Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance

Author:J. D. Vance [Vance, J. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-06-28T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

During my last year of high school, I tried out for the varsity golf team. For about a year, I’d taken golf lessons from an old golf pro. The summer before senior year, I got a job at a local golf course so I could practice for free. Mamaw never showed any interest in sports, but she encouraged me to learn golf because “that’s where rich people do business.” Though wise in her own way, Mamaw knew little about the business habits of rich people, and I told her as much. “Shut up, you fucker,” she told me. “Everybody knows rich people love to golf.” But when I practiced my swing in the house (I didn’t use a ball, so the only damage I did was to the floor) she demanded that I stop ruining her carpet. “But, Mamaw,” I protested sarcastically, “if you don’t let me practice, I’ll never get to do any business on the golf course. I might as well drop out of high school now and get a job bagging groceries.” “You smart-ass. If I wasn’t crippled, I’d get up right now and smack your head and ass together.”

So she helped me pay for my lessons and asked her baby brother (my uncle Gary), the youngest of the Blanton boys, to find me some old clubs. He delivered a nice set of MacGregors, better than anything we could have afforded on our own, and I practiced as often as I could. By the time golf tryouts rolled around, I had mastered enough of a golf swing not to embarrass myself.

I didn’t make the team, though I did show enough improvement to justify practicing with my friends who had made the team, and that was all I really wanted. I learned that Mamaw was right: Golf was a rich person’s game. At the course where I worked, few of our customers came from Middletown’s working-class neighborhoods. On my first day of golf practice, I showed up in dress shoes, thinking that was what golf shoes were. When an enterprising young bully noticed before the first tee that I was wearing a pair of Kmart brown loafers, he proceeded to mock me mercilessly for the next four hours. I resisted the urge to bury my putter in his goddamned ear, remembering Mamaw’s sage advice to “act like you’ve been there.” (A note about hillbilly loyalty: Reminded of that story recently, Lindsay launched into a tirade about how much of a loser the kid was. The incident occurred thirteen years ago.)

I knew in the back of my mind that decisions were coming about my future. All of my friends planned to go to college; that I had such motivated friends was due to Mamaw’s influence. By the time I was in seventh grade, many of my neighborhood friends were already smoking weed. Mamaw found out and forbade me to see any of them. I recognize that most kids ignore instructions like these, but most kids don’t receive them from the likes of Bonnie Vance.

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