Mike:
Instead of me typing it all over again just read post #s 18, 45 and 51 and see if you can figure it out all by your lonesome.
The clue is----what if the locals (the proverbial town idiot adage) made those things way back when and they've been there ever since? After-all Wilson did ask Oakley back in the fall of 1913 if they could or should stay and have grass grown on them after having been purified of salt (via a lime application by Clarence G and the local idiots) after a half year or a year. Remember?
Tom,
Gotcha...I just don't know the perimeters of the holes well enough to tell you specifics of what holes George may have shot those photos on, 'cept the two I mentioned. Perhaps he can chime back in if he sees this.
Personally, before walking the course again to take photos this past weekend I'd only played there once prior, about 1990 or so a few years after the formerly private club became a public-available "resort" course.
However, I have very fond, and very sentimental reasons for doing this labor of love anyway, which I'll explain.
Back in the July of 1973 I had been playing golf exactly two years and my brothers and I were absolutely enthralled with the game, me in particular. And, at age 40 or so, our dad had just started playing the previous summer and became equally captivated. He was also going through a mid-life crisis.
It was a few weeks before my 15th birthday, and we were on our annual weeklong summer vacation at Brigantine, NJ, a barrier island off of Atlantic City.
Every day my brothers and dad would get up at the crack of dawn to wake the Moonlight Motel owner Carmen Saia and get our free tickets (part of the deal with staying at the Motel) validated to go and play at the Brigantine Country Club (Stiles & Van Kleek, and another sentimental favorite) where we would go and play at least 27 and usually 36 holes before returning and meeting my sun-burned mother and her mother to spend an hour or so at the beach or pool before dinner.
We thought we were in heaven.
Each night we would eat dinner at the Island Diner, which was reasonable cheap family food and where I could get fried shrimp each night before trying to chase young French-Canadian girls who didn't love us, go for late night walks on the beach, get a sundae at Dairy Queen, and get up and do it again.
However, I had to up the ante.
Being a brat, I thought I'd see if we could go for lobster tail, which the diner didn't have, and which I'd aquired a taste for from my late grandfather, who periodically would treat the both of us. My parents, wanting to make their son happy on vacation one night asked the waitress if there was some place nearby where we could satisfy my craving.
She told us about a restaurant inland past Smithville called Oyster Bay that would do the trick. It was late in our vacation week on a beautiful summer evening, and we decided to take the drive.
My dad, who had recently taken to the 70s in full color, had traded in his formerly drab attire for yellow pants, hawaiian shirts, pink hats, and wide, white belts. He was also driving his mid-life crisis car of choice, a 1972 solid ORANGE Chevy Malibu, with black interior, and no air conditioning.
Piled into this car was my dad, my mom, my grandmother, my older brother, my younger brother, and me, and a trunk full of four sets of golf clubs and a week's worth of luggage for six people. It defied the laws of physics and the physical limitations of the universe.
Along our drive, we turned onto route 9 and soon we passed through the town of Absecon. Suddenly, our eyes were directed to the sight of xanadu on our right, for visible along and through tall hedges was a shining emerald unlike we had ever seen before in our glory days of public golf at farmland courses in northeastern PA. No, this was a spectacle, full of sweeping mounds and deep whitish-yellow sand bunkers intersecting into green paths of glory with a blue-green bay out at the horizon.
My dad stopped the car and turned around.
Spying a road that ran along what I now know to be the first and second holes, and we drove until we found another road to our left that took us right onto the course proper. I believe we actually drove across the second fairway short of the green, continued on probably another hole or two until we came upon a group just teeing off at what I believe is the 8th hole.
Off to the left was a clubhouse that looked like somewhere the President of the Unitd States should live or at least the Rockerfellers or Vanderbilts. My mom was freaking out, telling my dad we were going to be arrested or minimally detained overnight in some cell for people who go where they aren't supposed to.
My dad, oblivious to her pleading, and fixated on the beauty of golf nirvana drove the OrangeMobile up along the players who seemed to be fastidiously ignoring us, but then caught the attention of their white-jumpsuited African American caddie who looked to be about 7 feet tall, rolled down the window, and asked, "Is this a public course?"
His answer was brief, curt, and stated as if we had asked him if the sky was bright pink.
"No suh".
Each of us slinked down further into our seats as my dad tried to figure out the quickest, safest way to extract us from the middle of the Seaview Country Club.
Today, in my mind's eye, I can still remember that feeling of being somewhere we weren't supposed to be, yet feeling somewhat strangely proud of my dad for his passionate committment to a game we had newly discovered, and that we had yet to learn was going to provide a source of familial companionship and father-sons togetherness and camaraderie for the next forty years.
Kyle,
Nice you've joined us. Hope you enjoyed the story
The bald demon is the ghost of Kyle future, I believe.
Back in 1974 when this story took place said author had long thick hair down to his shoulders.
