The Times Are Out Of Joint-The Trials and Tribulations Of Sand-Bagger Johnson

 

 

 

“You know Tom was all confused when I called him up after my flight got in asking him about whether I could get, or needed a tee time in order to play. Got confused because I was asking him at the ungodly hour of about one in the afternoon. We chuckled about the matter when I went in the clubhouse to sign up to play,” chortled Sand-Bagger Johnson as he approached the dreaded wind-blown and frigid first tee and spied an old-time  member of his playing foursome, Casey, standing there with two other unknown golfers waiting for a fourth (him) to come can join them. The “confusion” reference referred to the unusual time that Sand-Bagger had decided to play. For that matter as we shall presently hear the same with the lanky Casey.

See Sand-Bagger (henceforth Sandy in order to save cyber-ink which one wag claimed Sandy was using up at a prestigious rate with his weekly musings about the game of golf, the historic game of those with plenty time on their hands like the phalanx of retirees one sees on the nation’s links on any given weekday, and time to write little paeans to the “sport of kings,” or at least to the sport of King Charles I of England back in the day) had just come in from a flight to Washington and had missed the usual Saturday morning tee time with Casey, Lucky Pierre and Zowey (formerly known and Zowy but he, Zowey, had insisted that if his name was to be maligned in the interest of literary license then the added “e” provides a more stately moniker). Hence his unheard of late tee-off and Tom’s, the assistant pro at the exclusive Pine Pond Club, utter confusion. Casey’s reason for teeing up so late had been that he (and the others) had arrived for their tee-time at the imminently reasonable time of 6:30 but due to the frigid conditions of the fairways and greens a “frost delay” had been declared for an hour and none of the brethren had wanted to wait around for that new tee time. Casey, known around town as something of a malingerer had decided to “sneak” out of the house in order to avoid doing the dreaded spring yard work.

Thus Casey and Sandy’s meeting had been completely fortuitous that brisk day. What was not fortuitous was Sandy’s next sentence after explain to the three fellow golfers what he had been talking about when he came up too them-“Okay, bet, I’m giving you three strokes, no, we are only playing nine so you get two off of my handicap. You get one of this hole and on four.” Naturally Casey smilingly nodded in agreement to the bet knowing that Sandy felt there was almost no reason for playing golf these days without a small wager on the contest. The explanation for the mysterious reason why Casey was getting two strokes will have to wait a more advantageous moment since an explanation of that arcane handicapping system would tax Casey’s short-fused reading habits and it is necessary to at least pay some attention to the match. So later on that.

Of course Sandy, the older of the two men, and somewhat feeble these days, or with some excuse about a broken shoulder or something, golfers’ grab bag of excuses for poor play are endless, was fearful of the younger man, of giving him two precious strokes as they teed it up. And that proved to be the case that day as Casey got many lucky breaks. Or to hear Casey tell it, beat the old man’s gong. First hole-stroke hole-half, second hole half, third ditto, fourth-stroke hole- Casey one up (with the additional benefit of having the advantage if there was a tie after nine another arcane rule which there is no time to explain now)-fifth hole Casey drained a forty-footer for a very lucky birdie, Casey two up. Sixth hole-half-Casey still two up. Seventh Sandy gets a well-deserved break, Casey one up. Eighth hole Sandy booted it all over the place, Match, Casey. Leaving Sandy shaking his head wondering why he bothered to exercise his flight-addled brain playing golf that day.   

Summary for Casey’s eyes. A nice Abe to put in his fatted calf wallet. But wait a minute. Hasn’t the reader been paying attention to previous sketches? A “loser” has the constitutional right (look it up it is in the Bill of Rights section, the Second Amendment I think) to “press.” There is not much time (or space) to go into the intricacies of the “press” now but the idea is that the winner has to take the bet or gets “no dough.”  In the event both golfers booted the ball all the way down the long ninth fairway but Sandy took a satisfying victory against the younger man seven to eight. So Father Abraham stayed down in his righteous big ass memorial in D.C. for another day.