Thank you for posting that picture Tommy, there is no doubt in my mind George was also in that photo, we just couldn't see him. I'm writing this as the train blazes through New London on the way to Beantown. I swear I can see Fishers Island in the distance, but it could be a hallucination from my past. Uncle George and I took the ferry many years ago and spent the day with Charlie Ferguson, who shot his age (81) from the senior tees. I carry that memory close to my heart not because I'll likely never return, but because I got to see it through Raynor's eyes with two mystical docents. What an honor and privilege is was to visit so many magical places with The Great Bahto.
It seems impossible - and I let it slip at lunch after the service - but in all the places we visited, George and I were never on the grounds at NGLA at the same time. I know when I get back there he'll be walking the course with me. I can still hear his voice, describing the intricacies of each hole we studied; it is hard to believe, but most of the time I kept my mouth shut and just tried to memorize everything he taught me. In many ways, I was sadder when I got the news from Pam than when my father died last May. In the end, I gave my all for Dad and had no regrets when the buzzer went off. In George's case, I failed him the last five years, trying to sort out my fucked up life. That second book might end up as interesting as The Evangelist and to honor his memory - and thank him for the times he talked me down from a tree - it simply must get finished. I'm going to help anyway I can and George left it in the hands of exactly the right person.
If pressed to identify my favorite day, it was the afternoon before Old Mac opened. We spent the day dissecting every single hole, occasionally following Doak around - who decided to play the course armed only with his Ping 1-iron. The next day, George drove up while I was playing #18. Somehow, I'd managed to catch one down the slot and was trying to figure out whether to sneak my 4-iron between the mounds in front, where the pin was set directly between them.
"Gibby! What the heck are you thinking," he bellowed. "Weren't you paying attention yesterday?"
I admitted to being a little confused at what to do, so George - in that inimitable way we love so much - totters out of the cart, pulls a club from my bag and points down the barrel about 30 yards left of the pin. Back to his seat in the cart, staring at me with arms folded.
"Now," he says, "just put a good swing on it and see what happens."
I'll be dammed, but I hit the best long-iron of my adult life, a bullet right on line - and watched the ball bound up the slope, turn right and tumble all the way down next to the pin.
Uncle George winked at me, chuckled and wordlessly drove off.
I'm indebted to Pam for reading a private final message from me his last day. Her Redness told me I would be sorry forever if I did not see him before C.B. and Raynor took him home and she is surely right. What are the chances a Dry Cleaner from Jersey became the world's foremost expert on the seminal influence of golf's fledgling steps into America? And somehow George Bahto put me in his sidecar and took me along for the ride.
We were all blessed to have him in our lives.