Rainy Sundays

By Jim Dodson

 

It’s raining this morning, a Sunday in early May.

Few things, meteorologically speaking, make me happier.

To begin with, Sunday is my favorite day.

Also, soft rain is a gardener’s blessing. Together, rainy Sundays make the world a smaller, quieter place, encouraging certain hardworking souls – my beautiful Yankee wife, let’s say — to burrow a bit longer beneath covers before she’s roused by the muddy-pawed crowd (human and canine) to stage one of her heroic Sabbath morn breakfasts, with time off allowed for good behavior to read the newspaper and talk of small things, savoring a peace that passeth weekday understanding even as her husband heads off for the garden.

For me, on a different level, rainy Sundays stir involuntary memories of my family’s odyssey through the strange garden of the deep South during my first seven years of life, a South that really no longer exists outside the boundaries of my mind, shaped by solitary days of a childhood passed in a succession of small sleepy southern towns where my father worked at the newspaper and my brother and I were pretty much left to roam the world untethered, forever ditching our shoes, Boxcar boys growing up wild and free.

First there was Gulfport where my pregnant mother and I would walk the broad flat beach in the evening light, shoes in hand, collecting interesting shells and keeping watch for approaching storms over the vast Gulf of Mexico, a body of water that was often as still as bathwater but reportedly coughed up more diverse shells than any other ocean on the planet.

This information came from a mountainous pressman named Tiny Earl, who worked at the weekly newspaper my dad owned with his silent investment partner.

Tiny Earl also let it slip that we happened to reside “smack in the middle of Hurricane Alley,” predicting that any day now a “killer” hurricane would churn up from the Gulf to wreak incredible devastation on Gulfport and neighboring Biloxi.

Looking back, I was secretly thrilled at this terrifying prospect and immediately wrote off to the National Geographic Society for an official Hurricane Watch kit that included a special map of common hurricane patterns and a preparation guide plus membership card.

A few impressive storms did boil out of the Gulf during the two years we lived across the street from the state beach, bringing curtains of rain and fearsome winds but disappointingly no named hurricanes that I could later claim to have witnessed and somehow miraculously survived. That distinction would come half a century later when Hurricane Katrina wiped away hundreds of lives, homes and businesses on the very coast where we lived.

A different kind of hurricane blew us home to Carolina.

My mother lost her baby the same week my father lost his newspaper owing to a silent partner who cleaned out the paper’s bank accounts following his Tuesday Kiwanis luncheon and struck off for parts unknown with the cigarette girl from a downtown hotel.

My father had just returned from a trip to Memphis where he’d purchased a new printing press that would allow his newspaper to publish five days a week in the new year. Instead, he lost both his newspaper dream and life savings in one afternoon, not to mention a third baby boy later that week.

In my mind it was softly raining the late November evening we left Gulfport for the overnight drive to North Carolina, though I could simply be imagining this because of the rain that seemed to follow us everywhere in those days.

I do have a clear memory, however, of my dad’s nine employees lining up on the sidewalk to say goodbye, and my father handing each one of them a small white envelope that contained – as I learned from my mother decades later – the last of my parents’ savings. Tiny Earl the pressman gave me, of all things, a waterproof flashlight that I kept for years. Tina the receptionist gave me a handful of peppermint candies for the overnight ride home to Carolina.

We wound up living by Greenfield Lake in Wilmington for one year, where the weather either seemed blazingly hot and sunny or moodily cool and rainy. I hoped for a hurricane but none came, though I did learn to swim in the little lagoon near the drawbridge to Wrightsville Beach one rainy summer Sunday after church, dog paddling about while a sudden shower freckled the surface of the water. I also learned to ride a bicycle that year, 1958, peddling along the oyster-shelled foot paths of Airlie Gardens and sidewalks in the rain around Greenfield Lake, my tires singing on the wet pavement.

After my mother’s second miscarriage, we spent another full year living in Florence, South Carolina, where I started the first grade and had perfect attendance and my father worked at the newspaper and my mother was nursed back to health by a wonderful black woman named Jesse May Richardson, who looked after my brother and me during the week and always checked in on us after her own church services on Sunday.

Among her many gifts, Miss Jesse May taught my mother – a former Miss Western Maryland beauty queen — how to garden and cook “real” Southern food.

She also taught me to “feet dance” by hoisting me up by my skinny arms and lowering me onto her own canvas work shoes, shimmying us both around the kitchen while supper cooked on the stove and gospel music played from her transistor radio in the window over the sink. To this day, anytime I hear “I’ll Fly Away” or “Over in the Glory Land,” I’m inclined to dance on the spot or at least move my feet to the holy beat.

