I got a set of golf clubs when I was fifteen. They were Spalding Par Plays from Woolworth’s at South DeKalb Mall. I played a couple of times at Clifton Springs, stuck them in my closet and didn’t pick them up again for twelve years. Mary Jane’s dad played golf and often talked about the game. That kind of piqued my interest, coupled with the fact that a lot of baseball and football players were golfers, so maybe it wasn’t such a wimpy game after all. In the summer of ’81 something happened that had a profound influence on us. We saw the movie Caddyshack. We laughed hysterically at the antics of Al Czervik, Carl Spagler, Ty Webb, Judge Smails, Danny Noonan and Lacey Underall at Bushwood Country Club. Afterwards I said to Mary Jane, “You know, maybe we ought to try playing golf.” I pulled my old golf bag out of the closet at my parents’ house, dusted off the clubs and we began hitting shots with plastic practice balls in our back yard. One evening we had Mary Jane’s friend Heidi down for a barbecue. Standing around the grill, her husband Tom and I got into a discussion about golf. He said he played the game and I told him that we had been practicing but had not played yet. We decided that we would all get together the following day and play a round. Mary Jane had never played and I had only played the few times at Clifton Springs. That was all about to change. “Where are we going to play?” they all asked. “There’s a course over on Highway 212 called Idlewood,” I said. “We’ll play there.”
Idlewood Golf Course was built on farm land in 1963 by a man named Ed Poss. It was one of the last of its kind, a hand-built nine-hole course riding the golf boom of the early Sixties. It was way out in the country back then and was still fairly rural at the time we started playing. Idlewood was a throwback. It harkened back to the days of persimmon woods, forged irons, balata balls and Arnie charging with his Army. A player could walk all day for a five dollar green fee. The Weekend Special was two riding eighteen for fifteen dollars. No bunkers. No doglegs. Six par 4’s. Two par 3’s and one par 5. Par was 70. Two small ponds brought water into play off the tee on number seven and the approach on number eight. The land gently sloped down from the clubhouse and first tee to Pole Bridge Creek, which ran parallel to the third hole at the bottom of the property. At sunset the fading light and shadows made the land absolutely gorgeous, accentuating the rolling landscape with greens, yellows, reds and oranges. In the summer and winter the fairways and tees would get hard as rock. There was no such thing as a frost delay at Idlewood. The greens would freeze in the winter and burn in the summer. They were mostly flat, Bermuda, inconsistent and, once you learned and understood them, an absolute thrill to putt. The basic idea was whatever break you saw, divide it in half or ignore it and ram the ball into the hole.
Idlewood had a unique starting system which I have never since seen or heard of before or since. There was a metal wire rack bolted to one of the posts on the clubhouse porch. The rack contained two wire tubes, one on the left and one on the right. They both met at the bottom of the rack with a single opening. Starting out, you placed your ball in the left hand rack. Making the turn, the ball was dropped in the right hand side. The balls alternated from each side, dropping to the opening at the bottom of the rack as each ball was removed. The starter would remove the bottom ball, announce the make and number, take the group’s receipts and that group was on the tee. Making the turn could take up to an hour on busy days.
The clubhouse was as simple as it can get. It was a small one story cinder block building with benches outside on either side of the door. There were three picnic tables with benches on the inside. Some of the merchandise in the glass counter appeared to be at least fifteen to twenty years old. Hot dogs, soft drinks, beer, chips, crackers, candy bars and pre-made sandwiches made up the menu. There was no liquor, but Mary Jane and I would bring a kit containing a flask of vodka, tonic, vermouth, limes, olives and a container of orange juice. We would sit and have a toddy after a round with Mike, the course manager who always had sports going on the TV in the corner. There was a back room in which there was a huge oak bar. This room never seemed to be used, although rumor had it that the old guys would get some pretty high stakes card games going in there. There were two bathrooms, men’s and ladies. Sets of clubs made by regulars were for sale in racks along the wall. There were no cart girls, no marshals and no dress code. Personal coolers were allowed in the carts. Idlewood was a course for everyman. It was where we first played and learned the game. It played a huge role in our family history. It was our St. Andrews.
The first four holes circled the perimeter of the property. The remainder of the holes ran parallel in the middle, with the exception of the ninth hole, which was a par three that ran along the top of the course with the green adjacent to the clubhouse. The four holes in the middle were like a war zone. You needed a football helmet for protection from errant shots that were always flying from the tees into the adjacent fairways. There were no hills to speak of, only one off the tee of the lone par five. There was one stand of trees on the course, between the second and eighth fairway. There was only one set of tees on each hole. The longest hole on the course was the par five, which measured 485 yards and ran along the eastern border of the property.
