Les Temps Perdu: In which I gain my first employment

I had other jobs in addition to my short career sweeping up the music school. After all, I started working when I was 13. You rack up a few miles when you get a head start.

My first job was caddying, which was also my first encounter with the game of golf. 13 was the considered age for starting one's bag-toting career, and there was a public course at which people my age had a perfectly good chance to get out, as we used to call it. Of course, you would get out after everyone else, but if you didn’t mind waiting around for most of the morning playing cards, it would happen. This was before the dawn of golf carts, which means that everybody walked, and it was the rare golfer who wanted to carry his (or occasionally her) own bag. These things could weigh in at serious tonnage, and if you didn’t have to carry it yourself, what did you care if you threw in a few extra clubs, a couple of dozen balls, a change of clothes including shoes and your pet brick collection? Young ‘uns like myself would carry one bag, a single; older kids and adults usually carried two, a double, and get paid twice as much for it. If you were hungry enough, and stalwart enough, you could get out twice a day with two doubles. You could also saw off your right foot with an emery board, if you enjoyed slow torture. One bag once a day was rough enough, especially if your golfer wasn’t any good. In addition to the five or so miles of traversing the course, bad golfers would send you into the woods as often as not, adding a couple of miles more over hazardous terrain. And woe be to the caddy who didn’t find a ball! That was your job. You watched it fly off, and then you marked it, connecting to some geographic landmark to which you would head and then, voila, there it was. Or not.

The golf courses I would caddy at were not near my house. Sometimes a parent would drop me off, but as often as not I would hitchhike. At the age of 13. The idea of hitchhiking at any age in the year 2012 (unless you’re John Waters) is tantamount to wishing yourself a sexually abused and slow tortured demise, but back then, it was just somebody picking you up and giving you a ride. I hitchhiked up through my college years, hardly alone in the act, and only encountered a couple of dicey situations (if you don’t count Texans telling you about their guns and how they’re ready to use them so even though they’re good guys for picking you up don’t try any sudden moves). It was just how you got around, almost always effectively. There was one course I could walk to, though, where I discovered that, if I got there early enough, I could get right out. The Westchester Country Club was about a half hour away. I would arrive there at about five in the morning and help put up the flag, and then there would be a handful of solo golfers who were going to work or put in their family time later and wanted to get in a round right after sunrise before they had to punch in or before the duffers showed up. These guys tended to be seriously good and seriously fast, and I would make my money and be back home by nine o’clock, ready to head to the beach for the rest of the day. Of course, a place like the Westchester had professional caddies, so if you didn’t catch one of these early birds, you’d soon be sidelined by the serious workers. There were two courses at the club, a really tough one and a normal one. (I don’t think there’s such a thing as an easy golf course anywhere on the planet. Normal is the best you can hope for.) All the he-men played the tough one; the men who were honest with themselves, and the women, played the other one, the South course. In the private club world of the 60s, women were literally not allowed on the other course. Imagine that. Imagine also that they were paying through the nose not to be admitted to all the privileges their husbands enjoyed. On top of that, when they did play, on the wrong side of the tracks, they would get caddies like…me. Those poor women. Then again, poor me. I’ve played golf with plenty of women, including plenty of women who are a damned lot better at the game than I am, but at that course back then, it was women who were waiting for their husbands to finish their games over at the real course or whatever, and as a rule, they were dreadful. Slower than molasses, for one thing, and not capable of moving the ball very far. A round on the South course could easily last an hour longer than a round on the real course. At least the women were nice to the caddies, though. They didn’t pay much attention to us, for the most part, but the one thing they didn’t do was blame us for their shortcomings. At the public course I usually worked—I wasn’t getting up at 4:00 a.m. every day because I may have wanted to make some money but I wasn’t insane about it—I still remember one golfer in particular who was, to this day, the worst golfer I have ever seen*. Worse, the cause of his crappy play was, in a word, me. He blamed me for everything, every time. I recommended the wrong clubs, I was standing in the way, I lost his balls, whatever. (Imagine me at 13 years old. If you were a golfer, would you listen to my recommendations of what clubs to use?) That guy was, for all practical purposes, the first lousy boss I ever had. And as I say, I still remember him, even though I only caddied for him once. I even remember what he looked like. That’s amazing.

I caddied for three years, until I was 16 and old enough to get working papers and a regular job. Which I did, almost immediately. Which is a story I guess we'll get to soon enough.