It was Miss Jesse May, in fact, who first informed me that rain is holy water, the Lord’s way of helping the world grow flowers and food. “So never say a cross word about a rainy day, Child!” she instructed me, just one of many important things I was told that year– quite bossily at times, I might add, with unwavering authority from my mother — including the fact that no civilized child ever removes his shoes in a public place, and certainly not at the Piggily Wiggily — no matter how hot it happens to be outside or how cool the tiled floor of the newly air-conditioned grocery store feels under your bare feet.

My mother liked to say she owed Miss Jesse May her life, and I believe there is Gospel truth in that. For what it’s worth, I still use her recipe for seasoned collards every Thanksgiving.

It rained the Sunday we went to see her in the colored wing of the old Florence Memorial Hospital. This was just before Christmas of 1959. My parents refused to tell my brother and me what was wrong with her. We came straight from church. My mother took her a bright bouquet of flowers from the florist shop near the newspaper.

Her funeral a week later was held at a small freewill Baptist church on the outskirts of Florence. It must have been on a Saturday. The service was long but I liked the music and met Miss Jesse’s grown daughter, Babygirl, who drove up from Atlanta. That Sunday it rained. I remember this because my mother said a good rain was Miss Jesse May’s doing – the winter garden out back needed it.

Within weeks, however, we moved home to Greensboro, where I joined Miss Chamberlain’s second grade class at Braxton Craven Elementary for the new year, 1960. That week we were asked to bring a poem to class and read it aloud. I chose Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Rain,” a ditty lodged in my head to this day.

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and trees,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

His message seems clear. Rain feeds the earth and oceans and connects us all to each other, wherever life’s voyages take us.

Miss Jesse May was right.

Why else is water mentioned just 39 words into the Book of Genesis, even before the Almighty made light to separate the day from night; even before He created the land and stars, the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and finally man. We bathe in water, we baptize new life with it; rainwater washes away the dust of the day, cools city streets and washes windows of the soul; makes the world green and forever new, gives us flowers and food.
Perhaps this explains why, six decades later, I’m prone to lose track of time when I’m working in my garden on rainy Sunday mornings.
The scent of watered Earth and growing plants takes me back to a quiet South that may rightfully exist only in memory – and a very privileged one at that – but shaped so much of what I believe about life and people and worlds both seen and unseen.
Not long ago, after an early hour of spot weeding in a light Sabbath mist, I hurried off to church forgetting to change out of my muddy garden shoes.
An elegant older lady who often shares our pew, gave me an amused look and nodded at my feet, where chunks of red clay and bits of mulch clung to my khakis and shabby canvas shoes.
“I can see where you’ve been this morning,” she whispered with a chuckle, as our pew rose to head for the communion rail. “Closer to God’s heart in a garden, dear?”
“Yes ma’am,” I replied.
For a crazy instant, I was tempted to kick off my muddy shoes and take communion in my bare feet.
But then a voice in my head reminded me that this was the Lord’s house and not the Piggily Wiggily — where even muddy shoes are acceptable at the table.
So up I went, hoping it was the Almighty who’d spoken to my heart.
On the other hand, it could easily have been Miss Jesse May Richardson.

 

 

The edition of Simple Life was first published in May 2016.

Art Lives Here

For Center for Visual Artists, the show must go on

By Maria Johnson

Fine art venues have been up against some blank walls with social distancing born of coronavirus, so the Center for Visual Artists, a nonprofit Greensboro gallery devoted to local creators, is trying a different tack.

In mid-May, the gallery will launch a soft opening of the organization’s first online show and sale, Maggie Fickett: Living in Plein Air.

The show — featuring the work of former Greensboro watercolorist Maggie Fickett — was supposed to have opened in the CVA gallery on April 21, but the city locked down the Greensboro Cultural Center, which houses the CVA’s office and exhibit space.
It’s not clear when the building and the gallery will reopen, so it seems like a good time to experiment with a different way of showing, selling and educating the public about an exhibit, says gallery director Corrie Lisk-Hurst.

“We want to be one of the first to do this kind of thing,” she allows. “If that means learning as we go, that’s fine. It’s giving us focus and purpose.”

The art world has used online tools for a long time. Many artists sell directly from their websites and from online marketplaces like Etsy. Live auctions are fairly common. So are recorded gallery tours, artist interviews, demonstrations and classes.
But it’s new territory for a smaller gallery like CVA to fuse an online show, sale and education-related programming.

“For a long time, we’ve wanted to increase access to the local arts via online exhibitions,” Lisk-Hurst explains. “Lucky for us, Maggie’s family and supporters have allowed us to use this show as our first educated experiment.”

