Pat:
I see that a couple of years ago you put a comprehensive timeline on this thread apparently to explain why early on Pete Dye could not really have had any knowledge of Seminole on the subject of the greens being significantly changed.
I had a long conversation with Pete Dye the other evening but unfortunately I did not ask him when he recalls those greens were changed. It did not sound to me like he was talking about before or just after WW2. It sounded like he was talking about the 1960s, 1970s or even later.
He went into a long explanation about the contractors who were a big well known company out of Tifton, Georgia. He even gave me a long and detailed explanation about their topdressing methods (and he said he is mailing me some material on that), the piece of machinery they used (a Cushman) and how and why the brushes that were dragged behind the Cushman did not distribute the topdressing evenly over the green contours.
And what of this famous black contractor from Georgia called Amos Jones? Pete said one of the contractors was a black guy but when I asked him exactly who Amos Jones was, Pete said: "Oh, I called them all Amos Jones."
Why would Pete call them all Amos Jones and where did he come up with a name like that? I can't prove it at this point but I have a feeling I might know where he came up with a name like that. Back then down there around that time there were a group of guys that regularly hung around together that included my father, Dick Wilson, probably Pete, Jim Raymond, Stewart Iglehart, Truman Connell, another interesting Italian guy whose name I can't remember right now, and an amazing guy by the name of Warner Jones (a bigtime horseman and the president of Churchill Downs). Those guys always had this crazy name-game going on between them. They would call each other all kinds of crazy names all the time. For about the last twenty years Dad and Warner Jones always called each other "Mollish." So eventually I asked my Dad why he and Warner did that. It was one of the funniest stories I ever heard.
I'll tell you about it later.