* Bonus John Updike golf joke: A golfer goes to Ireland and hires a caddy and the golfer hits the ball everywhere but straight, losing balls, whiffing, generally demonstrating terrifically bad golf for the entire round, scoring off the map, while all the while blaming his caddy for everything that goes wrong. At the end of the round the golfer says to the caddy: "You are the worst caddy in the world," to which the caddy replies, "I don't think so, sir. That would be too much of a coincidence."

Fore lorn

I am now ten months golf-free.

Golf is one of the oddest games I’ve ever encountered. First of all, it is an athletic endeavor, yet entry requires literally no athletic ability. You merely have to pick up a golf club and swing it at a ball and, voila, you are golfing. In my years of playing the game, I have seen every possible example of non-athlete zipping around in carts all around me, occasionally getting off their duffs and attacking the ball with every limb crooked in impossible contortions, sending projectiles flying in all but the intended direction over and over again. This, of course, is part of the game's appeal, that anyone can make at least a marginal go of it, once you get the hang of not missing the ball altogether. You don’t even have to walk the course, if you’re not so inclined. So much for the proverbial good walk spoiled. Now it’s a good go-cart ride spoiled.

I should point out that while non-athletes can conduct a game of golf, they are not necessarily good golfers. On the other hand, I have seen athletic kids in their teens, masters of other sports, hit the course for the first time and play in the 80s. I have wanted to kill them for this, but there is no question that natural athletic ability evidences itself in the hand-eye coordination and basic body control necessary to repeatedly move the ball successfully. Golf, therefore, is not a game for non-athletes, it just happens to be a game that non-athletes are able to play.

Like an sport, golf rewards practice. To some extent. I can’t say that I ever practiced much, but I did on occasion go to the driving range and mindlessly hit balls out into the field. More to the point, if you play pretty regularly, you find yourself improving on the shorter shots, like chips and putts, so your score can improve a little bit. Of course, these shots don’t require use of your whole body, so maybe that’s why this part of the game is open to more players. Old guys who have been playing all their lives, regardless of what they do off the tee or on the fairways, tend to do very well around the greens, which may not prove the point but which does at least offer some evidence to support it.

I was never much of an athlete, but there was something about golf that intrigued me. It probably came from what all golfers know, that every now and then you hit a shot that is as good as anyone could have hit that shot. You are, on the basis of this one swing, as good as any golfer who has ever lived. The shot, of course, is sheer accident, but that kind of accident doesn’t happen in other sports. You can’t accidently hit a home run off a ball pitched at a hundred miles an hour by accident your first day on the baseball field, for instance. But you can sink a hundred foot putt, or chip to an inch from the hole from thirty yards off the green, or get a six iron stiff to the pin from a hundred and sixty yards off on the fairway. And when you do that, you wonder, why can’t I do this all the time? You know the answer, of course, but the fact that you can do it some of the time tends to minimize the psychic thud of all of the rest of your shots.

So every game, no matter how bad you are, probably has a few shots that are as good as it gets. Add to this that you’re outdoors on a fine day (unless you’re the sort of idiot who thinks that forty degrees Fahrenheit and gale force winds make it a good day for golf, and believe me, I have been one of those idiots), there is usually a natural beauty to a golf course with broad vistas and charming little lakes and even occasional wildlife (I’m all in favor of heron, but you can take your geese and shove them sideways), and you’re in the company of good friends enjoying warm companionship: there are some attractions to the game beside the game itself. And the game itself does keep bringing you back because of those magic shots that, if you just hit a few more of them, you’d be so much better.

But the down side, and this is why I went on sabbatical—I hesitate to say that I’ve quit, because I’m pretty sure that when the DJ gig comes to an end and all of a sudden I’ve got seven days a week to fill up, I’ll be looking the pick up the old sticks again—is that the damned thing takes all day. Unless you’re alone on the course, the average game, from first shot to last, takes roughly five hours. Plus you have to get there and get home, you’ve got to wait around to tee off, and you may throw the odd lunch in there somewhere, which means that a game of golf requires a full working day of about eight hours. When, like me, you’ve got five full working days already, adding a sixth, even though it’s not exactly work, means that there’s one day left over for everything else. And therein lies my problem. I can’t do everything I want to do that isn’t golf and/or work in one day. Since I’ve been on sabbatical, I’ve read more books, gotten more chores done, and generally relaxed more that I have for the last dozen years, thanks to the hole in my schedule created by not playing golf. In other words, I have gotten a lot of my life back. No more running out Sunday morning without reading the papers, no more getting home too late to fix up a decent meal, no more trips after long days at work to do errands that I can now leisurely do over the weekend.