The first day we played it was obvious that we had no clue what we were doing. Tom had claimed that he played golf. If so, it couldn’t have been very often. He wasn’t very athletic anyway and hacked it around just like the rest of us. I swung and missed three times on the first tee. When I finally made contact I hit a ground ball about fifty yards down the fairway. But it was in the middle and that was all that mattered. A few holes later I was standing behind Heidi and to her left. Somehow she hit the ball backwards and it almost took my head off. On the next tee I chopped under the ball with the driver and the ball flew up and hit me in the left eye, rendering me temporarily blind with my wife and friends rolling on the ground, convulsing with laughter. The whole scene looked like a blooper reel out of a Three Stooges short.
Mary Jane and I began to play golf more and more, eventually once a week. We always played at Idlewood. It was inexpensive, fun and there were a lot of characters that hung out there, mostly older retirees. We really came to love and appreciate the course itself. When her mum and dad visited from the old country, Dad would drop Mum off at the Monastery for Mass on Sunday mornings, then drive up Highway 212 to Idlewood. He would sit on one of the benches out front of the club house with the other old veterans, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and swap stories with them. He eventually became one of the regular old guys.
We used to have feral cats that would show up at our house when our female cat would go into heat. Mary Jane would get traps from Animal Control, catch one and then have me drive the prisoner to Idlewood and release him. There were woods all around and a neighborhood adjacent to the first fairway. That way, she figured, the cat would have a chance and it was better than having the authorities come and pick the animal up. This had to be done extremely early on a Saturday morning, because the old guys would start showing up around seven in the morning. So, in the pre-dawn hours I would rise, load the trap in the back of my El Camino, drive to Idlewood, back the tailgate up to the woods at the top of the parking lot and open up the trap. I never had a cat that was hesitant about jumping out of the trap and running into the woods.
There was one cat in particular who would not go away. He was black with half of his tail and one ear missing. We called him Bob because of his tail. Bob was also ornery, mean and very smart because we couldn’t trap him. He could eat all the food without stepping on the release and closing the trap. You can only go to the well so many times, however. One day Bob became careless and got caught in the trap. The next morning, with him hissing, spitting and growling at me, I loaded Bob into the El Camino and took him to the golf course. He refused to come out of the cage, so I picked it up and shook it. He refused to budge. I shook it harder and he latched on tighter. I banged it up and down on the bed of the truck. He fell out of the cage, stopped at the edge of the tailgate, turned, hissed a profanity at me, jumped down and ran into the woods. The next weekend Mary Jane and I played golf. I went to pay our green fee while she loaded the bags onto the cart. When I got to the clubhouse, sitting at the door beside a food and water bowl was Bob. He hissed at me and I went inside. “When did y’all get the cat?” I asked Mike. “Oh, he showed up about a week ago,” said Mike. “He won’t leave.” “What’s his name?” I asked. “Bob,” he said. “We named him that because of his tail.” I walked back outside and looked at Bob. He looked back and we both stared at each other for a few seconds. He knew and I knew. “You ought to thank me, you know,” I said. He hissed at me again. I walked to our golf cart where Mary Jane was finishing loading the bags. “You’re not going to believe who’s sitting outside of the clubhouse,” I said to her. “Who?” she asked.
“Bob.”
“Bob who?”
“Bob the cat.”
“Bob, our cat?”
“Yep. Apparently he lives here now.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’ll see for yourself in just a minute.”
“Wow.”
“It gets even better. You’re not going to believe what they named him.”
“Bob, because of his tail.”
“How did you know that?”
“Well, it’s a pretty obvious name.”
Bob slowly came to terms with us. He eventually let Mary Jane pet him. I was never brave enough to try.
Idlewood closed in the late Nineties. The Poss family owned the course right up until the end. On a spring Saturday morning we loaded up the clubs and headed that way. There was a chain across the gravel entrance to the parking lot. We came back the next day after church. The chain was still there and the parking lot was empty. I called the course the next morning from work and the number had been disconnected. I called Mary Jane and I thought she was going to start crying. “I wonder what happened to poor Bob?” she said. “Go by there this afternoon and see if you can find him.” I explained to her that would be trespassing and even if I found Bob, he hated my guts and would probably shred my arms if I tried to pick him up.
A subdivision was built on the property, about two hundred houses shoehorned into ten acres. It kept the name, Idlewood Crossing. I drove through it once in our VW convertible, which was the car that we usually took to the golf course. It was very strange driving on the property, down the first fairway, over the second hole that was the first par three and turning left at the third tee. The stand of trees was gone, along with both of the ponds. The houses were cracker boxes, stacked right next to one another with no yards to speak of. I circled the subdivision and stopped at the top of the hill on the old par-five fourth hole. I tried to look out and envision the old course but couldn’t because I was looking right into someone’s garage. It was heartbreaking. I slowly circled around to the front of the subdivision and past where the old cinder block clubhouse once sat. I didn’t see Bob anywhere. I took a right and pulled out of the subdivision, turned left onto Highway 212 and headed toward home. I never rode through Idlewood again. But the memories are there. They always will be.