The soft opening will be accessible by email invitation only. People who want to be invited may email their requests to gallery@greensboroart.org. In June, all visitors to the CVA website should be able to view the show at www.greensboroart.org.

Using newly acquired software that enables the display and sale of art online, the CVA will start the show with about 200 framed and unframed works that cover a variety of subjects and locations.

Fickett painted scenes in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Jamestown, Eden, Burlington, Seagrove, Raleigh, Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, as well as her home state of Maine and the city of Boston, where she worked as an advertising illustrator for several years. Bermuda, a favorite vacation spot, pops up in balmy blues.

As chronicled in the November 2017 issue of O.Henry, she captured familiar Greensboro locales, such as Fisher Park, Hamilton Lakes, Tate Street, State Street and downtown during its last big construction boom. She preserved local landmarks, including the Boar & Castle restaurant, Ham’s restaurant, the Carolina Theatre, and several colleges and churches.

In time, the CVA plans to sell hundreds more of Fickett’s works online. Buyers may use credit cards to purchase the art. They can pick up the items by appointment.

Someday the gallery might host an in-person show of Fickett’s work, Lisk-Hurst says.

But for now, CVA will stick to the cyber-show. They plan to promote the ongoing event through their Facebook page, Instagram feed and email list. They also hope to post videos about Fickett, including discussions of her artistic style and biography.

Fickett died on March 26 at age 89. A native of Maine, she moved to Greensboro in 1979 and became a prolific chronicler of area streets, parks, historical sites and private homes. She lived in Wilmington for a couple of years in the late ’80s before returning to Greensboro, where she often sketched and painted on location, en plein air.

Fickett’s family moved her back to Maine in 2014 because she had Alzheimer’s disease. Much of her work remained in storage in Greensboro.

A week before she died, Fickett, who no longer recognized family, fell out of her wheelchair in the memory care facility where she lived in South Paris, Maine. She broke a hip and possibly an arm, and she was in pain.

Hospice caregivers administered palliative care. Maggie passed peacefully, in the company of staffers whom she treasured. Family was not allowed into the home because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Fickett’s family and gallery officials had planned to use the majority of proceeds from the show to support Fickett’s care. Now, they’re considering using most of the profit to create a plein air painting class in Greensboro in Fickett’s honor.

“I’m thrilled that some of the profits from her art will be used to enlighten and educate others in her style of work. She loved sharing her art with other people,” says Debbie Fickett, who is married to Maggie’s nephew Robert. “It gave her much joy, and it’s wonderful that others will be able to experience that.”

by Jim Dodson

 

With graduation season upon us, here’s a letter I wrote to my son, Jack, eight years ago this week, upon his graduation from Elon University. My nickname for Jack was “Nibs.” Today he is married and resides in the Middle East, working as a top journalist and filmmaker. His old(er) man couldn’t be prouder.

 

Dear Nibs,

Hearty congratulations, dear boy! As of noon yesterday, you are a college graduate.

Four years have flown by like the speed of light, or at least a bird in flight.

Come to think of it, so have the past two decades. As I was driving up to the university Thursday afternoon along that winding state road that we both love, the one that passes farms and fields, heading to meet your mom and grandmother for your Periclean Scholars farewell dinner, I confess to thinking it was only yesterday that you were a sweet, quiet, curious and sometimes stubborn lad who loved nothing more than to ride with me on the John Deere tractor and hear my silly made-up stories about Pete and Charlie, the two disreputable bears who inhabited the hemlock forest around our house in Maine.

I remember how you would tremble with pleasure over the goofy adventures of those two bumbling imaginary bears, like the time they broke in while we were away on vacation and threw a wild party for all the other animals in the forest, eating up everything in the pantry and watching all your Disney videos without rewinding them.

Funny to think you’ve out-lived video tapes, isn’t it? Someday you may actually need to explain to your son or daughter what those were. Good luck with that. In another decade or so, I recently read somewhere, kids may even be watching videos on command from an information chip implanted in their skulls. Personally, I find that thought to be a bit frightening. Give me the Stone Age nuisance of rewinding Beauty and the Beast any old day.

Since we’re on this subject, I can’t possibly leave out “Ugga-Bugga” the Bedtime Monster and his beloved (if now woefully politically incorrect) bathroom sidekick “Chinese Washy-Hair Guy” who would make you and your big sister disappear under clouds of tear-free shampoo as you splashed in our huge Portuguese claw-foot bathtub, provoking gales of lovely terrified laughter. Bath time was always something of a three-ring circus at our house.

Gosh, how I miss those wild and crazy guys. They brought out primal screams of pure joy in you both, and maybe the best in me.