Still, I won’t say I haven’t missed it. When I drive by a golf course, I gaze at it longingly, wishing I was out there for a little while, maybe trying to get up and down in 2 on the fourth hole at the Sprain, for instance. But then I just sigh and move on. I have accepted my present fate. Should my circumstances change any time soon (and God knows, they easily could), the clubs are in the basement near the door, ready to go. In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Blizzard Beach golf with O’C during DisAd13. He is fresh off a victory over a couple of tween girls last weekend, so maybe I can get him to pony up some reasonable stakes for a nice gentlemanly bet…
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Thoroughbred racing

There is a certain beauty to a Thoroughbred racing full steam, an animal doing what it was born to do. Every year, the best of these animals (the three-year-olds, at least) come together for the Triple Crown races. These races are an American ritual, attended live and on TV by multitudes. The horse people—the trainers, the breeders, the owners, the whole lot of them—are on their best behavior because their world is on display, and they want it to be entirely the glory of animals doing what they were born to do.

But there is more to racing than that, and a lot of it isn't pretty. In fact, the coverage of the Triple Crown could be part of the problem, a conspiracy by horse people with the willing suspension of disbelief by the fans, to cover up the way things really are.

The industry rallies around these races, and rightly perceives them as a smart way to attract new fans and to remind the old ones of why they love the sport... But there is more to marketing than putting on a good show and the industry would do well by moving beyond its parochial view about what it perceives to be "bad" news. Horse racing is too big, and too regulated, to labor under the delusion that its problems and its villains are the sort of "inside baseball" stories that the rest of the world doesn't need to worry its pretty little head about. And yet the industry is too small, evidently, to sustain a sufficiently independent reporting corps that is willing and able to consistently provide critical coverage of the reasons for the sport's decline.

The Kentucky Derby and the Slow Death of Horse Racing by Andrew Cohen is a balanced and smart look at the sport as it is, and as it should be. If you watched the Derby, or plan to watch the Preakness or the Belmont, you should know what you're looking at. It's beautiful, but it isn't the total story.
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Synchronized swimming

This may be one of the hardest Olympics sports to appreciate. It doesn't seem to relate to anything except, well, synchronized swimming. One of the contestants in this film calls it gymnastics in the water, except you don't have the ground to work with. When you see what they're doing underwater—remarkable!

It's 2012. London is coming. Watch this. It's called Sync or Swim. These are amazing athletes. You may not get through all of it (it's a real film, at real film length), but you'll appreciate what you do watch.
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Toward the understanding of the appeal of horses

Coming from a family where there is at least one rider—or maybe former rider, it's hard to say—horses have loomed a little larger for us than if they just happened to be grazing away as we drove by in a perfectly good automobile. Then again, as we edge into the Derby this weekend, we do admit a fondness for the Sport of Kings (although we regret that lately there are practices that are, to put it mildly, appalling at some less storied barns than the ones in Louisville). I fondly recall going out to Belmont a few times when the legendary Forego was racing, and watching this giant gelding come from behind—always from way behind—and win, and win, and win. Of course, people who ride, while admiring race horses, aren't that interested in them. Riders do events that are far removed from galloping around a track at top speed while the people in the stands pray that they'll win the Daily Double. They don't dislike racers; they just happen to be in a different business.

One thing you can say about riders that differentiates them from the rest of us is that they love horses. I have nothing against horses, but nothing particularly for them, either (unless they're running like Forego or winning me the Daily Double). I prefer cats. Cats are cuter than horses, for one thing, and can more easily fit on your lap. They also use a litter box, which means that they don't require any mucking of the stables. But horse people don't see it like that. Horse people look at horses and—Well, what is it that they see when they look at horses?

You are not vitally important to your horse, not really, not like you are to your dog, ever. They never figure out who you are, and why you do the silly things you do. You have to forge a relationship with your horse while knowing that, given the chance, they'd probably rather hang out with their buddies than spend time with you. But then, one day you pull up to the barn, and you realize that your horse has memorized the sound of your car, as opposed to other people's cars, and has wandered over to the gate to greet you.

