THE ROAD IS LIFE

GMC, Summerfield, NC

Farmall, Summerfield, NC

I find a lot of inspiration for writing while driving out into the countryside with no particular place to go.  I try to be alert to my surroundings and to the thoughts that wander in and out of my mind as I experience stimulus in the world.  I was detoured by county sheriff cars this afternoon on my way home from a golf practice green as crews were laying a new pipe line next to the two-lane highway I was crusin’.  The smaller country road led me past a rustic weathered barn somewhat sheltering a rusting GMC truck and a fading red Farmall tractor whose patina nicely blended with the rust.  Our human legacy remains dust to dust while machinery’s condemnation is rust to rust.  Elvis was ironically streaming on my sound system, singing of “memories pressed between the pages of my mind, sweetened through the ages just like wine”.

The sight of large hay bales in the barn triggered summer memories of my high school and early college days and those sunny days in the hay fields trading honest sweat for minimum wages.  Yet, that was enough to fund those glorious warm evenings with my friends dragging the gut in our small central Kansas town.  And the 1973 coming-of-age film American Graffiti perfectly nailed the essence of those beautiful nights before finally capitulating to a responsible adult lifetime of married commitment, family, mortgages, credit cards, business travel and endless meetings.  That was all good for the most part and the pay was certainly better, as were the adventures out into the world.

It was also during that time when it was apparent that hormones were kicking in attracting teens to the opposite sex and developing a somewhat rebellious attitude that facilitated the time-honored impetus needed to jump the nest and stretch out wings.  We were reading books like Knock on any Door where the motto was “live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse”.  Of course, everyone at that age is immortal, so that was merely a rallying cry to summon up the courage to make the leap of faith.

I didn’t immediately act on any serious attractions to girls, because I reasoned that an early bond would probably derail my future plans to follow my bliss in the footsteps of the 1949 Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and the 1957 travels On the Road alongside Jack Kerouac; " I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future…Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

I had experienced enough by my senior year of college to understand that the adult world awaited me and it was time.  I was open to meeting the love of my life that year and she was introduced by the future wife of a friend.  We were instantly bound as soulmates and engaged within a year.  Her parents’ only caveat was that we hold off marriage until she also graduated and that time flew by and into forty more years until breast cancer claimed her life.  One day we were carefree students and the next we were separated, but I have the knowledge of another meeting that will be even sweeter than Cana wine.  And I have sweet memories.

DEWSWEEPERS

Dewsweeper, Greensboro National GC

Footprints in the Dew, Greensboro National GC

A Great Friend, Jamestown Park GC

A golfing friend recently loaned me his copy of Final Rounds by James Dodson about a bucket list trip to the origins of golf with his father who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Dodson turns out to have grown up in this area in Greensboro, North Carolina, and his subsequent book on the experience became a bestseller and 1996 Golf Book of the year.  I enjoyed the book so much a quick search on Amazon scored another book on The Dewsweepers, Seasons of Golf and Friendship.  Early Dewsweepers were sent out at first light to swipe the dew off of golf greens with a long cane pole.  Dodson defined a Dewsweeper as “a guy who takes the game but not himself very seriously”.  I finished this book on the eve of an early June tee time acquired by a regular group of Dewsweepers at Greensboro National Golf Club the next morning.

This group of senior golfers has a lot in common with my golfing friends in Kansas City where we played many rounds of golf through the liquid sunshine on sparkling fairways.  I actually set my alarm around 5:00 each Saturday morning for years and drove to a public course where tee times were issued in the order of the golfers assembled on a wooden bench next to the clubhouse door which was unlocked at dawn. 

 The Dewsweepers had three cardinal rules which were uncannily similar to our rules:

*  We only play to have fun.  Nobody takes this game all that seriously.

*   We never play for more than a buck—no big money to be made here.(keeping things friendly) 

                                             *  We play a Floating Flannigan (McDonald)—a mulligan that carries over from the first tee and can be used on any tee.

