To the End of the Earth and Back Again

You may think that the life of a debate coach is nothing but champagne and caviar and yelling at people who stumble into the tab room looking for the lavatory. But sometimes we must set forth on adventures far beyond our ken, or your ken, or anyone else’s ken, for that matter. While thousands were herding like llamas in the direction of Kansas City this weekend, I took a more dangerous trip, to the literal end of the earth, also known as Fitchburg, Massachusetts, for a golf tournament in honor of CP’s late firefighter grandfather.

Fitchburg, for those who haven’t been there, which is pretty much everybody and for good reason, is one of those towns where the streets make little or no sense, and where Google Maps and global positioning and just about every known attempt at finding where the hell you are have failed miserably. Random boulevards have signs with numbers slapped on them, but as you drive along listening to “Born to be Wild” and dreaming of Dennis Hopper, a minute later you are on a dirt road with a different number slapped on it altogether, and the music has changed to the soundtrack of “Jaws.” I did find a Christian Coffee House (I wasn't aware that coffee believed in God) and the Straight Apartment Building. That I found the golf course was a miracle. The map said go here, turn left, then left again. In the event, I went there, found no lefts for the taking, so I turned right instead. Lo and behold…

Most of the celebrants were of either the relative or firefighter persuasion, and I alone carried the banner for the forensicians of the world. I was thrown in with three folks whose age, added together, almost reached mine. They were, I understand, rather bummed by having to wheel around a fossil from the McKinley administration, and kept texting CP asking if there was any likelihood that I would make it through the day without my walker. He responded that I normally dealt with high school students, so I would probably be able to survive our encounter. I would have added that I have gone so far as to judge a Nietzsche kritik, so I could handle anything that they threw at me.

Our first attempts at conversation were not promising. After we established that they were from Boston and I was from New York, they asked me whether I preferred the Yankees or the Mets. They could have as well asked me if I favored Sennacherib of Assyria or Mushezib-Marduk in the Babylonian revolt of 689 BC. They were also rather taken aback by my lack of a burning need for beer at nine o’clock in the morning. However, there is no greater bonding mechanism than the great and glorious game of golf. Old poop that I am, and incapable of hitting the ball 500 yards with the bloom of energetic youth though I may be, I was also the only one of us who could actually connect with the ball after the initial drive. We were playing Best Ball, which means that everyone shoots the best shot after each attempt, i.e., the best ball of the four, and surprisingly enough, after the drives these young bucks powered out there, those best balls were almost invariably mine. By the end of eighteen, my new young friends were carrying me on their shoulders and crowning me with laurels. We made a great team.

Unfortunately it was a rather rainy day, mostly mist but occasionally really coming down, which means one has to put on all sorts of raingear to stay dry (unless one is young and nuts, in which case the norm is getting wet and freezing your tuchis off), followed by taking it off when the rain lets up, and putting it back on when it starts up again. One’s grip on the club, like one’s grip on reality, is tenuous at best. And I am now covered with bug bites, although at the time I never saw any of the filthy little blighters. Fitchburg bugs: fitchbugs? Whatever. As for the golf course itself, it was really right up my alley, not very long but lots of shots that required one to think a bit before acting, not that I actually ever do think a bit before acting—that seems to be counter to the whole reality of golf, which in no way reflects the philosophy of golf—but it is nice to know that, if one were to do so, one might achieve good results.

So, I had fun and I’m glad I went. Now CP and I need to find a golf course somewhere maybe halfway between us, since he’s been taking to the game lately. I snuck out for the long drive home halfway through the proceedings that followed the event, lots of fundraiser raffles and whatnot, after my last ticket did not win the case of beer (which I would have started drinking the next day at nine in the morning), while CP was flying up to the podium to collect whatever he had just won with his ticket.

The games were rigged, obviously.