Golf Balls

My grandparents moved to South Florida this month 40 years ago. They are of course both long gone, taking that last one way trip to Chicago with no return. It would have perhaps made for an even better story if I told you that they left after the Blizzard of ’79, but my grandmother had her fill of more than 60 Chicago winters by then and was ready to go south. The storm had grounded flights at O’Hare for 4 days, froze the ‘L’ tracks and caused problems on the roads for weeks. Snow lasted on the ground for a few more months. Cold and wind persisted. The city’s response was slow and then candidate Jane Byrne used it against her Democratic opponent to become the city’s first female mayor. Around 8 years old, I figured if you plowed the streets and picked up the trash on time, you could stay mayor of the city a long time.

Anyways, in the Summer of ’79 I visited my grandparents and spent a couple of months with them. They introduced me to their friends, and their friend’s grandchildren, including I remember a few cute girls from New York. My grandfather did not care for “New Yorkers”, the way the drive, pushed their way around at the Early Bird dinner, played cards, their pizza or being “Second City” to theirs. I was told not to get involved with any New York girls.

We went to the pool, beach, water park and worked a little bit as my grandfather drove part-time for a florist making deliveries to hospitals and cruise ships. He was a glazier before he retired, installing the windows on the tallest buildings in the world at the time. He was always proud of that. When he couldn’t hang huge windows 100 stories above the ground, he drove a cab. A big Checker cab. A good day for me in those days was driving around Chicago in the back of my grandpa’s cab on the jump seat meeting people going to dinner, a show, a meeting, work or the airport. In retirement, he did side jobs such as hanging mirrors and delivering flowers instead of people. A few years later we could watch the Cubs on “cable” on WGN-TV from Florida! My grandfather didn’t have to wait for his Chicago Tribune 2 days later to give him the box score!

We also went golfing. Their condominium complex had a golf course lined by canals used for irrigating the course and property as well the usual assortment of bunkers, trees and out of bounds areas.

The first two holes were longer than most but wide open. It was a good warmup. I hadn’t been playing long I could usually keep my ball in play, if short. By the third hole, balls would start getting lost. In canals, in trees, in condominium windows (my grandparents lived on the third hole and my grandfather replaced their windows not infrequently until he gave up and left a piece of plywood where the window should have been).

Many of the guys my grandfather played golf with were retired lawyers and doctors and executives, children of the Depression whose grandparents and in some cases parents, or themselves, came from “the old country”. I thought “the old country” must have been ten times the size of America given all the people from there. He was the only laborer as I recall and he had the scars on his hand from cut glass and accidents to show for it.

They fought in “The War” and their generation became “The Greatest”. The GI bill allowed many to get an education, buy homes, start businesses and retire to South Florida from “up north”. If you called any of them Dr. Goldberg, Dr. Goldstein, Mr. Greenberg or Mr. Silverstein, you wouldn’t have been far off.

Some of them had numbers tattooed on their arms. I knew enough not to ask and no one ever volunteered any information, regardless of what side of the barb wired fence they were on at places named Dachau, Buchenwald or Auschwitz in 1945.

Many grew up orphans, as did my grandfather and his brothers, going from orphanage to orphanage and foster home to foster home. Now they were wearing white shoes, white pants, lime green shirts and chasing a little white ball around.

I learned those golf balls had significance. Never a ball was lost without an extensive search and recovery mission. 4 across they would scour the ground and sand and even fish around in the irrigation canals before declaring it “lost”. It slowed down the game but at their age I realized the only thing they were going to be late for was the Early Bird at Morrie’s Restaurant.

They had nowhere in particular to be since today was a golf day and not a card game day or a day they took their wives to the hairdresser and doctor and their mahjong game. After this round of golf the Chicago guys would fall asleep watching the Cubs on WGN-TV and the New York guys would probably do the same watching the Mets on WOR-TV as I recall.

My grandfather told me that he use to sit in the bleachers at Wrigley for a nickel. And you could get them on day of game. He claimed he stopped going when they raised the prices to a dime. I asked him why. Did he not the money? He claimed “they weren’t worth watching when they were a nickel”.

The lesson about golfing I learned from playing with some of “The Greatest Generation” and the lost golf balls was too appreciate what you have and conserve. They spent their hard earned money they had saved on those golf balls. They survived the depression, World War II, starvation, homelessness, droughts, floods, blizzards and a Miami Hurricane so they could wear white shoes and pants and hit a white ball in the Florida sun.

Mind you, these weren’t the balls that cost $50 a dozen in gold-plated sleeves signed by Ben Hogan. These were likely balls they had found or picked up for 2 bucks a dozen at the flea market. But no patch of grass was going to take their ball without a fight.

After watching the Cubs likely lose another game in the Chicago sunshine from our “bleacher” seats in a Florida condominium, my grandfather and I (and many others) walked the golf course looking for lost golf balls.