Day 1 ...
“Golf course groundskeepers needed,” the ad reads. “Apply in person.” I drive over.
“You ever do any labor jobs?” the superintendent asks me, looking at my hands.
“No.”
“So what’s your story?”
My mind whirs. I’m a 40-year-old white guy grown fat and pudgy from years behind a desk. I’m taking some time out to think things over.
“I want to work outside for a change,” I tell him.
The super leads us new guys out to the first tee. The hydraulic walkmowers are blaring at full throttle. The tee’s west side drops into a ravine filled with brier bushes. The grass is slick with dew. Within minutes, I’m dripping with sweat, my calves and forearms beading with blood. Hours later, I’m exhausted – my arms shake, and my ears are ringing.
“You gonna come back tomorrow?” the super asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
Day 5 ...
Dawn is breaking out, the birds are chirping, and I’m whipping the Sand Pro in and out of the bunkers. Life is perfect. Then it happens. I sheer off one of the bolts holding the plow attachment. The super sends me on my way, muttered to himself, with instructions to rake the remaining 50 bunkers by hand without a cart.
Day 10 ...
I’m teamed with Fat Boy, an amiable college student whose gut is so big he has special permission to leave his collared shirt untucked. We’re to mow the steep slopes behind the signature 18th hole. Fat Boy leaves the steepest grades for me. My heavy three-blade walkmower shanks to the right, and before I’m done I’ve dumped the mower in the bunker three times and gouged muddy furrows into the surrounding hillside. I look up toward the clubhouse. The candy-assed golf pro is staring down at me, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
Day 15 ...
It’s 4:30 a.m. and monsooning. I phone the shop, and I’m told not to come in. I should feel glad, but I feel depressed instead.
Day 16 ...
The bunkers have been washed down to stone. Freddie and I are told to get the Workman utility truck and start scrapping silt from the drier bunkers. Freddie is another college student. His work is always half-assed and he likes to hide in the woods for an hour or so in the afternoons.
“I can’t drive a stick,” I confide.
“We’ll trade off,” he says.
He drives the first nine. On the 9th hole, he foolishly parks on the steep slope behind a bunker, and the Workman slides in. It takes us 30 minutes to get it out.
“This didn’t happen,” Freddie says.
“OK,” I say.
I drive the back nine, learning how to use the clutch.
Day 17 ...
I show up in the morning, and the Workman is jacked up.
“There he is,” the mechanic yells. “The jerk who can’t drive a stick. Go out and find the drive shaft you snapped off.”
I find it on 9 where Freddie dumped the truck. I deliver it to the mechanic who gives me more heat. I take it. Freddie never looks me in the eye again.
Day 20 ...
“The biggest tournament of the year is a week from today,” the super says. “No more time off, and everybody needs to get cross-trained. Freddie, I want you to train on the greens.”
He goes down the list. Fat Boy gets tee mowing. It’s my turn: tee services.
I smell stale beer and decomposing chicken wings in the trash on 3. I have to go to the clubhouse to get water, toilet bowl cleaner, etc. The cart boys, the pros, the course marshals hang out there and see me drive up with my reeking cans of garbage, my squishy boots saturated with old ball-washer fluid and my collection of filthy towels I use to wipe bird crap off the markers and signs. They show me no respect. They yell at me if I venture inside. They move my cart. They make me beg for supplies. They know who I am. I’m the golf course geek.
Day 27 …
It’s tournament day. We report in at 5 a.m., and I’m sent to check the bathrooms. The spray tech catches me pilfering his stash of latex gloves and bawls me out. The bathroom on 3 gets hit hard during kiddy bunker clinics. The secluded one on 10 is a rendezvous point for some. The unisex on 17 is the worst: It’s where the greasy food served at the clubhouse kicks in and hits the patrons’ bowels like a bolus of Ex-Lax.
Day 30 ...
James is the course bad boy. He's drop-dead handsome and sleeps with the drink-cart girls.
“The super wrote me up when I burned out that fly mower,” he tells me.
“I’ve never been written up,” I observe.
“I’d rather be written up than laughed at.”
“Laughed at?”
“Yeah, like the time the golf pro called the super when you kept bunkering the mower on 18. The super said, ‘Well, I guess he can’t mow.’ And when you busted the Workman, the super said, ‘Well, I guess he can’t drive either.’ Before the tournament, the mechanic threatened to quit unless you were put on tee services. You’re hysterical, man.”
I quit. I just get in my car and drive away.
Day 40 ...
I’m writing this in my new cubicle at my new desk job. Every place has its geek.
“Charlie!” I yell over my shoulder. “Charlie! I need some Xeroxing done, pronto!”
Lord help me, I can’t help it. GCI