Golf Fever!

 Golf Fever!

     From little acorns mighty oaks grow and from driving range balls so does golf fever flow. Golf fever is something that took over both families, starting with my brother Stephen who has always been a very good player as a junior right on up to today. My Mom took up the game to save her sanity after having four brats and little escape from her own suffocating household. She taught the game to her oldest son and even in early eight millimeter home movies you can see the white canvas bag of a starter set for little Glen. When we moved to La Habra and joined Hacienda Country Club the fever raged since I could tag along with my Mom and play one of the best private courses around. The little acorns for South Gate kids though were the Pitch and Putt course in the park and the 19th hole driving range over by the South Gate drive-in. Jack took to golf as a young teen and we spent many hours paying sixty cents to play nine holes at the pitch and putt where the longest hole was 140 yards. As soon as Jack came home with tales of flirting with par, little Greg caught the fever. The Nineteenth Hole deserves it's own post so I will skip to just a couple of examples of the fun we had on the links. For some strange reason Jack and I had decided to get total buzz cuts in the Summer and then go out and play golf for the rest of the afternoon. It did not occur to us that the tender lily-white skin on our heads would not accept four hours of direct sun all too well. The end of the day was spent gingerly placing our blistertered pates in basins full of cold water and moaning from the throbbing sunburn. The event was known as "baked skulls." and the blisters healed just about time for the beginning of classes at Pius. The other scene is taken from the feverish visits Greg and I took out to Rio Hondo GC in the late afternoons where we could get on with a random twosome and even get in 18 holes if we were lucky. We have talked about Jack and Betty but on this day we played with Victor, a confident and competent Filipino golfer. He gave solid advise and played a straight up bogie round with no complaints. I was a tempermental young guy who maybe cursed a time or two after bad shots. At the turn Greg and I went directly to the snack shack and while waiting for our food smelled a strong odor of tabasco sauce. We looked over at Victor who was drowning his hot dog in the hot sauce to satisfy his taste for spicy. At the end of  our round Victor told Greg "Glen's got a bad temper...that's no good for golf" Victor knew what he was talking about.