Nicole Cliffe attempts to uncover the appeal of these animals that seem rather difficult to love. Unless, I guess, you already happen to love them. The article is The Horse, Explained.

Don't get us wrong, by the way. We have ridden the odd horse on occasion, and both we and the noble steeds between our legs have managed to survive the ordeal without too much permanent damage. But it takes more than riding them to understand them.

My cat, on the other hand, is perfectly content not to be ridden, and both of us are quite satisfied with the situation.

Tiger Woods

There was a period not long ago when getting a tee time on our local golf courses was about as hard as getting an invitation to sleep over at the White House. Maybe harder. And the whole reason for it was one man, Tiger Woods. Woods inspired all sorts of people to grab some golf clubs and get out there and play, and I have no idea why, because there was no way on the face of the earth that anyone he inspired could even remotely play the way he did. And he certainly wasn't the first golfer to come along and do really well, and he wasn't the first African-American to break down a sport's racial barriers, but there was something about him, a charisma in addition to his abilities, that just made us want to be like him. We knew we couldn't be, but there was no sin in trying.

When Tiger's famous personal collapse came along, his game collapsed along with it. But that was a while ago, and if Michael Weinreb, writing for Grantland, is to be believed, nobody really cares much anymore (except maybe Tiger himself). The question is, will Tiger find his game again?

Two months after Tiger won his first Masters, I went to see him play at the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio. I was doing what everyone else was doing at the time: I was there to write about how Tiger had changed the nature of golf, about how he might potentially change the nature of race relations in America... I subscribed to the mystique of Tiger because I was young, and he was of my generation, and I had never experienced a force of nature like him before. His youth and his background and his verve seemed intelligently designed to decontaminate a sport that clung hard to outdated tradition, and I imagined (naively, perhaps) that this would translate to the outside world as well.

This is a great essay about Tiger Woods and about golf and about aging and celebrity, and the timing of the Masters weekend makes this the perfect time to read it: The Aging Tiger Woods.

A bullfighter

If, as we alluded earlier today, horse racing has fallen under scrutiny lately for the harms it causes animals, what can we say about bullfighting? The whole point is harming animals. It's been banned in some cities, beloved in others, thought of as a fine art by some and as a cruel blood sport by others. We have never attended a bullfight in person, but watched them on TV while visiting Spain, out of curiosity more than anything else, trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out the appeal. We still wonder.

An article by Andrea Aguilar about the torero José Tomás helps bring the activity into some focus:

The bullfight proved to be crude and epic. Tomás was gored three times. After each goring, he stubbornly stood up, planted himself on the ground, and fought on, never stepping back from the bull. His torso bent achingly slowly, inches from the animal, to subtly guide the charge. His calm was astounding... Some viewers accused him of being suicidal; others saw the consummate performance of Spain’s best bullfighter, one who was ready to fight steadily till the end. When a journalist asked the old former matador Esplá, “What is courage?” he answered, “It’s the spot where José Tomás stands.”

Read Death in the Afternoon.

Secretariat

Today is Eric Clapton's birthday. But say what you will about the guitarist, he never set a record in a Triple Crown race, which co-celebrant Secretariat did, twice. ("Big Red" might actually have set a record in all three, but there's controversy over the Preakness time because of a malfunction in the infield timer.) And Secretariat's records still stand.

Secretariat was born March 30, 1970. He tore up the track pretty much from the beginning of his career. When he won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 1973, he was poised to become the first triple crown winner in 25 years, and he caught the imagination of the whole country. People who never thought much about horses one way or another were taken by this guy. He seemed to appreciate the adulation; here's how he did at the Belmont Stakes:



That is probably the most amazing Thoroughbred race ever run. Secretariat set the record that day for the mile and a half, which is why it looks at the end as if he was the only horse to bother even showing up.

Secretariat retired at the end of his three-year-old racing career. He went on to stud, making his best success as a sire of broodmares; a lot of breeders believe that racing magic always skips a generation, and while there's no scientific proof one way or the other, they were right in Secretariat's case, on the damsire side. The horse was euthanized in 1989, when he suffered from laminitis. His passing was front page news, and he was very seriously mourned throughout the country. He was buried at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky.

Racing isn't what it used to be, unfortunately. But there are still great horses now and then, animals that somehow connect to us because of their heart and spirit. Secretariat was one of the greatest of those greats.