Peruvian Nights and Jamaican Days

YARD GOLF

So..when I was a junior in college, I moved in with my dorm roommate to a house off campus. We spent lots of time drinking beers on the front porch, grilling meat products. One day, there was a tin can sitting on the step (I don't know why) and a stick laying in the yard. I think we started off playing baseball with that equipment, but soon, yard golf was born. After awhile, a 9-hole course had evolved:



Hole 1 started in a depression in our front yard (I think it is actually a karst sinkhole that will someday claim the whole house), and ended at the little metal water valve cover across the yard. Hole 2 went from there, doglegged around the corner of the house (usually smacking off of Evan's truck), went up and over the storm cellar (a testament to just how old the house was!), and into a strange little PVC pipe inset in the ground by the corner of the shed. We never figured out what that pipe was for, or where it went to. The third teebox was on top of the storm cellar hump, and double-dog-legged around TWO corners of the house, onto what seemed to be a concrete porch. It was weird that there was a porch there, seeing as how there was no door - my roommate and I always speculated that a tornado had picked up the house, turned it 90°, and put it right back down on the foundation. The "hole" itself, in this case, was the top part of this weird, metal rod that just protruded out of this porch-like thing. You just had to hit it with the can. We had always thought that the little 3" part of that metal rod was just a part where a handrail must have attached, until one day my friend Dan was over, and I was showing him all the weirdness about the house, and I pulled on the metal chunk - it ended up being this 15' long metal rod that was wet at the bottom. I guess it was an old cistern or something. The fourth teebox was located on that side porch-like thing, and the hole itself was a dogleg sharp left around dude's garden. The hole itself was a metal stake with a beer can on it. I don't know why that was there, either. The 5th hole started at that point, went over (or around) a big compost heap, and to a post where a birdfeeder was mounted. The sixth hole (and I'm not sure why we thought this was necessary) started directly behind a pear tree, and went up a hill. To get it "in the hole," you had to get your can to land & stay on a manhole cover set in concrete on the curb. The seventh hole was very similar - further up the hill onto another manhole cover. The eight hole went from that manhole cover, across the street, and into another one of those weird PVC drains set in the curb (not easy to get a 2.5" tin can into a 4" hole). The final hole went across the street again (often smacking into my car) and up onto the porch. Anywhere on the porch was fine, but it took a precision loft to get it high enough to get up onto the porch, and stay there.

After awhile, we each had several clubs - just like in real golf - which were sticks of various size, shape, and heft, used for different approaches. We tried many varieties of cans, since they often got smooshed flat by about the 5th hole, but eventually realized that a plain old tin can (like corn or french-style cut green beans would come in) was best, because you needed it to be a little flattened for it to not roll off the manhole covers on 7 and 8, and the porch on 9. I've realized since then that chicken stock cans (the kind with the ring-pull top) would be even better, because they're heavier. At that point in my life, I had never purchased chicken stock.

I'll have to rely on 'Tiska's superior power to recall obscure and pointless numbers, but I believe I shot a 29 when I was playing with him once. On a few holes, 3 strokes was really the minimum you could conceivably get. So 29 would have been pretty amazing. I only recall one hole-in-one - I think Evan did it on the first hole once.

We had rough plans for a full 18-hole course, since the lots behind us were also vacant and just used for gardens, but never got that motivated.

There was a woman that always sat on a bench in front of her apartment across the street. She must have been 200 years old. She was way too far away for us to converse with, but we called her "Mabel," and many were the nights, when, after a round of yard golf, we whiled away the hours cooking hot dogs and sipping Hamm's on the front porch, and staring across at Mabel.

That is the time in my life I like to refer to as "The Good Old Days."

-m