.

 While my dad was alive there wasn't much chance that I would learn life lessons from him. Because of his work and his health our time together was scarce. And then it ended without me knowing him. We never chatted at his favourite fishing hole. There was no meditative playing catch. He didn't live long enough to teach me how to drive, a car or a golf ball. 

 Thankfully he lived long enough to teach me resilience. By reframing our life together and channeling one trait of his I've done ok. As he was, I am tenacious. I cultivate life. I've harvested much. Nothing is paying rent on my bucket list. 

I feel like I hit a double when I chose the parents I did and then learned enough to stretch it to a triple just like my dad.  

June 29, 2016

 October 22, 2019

Arrested in Lamia

July 31, 1971

Not knowing where you will sleep when you wake up is one thrill of hitch-hiking long distances.

I woke up on a cot in the courtyard of a house beside the main highway in the middle of Greece one morning in July 1971. I ended up there after a hitching a ride on a truckload of watermelons the day before. Literally. I rode on the watermelons. The truck’s cab was full of watermelon farmers.

I started out for Athens after breakfast.

Hitchhiking across Europe was easy then. Maybe it still is. I doubt it. I was picked up right away.

The man who picked me up asked where I was going. I said the Acropolis. It was the only tourist destination in Athens I knew I wanted to see. I had been travelling for about six weeks. Lisbon, Seville, Barcelona, Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples, Corfu. I got one ride from Perpignan in France to Genoa in Italy so I missed the entire south of France.

My ride dropped me at the ticket booth of the Acropolis at about 1:30. I spent about 90 minutes touring the site. Of course, it was awesome. But I’m not the kind of person who is whelmed by these things. I’m happy enough with a good look see. I wasn’t budgeted for guided tours.

When I was done I found my way to the American Express office where backpackers congregated. I would’ve checked to see if there was any mail waiting for me but I had suggested Vienna as the place people write to me. If anyone did write, the letter is still waiting. I’ve still never been there.

At the American Express office I approached two girls who seemed aimless. I wish I could recall what I said. Within a few minutes one of them and I were on our way, hitch-hiking, to Istanbul. The world was a more civilized place then.

The way inter-city hitch-hiking worked was to walk towards the main highway along city streets with your thumb out. Eventually someone picked you up and you were on your way. Only Rome was different. The recommended tactic was to train to Siena and hitch from there.

Of our rides north that day, two were eventful. One was on an empty tour bus. We were the only passengers. At the end of our final ride we were dropped, as Arlo Guthrie would have said then, by the side of a side road, within site of the lights of the city of Lamia. Before we could start walking into Lamia a police car stopped to greet us. It was about 11 p.m.

The policemen checked our documents and then put us in the car to drive us into town, to a police station. There was no communication. They didn’t speak English. We didn’t speak Greek. We thought it best not to rebel. It was the time of the Colonels in Greece. If you remember the movie Z, the Colonels were a dictatorship not known for kindness. I wasn’t the smartest guy but I had seen the movie.

Well past 1 a.m. we were finally put on the phone with a local English teacher who explained what was going on. Apparently, that day, in Athens, a north American couple had murdered a local and were on the run. It took the police a couple of hours to determine that we weren’t the gringos in question. That’s when they got the English teacher to bring us the good news.

The police put us up in a hotel for the night.

I could have guessed I would sleep in a hotel when I woke up that day. I wouldn't have guessed it would be police hospitality after being arrested on a murder charge.