Fore! Play by Bill Giest

Author:Bill Giest [GEIST, BILL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759522558
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

11

Among My Own Kind

Maybe we should try to join some place a little more relaxed.

Maybe here, at Goat Hill: euphemistically called the Shelter Island (public) Country Club. I’ve stopped by a few times. It seems clearly the type of place I belong (although I would have joined a Michigan club advertising “18 Holes For $18 & Free Six-Pack” if it weren’t so inconvenient).

Here at Goat Hill, there are pickup trucks in the parking lot, something you don’t see at a lot of other country clubs. Guys in jeans and T-shirts sit at the small bar drinking Bud, not cosmopolitans. Although they appear to be grounds-keepers assistants or maintenance personnel, they are actually golfers and in all probability members. The local bon vivants (many of them in yellow “Shelter Island Fire Department” T-shirts) tell jokes and tales of emergency plumbing mishaps they’re supposed to be fixing for clients but aren’t. There are tables and plastic chairs. Food is served and it’s supposed to be pretty good since Phil took over, having been stolen away from the Four Seasons or somewhere. The pro shop is a converted closet.

The clubhouse is quaint, an old, slightly out-at-the-elbows, gray-shingled, white-trimmed Nantuckety-looking structure, sitting on perhaps the highest point on Shelter Island in eastern Long Island, offering vistas over the treetops of a small harbor filled with boats to the north and a large bay to the south. It has a nice wraparound porch filled with tables for diners and drinkers, protected by heavy mesh wire that detracts somewhat from the appearance, rather like a bug screen on a Cadillac grille or plastic covers on the living room couch—but it saves lives!

On the Fourth of July they park cars on the fairways. There are deer and sometimes deer hunters on the course. How’s that for a hazard? Carts are allowed anywhere, and it probably wouldn’t matter much if you just drove your car from hole to hole.

We have contacts here. Jerry Brennan, the guy with the used golf ball stand across the street, is president and membership chairman of the Shelter Island Country Club. That ought to tell you something. Usually presidents of country clubs don’t sell used golf balls in their front yards, they sell things like stocks and bonds on Wall Street.

We stop by his “Previously Owned Golf Ball Emporium” on our way home from golfing at Goat Hill to tell him that tonight is going to be a sensational one for hawking used balls out on the course thanks to the two dozen we just lost playing 9 holes, and to ask him about joining.

“Would you sponsor us?” I ask, knowing if we had him for a sponsor we were as good as in!

“Sponsor you?” Jerry asks. “You mean give you money to put my name on your hat?” Apparently they don’t require sponsors.

“What would it take to become a member here, Jerry?” I ask. “How many letters of recommendation will I need?” Again he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“References,” I say. “Professional, social, financial.

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