Everyone Sucks At Golf
“Fore!”
“OH MY GOD! Did that hit him in the HEAD?”
Remember in elementary school when every first day of the year you were forced to write a paragraph about what you did over summer vacation? Well, I just started 56th grade, and I’m writing one now. This one, however, is going to be slightly different than the bullshit I was cranking out in 2007 for a few reasons. First of all, in this one I’m going to use words like “bullshit” and “encephalopathy” and phrases like “middle-aged dads.” Second, in the summer of 2007 I didn’t have to work. Being unemployed used to be a thing, if you can remember that far. I can’t either.
Anyway, this summer, in the superlative (and superlatively chaotic) year of 2020, I, like almost everyone, had a summer that was far different than all that came before. Devoted readers of this blog (I love all of you. I’d give you money, if I had any) already know about a few of my more memorable escapades over the past few months, but I’ve neglected to mention anywhere in the Gonzo Papers the thing that took up the vast majority of my time: the supreme mundanity of my employment.
That’s right, the day-to-day, blank soulless humid hours that filled much of this summer and made it feel like one long empty Sunday afternoon when the air conditioning is broken. It was, alas, that kind of summer. If you had an exciting summer, then I can only assume you (like Dr. Gonzo once did) snuck into the trunk of Elon Musk’s personal Tesla and secretly rode back there while he discussed the coming Martian invasion with Kanye West. Yes, that’s what they talked about. Yes, I have recording devices everywhere. Yes, I know where you sleep. Yes, you still wet the bed. No, you can’t fix it through hypnosis.
Anyway, this summer, like each of the past five, I was employed (not by Tesla, though I’m sure I would have gotten the job if I had applied). Instead, I worked at Eugene T. Mahoney State Park near Ashland. More specifically, I worked at the Eugene T. Mahoney State Park Golf Shack. Yes, “Golf Shack.” That’s what we called the hundred-square-foot box that I spent endless hours in, overseeing the driving range and miniature golf course. Ah, where dreams (nightmares) are made.
Let me demonstrate a typical day at the golf shack. Okay. Late July, 100 degrees outside, I’m working by myself, Friday night, six families of 10+ people come in one after another, it’s 7:30 pm and we close at 8, the walls of the shack are closing in, the air is stifling, the fan is broken, our fridge stopped working so my sandwich is melting, we’re out of putters, some four-year-old is screaming “I want the red one, Daddy!”, I can’t see straight, the cash register is broken, my mask is falling off my face, in ten minutes I have to clean the bathrooms wearing a Hazmat suit—and to really put the icing on the cake, I’m making $9 an hour.
Let me just clue you in to a little secret: some things in this world are not worth $9 an hour. And desperately trying to explain to furious white moms why their crying 5-year-old can’t have the putter meant for people taller than 6’2” is one of those things. “I want purple!” the kid would sob. “Those are for adults, honey,” I’d say, trying to smile. The mom would glare at me, mentally calculating who she should call to complain. Then I would piss my pants to avoid the situation. “I have to clean the bathrooms,” I’d explain apologetically, shuffling out.
This is what I had to wear to clean the bathrooms twice a day. Yes, really. I could’ve walked the runway at New York Fashion Week wearing this fit.
The typical situation down on the Esther M. Daniel Miniature Golf Course was no better than inside the shack. I’d go down to collect the extra golf balls and someone usually had placed large rocks inside the last hole, leaving hundreds of golf balls stuck—that of course it was my job to get out. The pond filter never worked. Leaves were constantly covering the holes. Holes-in-one were impossible. Eighteen families all yelling like maniacs. Trying to rationalize my existence while I was using a putter to unstick dozens of golf balls from a tight tube while laying on my stomach with a bunch of little kids watching me unsurprisingly made me ask myself questions like Why do I exist? How did I end up here? Will I ever make enough money to never have to do this again? Is this giving me early-onset encephalopathy?
The driving range (officially the John R. Lauritzen Driving Range) was another animal. Filling those little buckets with golf balls by hand is one of the most mind-numbing tasks imaginable. People complained about our shitty used golf clubs even though they’re more than welcome to bring their own. They’d take the clubs and balls out to the tee, set up the first ball real neat—and then just hack the living shit out of it. No one, and I mean no one, who ever came to use the driving range was good at golf. I saw fifty-year-old dads shank it so bad I was worried we’d never see those balls again. Their kids would hit it like four yards on the ground. Their wives would swing the club in a way that looked like they were chopping tomatoes. And then there’s my idiot $9-an-hour ass out there being forced to drive the Gator with the golf-ball-picker-upper attached to the front, driving with the doors off and hoping to the golf gods that a stray ball hit by some Karen doesn’t fly through the open air and take my fucking head off.
One time I was driving the Gator to get range balls and I tried to reverse because I almost drove the whole thing into a hidden sand trap—and the main central iron bar of the ball collector snapped in half. I had to abandon the Gator in the middle of the range, sitting listlessly by itself, the key still in it, until the maintenance guys fixed it a week later. It looked like some terrible monument to all the shanked golf shots ever hit by middle-aged white people on business trips, this bright green Gator all alone in a giant field amidst thousands of chipped golf balls. That’s probably a metaphor for something, but those of us at the Eugene T. Mahoney State Park Golf Shack didn’t concern ourselves with metaphors.
I have to note here, though, that the golf shack, and Mahoney in general, is nowhere close to as bad as I’ve made it seem—thanks to the people I worked with. The people I met at Mahoney (my bosses, all my golf shack coworkers, the other park activity workers who were near my age) were so good to me and so fun that I was really glad I had the opportunity to work there at all. It’s the kind of job you get a lot of crazy stories from, as they all know, and I heard so many wacky customer stories from them that I wanted to share some of my own. Everyone from the park superintendent on down was so nice to me (my golf shack boss in particular is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met). I suppose that for any job like that, the people is what makes it worth having, and that was true at the golf shack. I was the only shack employee under the age of 50, and the rest were all very kind to me and shared some wonderful life lessons. One of them owned his own DJ production company, my boss had owned her own cake business, and another chain-smoked while telling me incredible stories of her trips to Africa. They were all gems. Also, I love Mahoney as a park—I’ve been going since I was a kid and have a great many wonderful memories from there.
—
Everyone—including me, you, and Woodrow Wilson—sucks at golf. Fun fact: of all the presidents, Wilson played the most golf during his term. According to my sources, he played 1,600 rounds of golf during his presidency. 1,600, for the record, is approximately how many golf balls I saw people shank forty yards to the left on the driving range.
President Wilson showing off his golf game
So, teacher, that’s what I did over summer vacation. For some reason, I can’t see Woodrow Wilson ever experiencing a summer quite like I did at the golf shack. Maybe we should put him on the Gator to dodge golf balls for minimum wage. See how he likes it.