Of course, the very mention of their names may embarrass you now, college boy. You have places to go and important people to see, a journalism career to get started, an interesting life to live. Fortunately, we have plenty of evidence from your early formative years in the form of scrapbook photos that prove all this silliness really did happen, including the dogs you grew up with and the Whiffle Ball games on the summer lawn, the Halloween parades, Christmas snow, your first hockey game, your last toothless grin. You name it, we covered it. I miss it.

One thing your mama and I agreed upon early in our married life, see, even before you and your big sister came along, was that the best thing we could possibly give our children was a childhood filled with happy memories and joy in the small and passing things of life, so that when your grown-up life and career present trials and speed bumps — as they certainly will – you would have something reassuring to fall back on, if only to remind you of where you come from – and that love and laughter are, in fact, two of the most useful tools for navigating the universe.

You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to know that a good laugh – especially at yourself – is powerful medicine, a cure for just about anything that ails you. A good laugh releases the soul from the shackles of disappointment and helps you keep a proper perspective. From this point forward, college boy, nothing of lasting value will ever come without a mighty struggle of some sort and even a major failure or two. That’s okay. No pain, no gain. You’ll learn more from honest failure, oddly enough, than any easy triumph. Just keep a sense of humor about it all and you’ll be fine.

Besides, the really funny thing is – and I’ll wager no professor dared to tell you this in college – there really is no such thing as failure. It’s only the universe’s way of sending you down a better path or teaching you the value of revising the project until you get it right.

For the record, old Albert also noted that there are really only two ways to live your life. The first is as if there is no such thing as a miracle. The other way is as though everything is a miracle. Eighty years ago this week, Einstein also told a reporter from the New York Times that only a life lived in service to others is a truly worthwhile life, and that the most beautiful experience one can have is the mystery of life itself.
Smart dude. Could have used a good barber, though. I guess it’s all relative.

Anyway, now that you’re officially a college graduate, seasoned world traveler and a scholar to boot, not to mention a promising filmmaker who has movingly chronicled poverty in India and vanishing rain forests in Sri Lanka, I guess I’d better quit calling you Nibs, the name I gave you from the Lost Boys of Peter Pan the summer you and I set off to try and see the wonders of the world like a pair of eighth graders on the lam.

As you may recall, just about everything that could go wrong on that trip did so. But didn’t we have the time of our lives? (If nothing else, it gave me my funniest book.) Moreover, it illustrated my point nicely, methinks, about the illusion of failure – namely that sometimes all our well-made plans and firm expectations come to a dead-end or at least take a sudden and inexplicable turn in another direction, usually something better. The truth is, you’ll probably never see the thing or person who changes your life coming, which I’m guessing is exactly the way God intends it. He works well with surprises.

You dream big and clearly work hard, dear boy. But please stay flexible, and always have a decent Plan B in your pocket. As your late grandfather used to say to me, quoting some long-forgotten sage, remember that it’s a wise man who keeps his child’s heart.

Leave room for being awed.

Being no Einstein, my prediction is that you’re going to do just fine out here in this wild and uncertain world. These are strange and difficult times, for sure, but the world has always been a challenging place and that’s when we human beings often do our best work — when the chips are really down.

Bottom line, Nibs: Have faith in yourself and believe in something larger than yourself and you’ll do splendidly. Things will take care of themselves. The right people will magically appear in your path, unexpected doors will open. You just need to have the courage to walk through them when the moment is right.

Listen to me – going on like I’m a regular Albert Einstein or something.

A few more bits before I let you go, old travel pal: You are a college graduate now but your real education is just beginning. Enjoy the blazes out of it, grab the reins and run hard, love deep and follow your heart. Go save the world. Just don’t forget to phone your mom and grandmother on Sunday nights.

As for me, well, I’m going to sorely miss the drive up that winding country road to see you at college and take you and your pals to supper. What an unexpected blessing that was. But it gives me deep comfort and pride to know that you are out there somewhere making a difference, and making a fine life in the process.

So, truth be told, you’re anything but a Lost Boy, son. You’re a damn good man who has found his way.

Besides, I still have Pete and Charlie, Ugga-Bugga and Chinese Washy-Hair Guy to keep me company in my happy dotage until perhaps some grandchildren come along.

As I watch you go, memories of those four old beloved characters – the disreputable wild things from your woodland boyhood — never fail make me to laugh.

Oh, how I loved them – and you, Jack.