Dodson notes that “when you’re simply out on the golf course enjoying the surroundings and the company, you have achieved the blessed state of stupid happy and reached NATO—Not Attached to Outcome.  Accept what the game gives to you.  That’s the secret to a good round—let it happen.  Golf can become a form of personal therapy and the holy grail.  Golf really isn’t about greatness—it’s about goodness.  Good shots, Good friends.  And ultimately, good memories.”

Our Dewsweeper round yesterday morning morphed into a very hot and humid finish.  After missing about four putts within three feet I also missed my chance to finish into the desired 80’s, so I drove over to our local practice range this morning to specifically work on that distance.  It’s been said that sometimes you stroke it and sometimes you tap it.  The trick is to know which you should do!

Somehow, I had never noticed a memorial bench unobtrusively placed between the practice putting green and chipping green.  Not being a local native, I didn’t know the man memorialized here, but the three words under his name summarized the game of golf nicely, “A Great Friend”.

EXPANDING BOUNDARIES

Youth Bike, Jamestown, NC

Passing through the neighborhood this morning on my way home from the gym, I noticed a youth bicycle that had been painted Carolina blue and parked against a tree as a yard decoration.  I had just been driving for a few miles in the latest of a long line of carefully selected automobiles representing my lifetime romance with the road less traveled.  Leaving the sanctuary of my home block was never in my thoughts this morning or any morning in recent memory.  I ventured out with no compunctions of crossing streets or staying within designated boundaries.

But the sight of that bicycle resurrected long-lost memories that flooded back into my thoughts.  I remembered the idyllic summer days of my childhood when I rode my first bicycle in endless circles around our city block.  I was under strict orders not to cross the street and venture out into traffic or suffer unknowable consequences that would not be pleasant.  So, I pedaled around the cracked sidewalks with increasing speed and agility to test my wings for the great escape!

And that momentous day arrived when my mother finally gave me permission to venture off the concrete sidewalks and across the forbidden asphalt street to visit a neighborhood friend from school, provided I stop and look both ways before proceeding.  From that day on my clipped wings began extending exponentially and before long I was riding with friends further out beyond the invisible boundaries of the world around me.  We eventually crossed one of the main thoroughfares not too far from home and explored the nearby college campus with its wide sidewalks, stadium track and scenic bridge over the local lake.

Later in life, I graduated from college and drove my first new car to the big city in search of a career job and adventure.  That experience then led to my first jet plane trip out of state to Chicago for a business meeting which pushed the boundaries even farther.  Those trips led to changing employers and opportunities to travel out of the country where people no longer spoke my language and considered me the foreigner.

My world has admittedly retreated somewhat these days even though I still enjoy travelling for pleasure and strictly avoiding those 6:00 am redeye flights.  I no longer ride a bicycle for safety’s sake except for the stationary ones at the gym that will not enable crossing the street.  But I still enjoy diverting my drive home many times and simply circle the neighborhood for old time’s sake.  And now that I think about it, I was also expanding a multitude of life boundaries while I was forever pushing those boundless physical boundaries!

TIME ENOUGH

Early Morning Summer Day Lily, Jamestown, NC

HAIKU

A Day Lily has 
only one good day to shine.
That is time enough.

MISCUES

This morning I accompanied a tournament threesome of American Junior Golf Association players as their scorer using an iPhone app. The world is in good hands with young men like those three from Texas, California and Portugal. They’re obviously still learning the mechanics and head game, but their game has already surpassed mine that has matured over five times the years that they’ve been alive!  They are very focused, driven to succeed and have a low tolerance for mistakes even though those are inevitable in life as we grow.  I found it interesting to reference that "a miscue in billiards and other games results in a failure to strike the ball or shot properly".  I’ve had a lot of miscues in billiards as well as golf over the years.  I mentioned to one of the walking fathers that Tiger Wood’s father wrote in his book about Training a Tiger that he instructed him to take ten steps every time he had a miscue before he did anything else to calm his mind and put it aside in preparation for the next shot.

We talked at lunch that miscues are part of the learning process and an indication that we’re expanding our present boundaries. Each one can be turned into a positive learning experience and we’ll never lose if we remember not to lose the lesson.

And golf imitates life.  I’m still learning and taking ten steps every day.