Forty years ago, my father and I were playing golf on a very ragged golf course in Auburn, Alabama, when we heard that. My old friend and fellow law firm associate Alex Barrett would have called it a dog track, unless he might have had something even worse to call it. At the bottom of a rolling hill, the fifth fairway ran along a fence; cow pastures lay beyond it. Now I know what it sounds like when a cow has sex, though someone had to tell me that that was what was going on.
I first learned of the course when I, an English major, inexplicably fell in with a bunch of math majors. They were extremely funny and very good golfers. We would show up at this course and pay $2.00 for nine holes (this was 1974, so still only $10.50 in today’s dollars) and tell the kid manning the cash register that we’d decide after the first nine if we were going to play more and would pay more then. The first day I joined them, no one noticed that we played 36 holes for $2.00.
A couple of phone or electric lines crossed over the course, and our rule was that if you hit a wire, you got two kicks and a throw. Little Greggie kept a thick boot in his bag specifically to deal with this eventuality, and on occasion he employed it to real advantage. He hit the wires so often that we accused him of doing so intentionally.
We called him Little Greggie because that’s what Elizabeth called him. Somehow Elizabeth, a fellow English major, knew Greggie. As he was a math major, he and I had few things in common, but one of them was an unrequited love for Elizabeth. She had no trouble deriding Greggie to me, and I have little doubt that she derided me to Little Greggie. She told me, “Little Greggie has his shit together because he has no shit.”
Inevitably the tension between Little Greggie and me grew, which was silly, as neither of us had any chance with Elizabeth, who was brilliant, funny, neurotic, and gorgeous with wavy red hair and large wary brown eyes. One of our other foursome, Lou, pulled me aside one day and said, “You and Greg have to work this out.” He was right.
Eventually peace was restored. Also in a few years Greg somehow got married. I went over to their place once, and they were like real adults, having pork chops and corn for dinner on TV tables. Perhaps he was a graduate student by then. Sometime in this more relaxed period, he told me that he played on his high school baseball team, and he got a hit off of Ross Grimsley, who later had a not inconsiderable career as a pitcher in the major leagues, most significantly for the Baltimore Orioles. That’s not nothing.
In any event, I believe it was sometime later that I was playing a round of golf with my father on that dog track. It was fall, and the grass over the fence on the fifth hole was brown. There was a heavy breeze. Few players were using the course.
There was a twosome right behind us, both older men. One of them spoke very loudly, and, quite in contrast, his partner was quiet enough not to hear. The noisy one had a very distinctive New York accent, odd to hear in Alabama. For those of you fortunately uninitiated in the ways and fortunes of golf, one doesn’t raise one’s voice on a golf course. One murmurs quietly. Not that it would matter, perhaps, as most people on a golf course are terrible at what is really a difficult game. But the etiquette is to keep it down. And this guy was really annoying. He wasn’t just talking; he was shouting.
At one point he bellowed, “Well, not calling me, that was your first mistake.”
This was the declaration that finally ended my father’s and my patience. It was so far from anything we would say to anyone that we had just fucking had it. We turned and stared at him. He was older with a lined face and thin, greying hair pushed back on his head. He was slender and dressed in vaguely appropriate golf clothes, a polo shirt and slacks in mild colors.
He must have sensed that we were staring at him, because very soon he glanced at us. Dad and I both put our index fingers to our lips, “Shhhh.”
I don’t recall how he reacted, but he must have stood and watched us. Dad and I were about to tee off on the next hole. I went first, and, as I wasn’t accustomed to calling anyone out about anything, I was rattled a little. I hit a lovely drive that unfortunately sliced a little at the end, settling in the rough.
From our interlocutor came an enormous, fake laugh, rattling across the fairways: “Ha ha ha ha ha!” Dad and I ignored him and went on to play, which was probably the best course. (Dad’s drive settled in the middle of the fairway.) In my intemperate old age, I would probably have turned and invited him to tee off with us just to see if he could do better and mentioned that the other guy had actually exercised really good judgment in not calling him.
So we had called him on a breach of golf course etiquette that he must have known he’d committed. He was a business guy, in the course of wooing his golf partner into some sort of business arrangement. He was merely saying, in essence, “The next time this situation arises, please don’t try to go it alone. Please come to me for advice, and I’ll help you out.”
But he was excitable and probably loud away from golf courses. I’m embarrassed to speculate that, in fact, he was probably a lawyer. The next probability down a step on the ladder is financial advisor, and way down the line, maybe a car salesman?
I would never have said anything of the sort that he did when I was practicing law. It’s simply not respectful, and if someone said that to me, I wouldn’t be persuaded to engage his services.
But I have to ask myself, how bad was it? Was it possible that the guy was simply an aggressive self-promoter? And I, being humble and self-deprecating and incapable of talking like that, was more offended by it than anyone else would be? Partly because I am constitutionally unable to yammer like that? Was I just jealous of his confidence?
It was my ambition to sell my novels and short stories. When I got my MFA in 1976, it was a different world: one sent query letters off to literary agents or even publishers and waited to hear. Maybe you could call them if they didn’t respond quickly and remind them that they had your manuscript. But you didn’t call them and say, Your not offering me a contract for this book was your first mistake.
That world is just gone. Everyone has to promote him or herself ferociously now. I have remained friends with a few writers, and they spend more time getting their name out in social media than it appears that they do writing.
I wrote about one in this blog, Julianna Baggott; her self-promotion is relentless (see post dated March 13, 2020). She sells very well. And she’s very kind; I sent her a synopsis of a novel, and she actually read it, as busy as she is, and said that if I sent it to 50 agents, 20 would show interest. That wasn’t the case, but thanks, Julianna. I’m confident that she would not get into “that was your first mistake” territory. Even self-promotion has its limits.
Is it possible that this golfer was simply ahead of his time, or maybe a man of his time, given whatever his industry was? Was I just envious of his self-assurance, which, at the age of 67, I am still lacking? And was I embarrassed by his laughing at my drive and still mad at him (I can really hold a grudge)?
It is impossible to say. One of the mysteries of my life is that these situations remain beyond my understanding. All I think I can say is that I would never say such a thing to anyone—“Your first mistake was not calling me.” It’s so cruel in several ways. Isn’t it?
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