— Dad

Health Benefits of Golf

William L. Healy, MD

Lahey Health

Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Boston University School of Medicine

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, Harvard University

 

Introduction

The health benefits of golf were first mentioned in a print publication by William Ramesey in 1672 in London, England, and in 1904, John Ward wrote an essay titled “The Benefits and Charms of Golf as an Outdoor Exercise”. For more than a century, in medical and non-medical publications, doctors, scientists, exercise physiologists, physical therapists, psychologists, and the golf industry have extolled the virtues of golf as contributing to individual and public health.

In 2018, the British Journal of Sports Medicine summarized knowledge regarding the health benefits of golf when they published a systematic literature review, “International Consensus Statement on Golf and Health.”

This white paper was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic to educate and inform allied golf associations and government officials regarding the physical, mental, and public health benefits of golf.

Physical Health Benefits of Golf

Increased Life Expectancy

• Playing golf regularly is associated with increased longevity.
• A study of 300,000 male and female golfers in Sweden documented life expectancy for golfers was five years longer than for non-golfers.

Improved Cardiac Health and Aerobic Performance

• Golf provides moderate intensity aerobic physical activity.
• Golf is a high intensity interval activity for elderly men.
• An eighteen hole round of golf is associated with 10,000-12,000 steps, walking 7000-8000 yards, burning 1500-2500 calories, and maintaining a heart rate of 100 beats per minute for two to five hours.
• Golf provides physical activity for persons of all ages.
• Physical health benefits are greater for golfers who walk the golf course compared to golfers who ride in motorized carts.

Improved Cardiac Risk Factors

• Walking the golf course is associated with decreased Total Cholesterol, increased High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), and an increased ratio of HDL to Total Cholesterol
• The favorable impact of golf on these cardiac risk factors is a health benefit.

Blood Glucose Control

• During an eighteen hole round of golf, Blood Glucose decreased 20% for young golfers, 10% for middle aged golfers, and 30% for elderly golfers.

Weight Control

• Walking the golf course is associated with decreased Weight and Body Mass Index for golfers as compared to non-golfers.
• Walking the golf course is associated with weight reduction, decreased waist circumference, and reduced abdominal skin fold thickness.

Golfers Who Ride Golf Carts Realize Health Benefits

• Motorized golf carts allow senior and disabled persons to play golf.
• Golfers who ride golf carts appreciate physical health benefits from physical activity and outdoor exercise.
• Golfers who ride golf carts experience mental health benefits from social interaction and competition.

Improved Strength, Balance, and Fall Prevention

• Playing golf provides strength and balance for older adults.
• Senior male golfers have better balance, increased balance confidence, and less fear of falling than age matched non-golfers.

Reduced Risk of Chronic Health Conditions

• The physical activity associated with golf reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 Diabetes, Colon Cancer, Breast Cancer, Depression, and Dementia

Sleep Enhancement

• Golf exercise is associated with ease of falling asleep and deeper, more profound sleep.

Reduced Mortality

• Mortality for golfers was 40% less than mortality for non-golfers in a cohort of 300,000 Swedish golfers, and this benefit applied to men and women of all ages. Interestingly, low handicap golfers had the lowest mortality rate.
• Risk of mortality for men, who participated in moderately vigorous physical activity, such as golf, was 23% lower than for men who did not exercise. The study population included 10,000 men 45-84 years old.

 

Mental Health Benefits of Golf

Improved Self Esteem and Self Worth

• Playing golf is associated with improved self-worth and self-esteem.

Reduced Anxiety and Stress

• Golf provides exercise and social interaction in a pleasant environment, which can reduce anxiety and lower stress.

Reduced Impact of Depression

• Exercise, including golf, decreases the impact of depression for women golfers, who have a depression condition.
• The impact of golf on depression in men has not been reported.

Inter-Generational Connection

• Golf offers opportunities for inter-generational connection.
• Family relationships can be strengthened by golf experiences.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

• Golf is used as a treatment for military veterans suffering from PTSD.

Treatment for Degenerative Brain Condition

• Golf training for adults older than 65 years improves immediate logical memory, delayed logical memory, and composite logical memory compared to senior adults who do not play golf.
• Golf is used for patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease to reduce the isolation of the disease with time spent in the peaceful environment of the golf course.

Treatment for Substance Abuse

• Golf has been used successfully for therapy for persons battling substance abuse.

 

Public Health Benefits of Golf

Recreation

• 70% of golf facilities in Massachusetts are open to the public
• Golf allows men and women of all ages to exercise and enjoy the outdoors.
• Junior Golf programs foster positive development on and off the golf course
• Recreational and competitive golf provides an outlet for personal and professional stress.

Preservation of Open Space & Protection for the Environment

• Playing golf provides golfers a connection to nature and the environment.
• 91% of golf course acreage is green space, which provides habitat, migration corridors, and food for wildlife in the surrounding environment.
• Trees on golf courses provide shade, protect land from erosion, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and add oxygen to the air.
• Sustainable agronomic practices at golf courses protect water resources.

