Jim,
Thanks for posting the message. It was a great evening! Anyone on this site should make an effort to get to a hickory event in their area sometime this year -- that will give you about 10% of what we experienced at Ralph's Hickory Museum. The diversity of clubs, the history of the clubs and the game, and Ralph's passion for it all just oozes from the bowels of the earth (the museum is in a finished basement)! There is so much cool stuff I don't know where to begin or end, so a few snippets: a scrapbook that Rick Holland brought along with old newspaper clippings - much of it about courses, rolling a guttie with an 1870's putter, holding Francis Oiumet's mongrel mashie, a 1915 metal-headed wood with a bore-through shaft, all kinds of funky putters, oversized niblicks (what is the term for them, Ralph?) that "could put the ball in your forehead" (Dan Lucas) - makes a 60deg wedge look like a 7-iron! It goes on and on -- very cool!
The kicker was that we had Ralph and Gary Wiren, two of the foremost authorities and collectors of these vintage clubs, there to explain about the clubs and that was, as they say in the commercials, priceless!
And, the camaraderie was wonderful. My thanks to everyone there for sharing their knowledge.
Mike