Golf “Gives Back to the Commonwealth”

• Golf in Massachusetts “gives back” more than $75 million annually with charitable activities, scholarships, and philanthropic donations

Golf Can Be Played Safely in 2020

• The Golf Alliance of Washington summarized sixteen steps for creating a safe golfing environment during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The incidence of injury from playing golf is lower than most other athletic activities.
• Golf injuries are generally associated with overuse, trauma, and poor mechanics during the golf swing.
• The most severe golf injuries are associated with motorized golf carts.
• Skin cancer can be a risk for golfers if appropriate precautions regarding sun exposure are not followed.

 

Conclusion

Medical and non-medical publications demonstrate that golf offers physical, mental, and public health benefits to golfers and to the Commonwealth.

I will conclude this white paper on the Health Benefits of Golf, with a 1935 letter by the poet, Robert Frost, in which he expounded on his theory of mental health for humanity. Frost believed that “form” was a necessary and “vital need for humanity” to survive and prosper against a background of “black and utter chaos” full of “large excruciations”.  Frost’s suggestion for “form” can take any shape — a book, a letter, a garden, a ring of smoke — but it is really everybody’s “sanity to feel and exert a measure of form in this world.”  What better way to exert form and concentration but in an ordered round of golf in the pleasant environment of a golf course?

 

 

 

Acknowledgement: Several family and friends assisted with the development of this white paper. Thank you Tom Bagley, Mike Considine, Angela Healy, Rich Iorio, Scott Seymour.

 

WLH
Concord, MA
May 1, 2020
whealy@lahey.org
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Walker HJ. An Investigation into the Personal Meaning of Golf. Ann Arbor: The Ohio State University, 1989.
Ward JM. The Benefits and Charms of Golf as an Outdoor Exercise. Physical Culture Publishing Co., NY, NY. 1904.
White R, Lundqvist E. Folf: A Fair Way to Human Health and Well Being. GoGolfEurope, 2018.
Zouzias IC, Hendra J, Stodelle J, Limpisvasti O. Golf Injuries: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, and Treatment. JAAOS, 26:4:116-124. February 15, 2018.

WLH
Concord, MA
April 20, 2020

The Laws of Golf

LAW 1:
No matter how bad your last shot was, you should have Inner Peace knowing that aworse one is yet to come.  This law does not expire on the 18th hole, since it has the supernatural tendency to extend over the course of a tournament, a summer and, eventually, a lifetime.

LAW 2:
Your best round of golf will be followed almost immediately by your worst round ever. The probability of the latter increases with the number of people you tell about the former.

LAW 3:
Brand-new golf balls are water-magnetic.  Though this cannot be proven in the lab, it is a known fact that the more expensive the golf ball, the greater its attraction to water. Expensive clubs have been known to be partly made with this most unusual natural alloy.

LAW 4:
Golf balls never bounce off of trees back into play.  If one does, the tree is breaking a law of the universe and should be cut down.

LAW 5:
The higher a golfer’s handicap, the more qualified he deems himself an instructor.

LAW 6:
A golfer hitting into your group will always be bigger than anyone in your group. Likewise, a group you accidentally hit into will consist of a football player, a professional wrestler, a convicted murderer and an IRS agent — or some similar combination.

LAW 7:
All 3-woods are demon-possessed.  Your mother-in-law does not come close.

LAW 8:
Golf balls from the same “sleeve” tend to follow one another, particularly out of bounds or into the water.   See LAW 3.

LAW 9:
The last three holes of a round will automatically adjust your score to what it really should be.

LAW 10:
Golf should be given up at least twice a month.

LAW 11:
All vows taken on a golf course shall be valid only until the sunset.

LAW 12:
Since bad shots come in groups of three, your fourth consecutive bad shot is really the beginning of the next group of three.

LAW 13:
If it isn’t broke, try changing your grip.

LAW 14:
It’s surprisingly easy to hole a 50-foot putt when you lie 8. (THIS is how the one-handed putting started!)

LAW 15:
Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.

LAW 16:
Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts.

LAW 17:
It’s not a gimme if you’re still 4 feet away.

LAW 18:
The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the center of a very large tree.

LAW 19:
You can hit a 2-acre fairway 10 percent of the time, and a 2-inch branch 90 percent of the time.

LAW 20:
Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make a double or triple bogey to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe.

LAW  21:
If you want to hit a 7-iron as far as Tiger Woods does, simply try to use it to lay up just short of a water hazard.

LAW 22:
There are two things you can learn by stopping your backswing at the top and checking the position of your hands: (i) how many hands you have, and (ii) which one is wearing the glove.

LAW  23:
A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.

LAW  24:
Don’t buy a putter until you’ve had a chance to throw it.

 

– Special thanks to trusty reader Mike V. for making sure we’re keeping the game honest.

A Fragile Blue World

by Jim Dodson

 

While digging out an old flowerbed the other day I found, of all things, a beautiful blue marble long buried beneath a foot of earth.

I decided it was either evidence of a lost race of marble-playing pioneers or simply belonged to kid who lost it in the dirt when our house was built in the early 1950s. That kid would now be at least 70 years old.

Either way, this beautiful blue marble, resting in the palm of my soiled palm, reminded me of an image of the planet taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission as they made their way to the Moon, a photograph dubbed the “Blue Marble” because it revealed a fragile blue world that is home to “billions of creatures, a beautiful orb capable of fitting into the pocket of the universe,” as NASA elegantly put it. Looking at the beautiful blue planet Earth from space, one astronaut was moved to say that it appears so peaceful and calm it’s almost impossible to believe it is a world endangered by poverty, war and disease.

Some experts believe marbles are the oldest toys on Earth, found by archeologists in the ashes of Pompeii and the tombs of ancient Egypt, mentioned in Homer’s The Odyssey and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Even the Founding Fathers of America were known to play a mean game of marbles during idle moments making up a nation.

The earliest marbles were made of dried and molded clay. In the mid-19th century, however, a German glassblower invented a pair of special scissors that could cut and shape molten glass, making glass marbles affordable for the first time. Glass marbles quickly dominated the world toy market, particularly after industrial machines made them more efficiently, dramatically lowering the price. “Valued as much for their beauty as the games played with them,” the National Toy Hall of Fame notes, “marbles inspired one 19th-century enthusiast to describe the twisted spiral of colored filament in glass marbles as ‘thin music translated into colored glass.’

Because my family was always on the move during my first seven years of life – following my father’s newspaper career across the deep South – I had few if any regular playmates and plenty of time to fill up during endless summer afternoon in small southern towns. Adventure books, marbles and painted Roman armies filled quiet hours when only the lonesome sound of cicadas in love filled the hot, still air.

Everywhere we lived from Mississippi to South Carolina, however, I always managed to find myself a cool and comfortable patch of earth beneath a porch or a large tree where I played out the Peloponnesian War or shot marbles in a large ring scratched into the dirt.

I got pretty good at shooting marbles, often whipping my dad when he came home from work and stepped outside with a cold beer just to see if I had any interest in coming to supper, squatting to play me a quick game in the dirt. The object of the game we played was to knock as many marbles outside the ring without having your “shooter” wind up outside the circle. I forget who told me that it was good luck to play with a marble that matched the color of your eyes. My favorite shooter was blue. So are my eyes, I’m told.

I could spin and skip marbles like nobody’s business in those days, or so I like to think, and even carried a small sack of my favorite marbles wherever my family went on vacations or – worse — visited elderly relatives. Politely excused, advised not to wander far, I could slip outside and find the nearest patch of earth for a little marble shooting practice in no time flat.
Marbles was the first game I ever fell I love with. But not the last.

For along came the spring and summer of 1964. I watched Arnold Palmer win his fourth and final Masters green jacket on TV and immediately took to swinging a golf club in the yard, within a year or so fashioning a list of things I hoped to do in golf. At the top of the list was my goal to someday meet the new King of Golf.

That summer, however, I made the Pet Dairy Little League team and began reading about Brooks Robinson, the “Human Vacuum Cleaner” in the sports pages. Robinson played third base for the Baltimore Orioles. I laid hands on an official Brooks Robinson fielder’s glove, vowing that in the unlikely event that I didn’t grow up to be the next Arnold Palmer I might become the next Brooks Robinson instead.

In effect, I lost my marbles that summer of ’64 – or at least put them away forever.

Arnie won the Masters and Robinson had his best season offensively, hitting for a .318 batting average with 28 home runs. He also led the league with 118 runs batted in, capturing the American League’s MVP Award and his tenth Golden Glove.  In the American League MVP voting, Robinson received 18 of the 20 first-place votes, with Mickey Mantle finishing second, much to my Uncle Carson’s delight.

He’s the one who took me to my first Major League ballgame when I got sent up that summer to spend a week with my mother’s big blond sisters and their husbands in Baltimore. Uncle Carson was a giant Irishman who worked at the Kelly tire factory and had a pair of season tickets to “the Birds,” as he fondly called the hometown Orioles. He detested Mickey Mantle. “I’d like to knock that smug smile that overpaid showboat’s kisser,” he growled during the pre-game warm-ups as both teams took the field in old Memorial Stadium.

Uncle Carson’s seats were a dozen rows back along the third base line. He encouraged me to bring along my new Brooks Robinson fielder’s glove, promising that I could get it autographed by “Human Vacuum Cleaner” himself during warm-ups.

Sure enough, when Robinson appeared on the field, stretching and chatting with other players, including detestable Yankees, Uncle Carson sent me scurrying down to the dugout where other kids were hanging over the railing in search of autographs.

When Robinson ambled over, I showed him my new mitt and asked him to sign it.

He obliged. “Sure, kid. Where you from?”

In truth, I have no memory what he actually said to me. I was much too tongue-tied and star struck at that moment.

Up in the stands, however, as Mickey Mantle sauntered past, Uncle Carson cupped his massive hands to his mouth and hollered, “Hey, Mantle! You’re a stinking bum! You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if they pitched underhand to you!”

For the record, I’m not sure this is exactly what Uncle Carson yelled at Mickey Mantle, either. But it’s certainly within the ballpark, as they say, because Uncle Carson was a world-class heckler, a one-man leather lung, the ultimate obnoxious Oriole. Mickey Mantle just laughed and kept walking.

When I got back to our seats, Uncle C was buying cups of beer from a vendor.

“How old are you now?” He asked.

“Eleven,” I answered truthfully.

“That’s good enough.” He handed me a National Bohemian beer, my first ballpark beer. As we stood for the national anthem, placing a massive paw over his heart, he added, “By the way, Squire, your aunt Leona and mom didn’t need to know everything that happens at the ball park. Including Natty Boh. You follow?”

I nodded and sipped my beer. It was great to be alive.

Funny thing about life on a spinning blue marble, though.

Despite my best efforts, I failed to become the next Arnold Palmer or Human Vacuum Cleaner. But at least I grew up to collaborate with The King of Golf on his bestselling memoirs, becoming a close friend of the game’s most charismatic figure.

Some years ago, I even had the chance to tell Brooks Robinson about my Uncle Carson’s remarkable leather lung at a dinner where I was the guest of honor for my sports journalism and books. The event’s host had secretly invited the greatest third baseman of all time to sit beside the honoree, who was nearly as tongue-tied and star struck as he was in 1964.

“I think I remember your Uncle Carson,” Robison told me with a laugh. “Or at least a few hundred other guys like him – especially up in Yankee Stadium. Those loud mouths made your uncle look like minor league player, I’m afraid.”

We had a fine time chatting about the Oriole’s golden seasons and lamented their cellar-dwelling ways these days. In 1966, Robinson finished second to teammate Frank Robinson in voting for the American League Most Valuable Player Award. But the Orioles went on to win their first World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In the 1970 post-season, Robinson hit for an average of .583 in the American League Championship, leading the way to a second World Series title for the Birds. It was Robinson’s defensive prowess, however, that earned him the Series MVP and prompted Reds manager Sparky Anderson to quip, “I’m beginning to see Brooks in my sleep. If I dropped this paper plate, he’d pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first.”

At the end of his final season in 1977, having collected 16 Golden Gloves as baseball’s top defensive player, Robinson’s number 5 was officially retired. Five years later he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot. “It all seemed to pass so quickly,” he told me that night we ate supper together. “But my goodness what great memories!”

A few years after this encounter, I sat with Arnold Palmer just weeks before he passed away, catching up on his family and mine, even drifting into the subject of boyhood dreams. He told me a story that I’d heard before about how as a little kid he dreamed that he might someday become a famous football star – to impress certain girls. But then the golf bug bit him.

“I’m glad you stuck with golf,” I said.
He already knew that once upon a time that I’d hoped to become the next Arnold Palmer but had an alternate plan to be the second coming of Brooks Robinson if that failed to pan out. I even told him about.

The King smiled. “I think you got pretty much what you wanted,” he said.

“So did you.”

I even told him about Uncle Carson and his leather lung.

The King chuckled. “I’m glad you never brought him to the golf course.”

As another summer looms, the world in 2020 is a very different place.

Stadiums and ballparks across the world are sitting empty, haunted by echoes of seasons past.

For the moment, memories are all we’ve got. For nobody can say when – or even if – the games will begin again anytime soon.

Having lost all my marbles but found a blue one buried in the earth of my own garden, I’m probably where I should be at this moment and time on a fragile blue planet, lucky to have a world I can hold in my palm of my hand, and remember.

 

 

Jim Dodson’s latest book, The Range Bucket List, tells these stories and other tales from his long journey through the world of golf and sports.