BACK NINE THE AUSTIN GOLF CLUB STORIES

T'was Tee Time  at the Circus

Members of the Austin Golf Club had various theories about Reggie Penworthy, the founder—or more properly, refounder—of the club. He had made millions in one or more of Austin’s high tech booms and had sold out right before the latest massive bust. He then acquired what had been the municipal Hancock Golf Course in the city’s fire sale of public property. But what, the members wondered, would drive a man to spend millions on buying and reestablishing an old semi-defunct golf club and yet to spend so little time there?             It was known he lived in one of the classy yet modest 1930s bungalows that lined the north and west sides of the course, but there was no consensus on which one or whether he lived alone. As the tipplers sat around the verandah overlooking the 9th green, there would be a report of having seen Penworthy at dusk playing the 3rd hole from green to tee using only an 8-iron. No, another said, he had heard it was a baseball bat. The overnight change in the snack bar to all vegetarian fare was assumed to have been on his command. The change back three weeks later to tasty greasy grub was likewise attributed. As was the change to an all-vegan menu a month later. “Can’t even get a pickled egg any more,” grumbled Boynton Butler. “Thank god he has resisted the Temperance Roundtable.”             One Penworthian touch caused sighs from the old guard and made the younger crowd happy. The front and back tee markers on each of the nine holes became small avant garde sculptures that were changed out once a month. The monthly art openings that resulted were lively hip affairs or tiresome swarmings of poseurs, depending on one’s views, with the invitees wandering from one tiki-torch lit tee box to the next, where buckets of beer and wine and raw vegetables or pig’s feet awaited. Inevitably, these became known as Tee Parties. One of the party games was to spot Penworthy’s erratic appearances.             But these events brought up a sticky situation for the club. The original Austin Country Club was established in 1899, back when this area was, in fact, in the country, as opposed to its current spot in the urban core. Then there had been no need for fences to keep the great unwashed out, but now the bathless were a presence on the eastern side, where the decrepit Hancock Shopping Center—once home of the club’s back nine holes—housed dozens of cut-rate businesses catering to the large flock of souls made marginal by the economic bust. Used bakeries and on-demand baptism stores drew crowds who then were attracted to the free food and drink of the Tee Parties across the street. After a few unpleasant exchanges between the have-somes and have-nots, Penworthy reluctantly brought forward for the club’s consideration whether times dictated a fence was now needed. A public meeting was called.             In broad terms the Austin Golf Club had two factions that matched the reactions to the tee-box sculpture openings: an older crowd who had played the course for years when it was a municipal course and a somewhat younger crowd who had managed to survive the current economic wreck enough to want to join a modest golf club. As is increasingly the case in Austin, it is those whose political and social sensibilities formed in the hippie years who were the more liberal, a contradiction to the stereotypical view that such attitudes belong to the young. Thus it was the young who favored a stout fence and the elders who advocated preserving openness.             Because no one was quite sure how Reggie Penworthy would react, no one was willing to advocate simply discontinuing the parties and thus not attract the outsiders. After much toing and froing, a formidable figure stepped into the breach: Major Saul V, just returned from a safari to Nebraska. He immediately volunteered to establish a militia to patrol the perimeter during the parties. There were the predictable rumblings about rights and dangers, fights and rangers, smites and angers, but the sheer force of Major Saul’s Gilbert & Sullivaness won the day. However his request for chrome helmets and patent leather Sam Browne belts was denied.             Major Saul called for the first training session to be at 5 am the following morning.   *     *     *               By 8:45 am about a dozen men and women were wandering about, coffee in hand. Several had brought their putters and were engaged in small-change betting games on the practice green. Major Saul walked briskly about, tapping the tops of his cowboy boots with a riding crop he had fashioned out of an old fly swatter. He had rolled the wire mesh and wrapped it with duct tape. There was talk among the gathered whether he had stuffed newspapers in the sides of his Bermuda shorts to make them look like jodhpurs. One wag started whistling “The Colonel Bogey March.”             “Men,” Major Saul began, pointedly looking at the women, “the training begins. You are to run the perimeter of the course three times. You may use a moderate pace since this is our opening day of training. Be on the lookout for strategic points to concentrate our defenses.” He pulled a massive pistol from his dark blue wool tunic and fired it in the air. Alarms on half the cars in the lot began an atonal, postmodern symphony. “Off you go!” he screamed at the bemused and immobile militia.             “No,” responded one. “Off you are.”             It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say Major Saul aimed the pistol at the group, but it was close enough to start them jogging away from him, toward the perimeter of the course.   *     *     *               Over the next three weeks, at least six of the original dozen hung on, working out a routine where they would show up for training, jog off and play a few holes. There was still enough sentiment that some sort of guard system was needed for the Tee Parties and enough respect, fear, and curiosity for, of, and about Major Saul to warrant the charade.  Reggie Penworthy evidently approved of it, also, so the small militia continued.             Some level of excitement built around the Austin Golf Club as the next Tee Party approached. The old guard on the 19th hole verandah overlooking the 9th green ruminated much. Paul B, the most junior of the senior members, opined, “Penworthy needs to climb out of the shadows and take charge here. Major Saul is a wild card, a loose cannon, a maverick, a twerp. I saw too many like him when I was a file clerk in the Army. There could be trouble, my friends. Waller Creek could run red. We need a backup plan.”   *     *     *               The theme of the next Tee Party sculpture installation was “Permanence / Impermanence: A Quaternary Quandary from a Quasi-Quarry.” The artist, Pelotino Stag-Royfitz, had painstakingly built perfectly realistic boulders out of sugar. As the accompanying brochure said:  “Over the course of the month, these will dissolve, reminding the already burdened golfers that in addition to their cartons of clubs they also carry their mortality as they pointlessly walk the Dantesque nine holes of perdition.”             There was some talk among the old guard of just going out straightaway with a hose and getting rid of the art then and there, but fear of how Reggie Penworthy might react put the kibosh on those ideas. Plus, Major Saul’s new militia guarding the tees might be looking for a little bit of the old ultraviolence.   *     *     *               An unease settled in the evening of the Tee Party. Major Saul strode along the Red River Street border, gazing toward Hancock Shopping Center through infrared goggles. Off in the east, he could see a small crowd of scruffians gathered in front of Kardboard Klothes, eyeing the tiki torches being lit on each of the tee boxes. He removed his revolver and spun the cylinder. He took out a walkie-talkie. “This is Apex-1. Come in, Falcon Fire….Falcon Fire, come in….Hello? Anyone?”             “Oops, sorry, Major. We were all trying to figure out how to work this thing. Hey, guys, hold it down a second.” A steady background of tinkling glasses and laughter died away. “What’s up, Major?”             The major stared at the furthest stars for a moment, then spoke. “What is up is that the enemy is forming a phalanx. Plus I see a couple of the reprobates sauntering down Red River, obviously a reconnaissance squad. You need to get your sorry selves over here, pronto. And don’t come empty-handed, if you know what I mean. Over and out.”             The meaning of “empty-handed” was briefly discussed among the four militia who had actually shown up.             “I think for sure he means bring weapons,” said Falcon Fire-1.             “But what if he means a bottle of wine and some crudités?” warned Falcon Fire-2.             “Isn’t it ‘crudité’? Without the s?” asked Falcon Fire-3.             “No, but that’s a common error,” responded Falcon Fire-2.             “Aha, you are both incorrect,” Falcon Fire-4 noted. “The s is, indeed, present, but it is not pronounced. Interestingly the word comes from the Latin cruditas, meaning indigestion.”             “Perhaps we should just call them hors d’oeuvres and get over there,” said Falcon Fire-1 Solomonically.             On the eastern front, the crowd of would-be gate crashers had grown to perhaps twenty. They licked their chops. They rubbed their empty bellies while simultaneously tapping the tops of their fierce heads, a sign of preparation for battle in Major Saul’s vast knowledge of the arts of war. He angrily looked back at the torch-lit course. “Where are those slackers!? They’d better get here soon. I hope they bring some of those nice appetizers, too.”             The Falcon Fire four strolled in lockstep from the crepuscular gloom. “Hey, Major. Anything happening?” One brandished a pitch fork, one a pitching wedge, one a platter of raw vegetables, and one a jeraboam of so-so Champagne. Each sported a stemmed wine glass in his chest pocket, like a battle ribbon from some rare French victory.             The major suppressed every fiber of his being and spoke through clenched teeth. Pointing with his riding crop, he said, “They have two men stationed there and there. The main phalanx is at three o’clock.” Only two of the Falcon Fire militia looked at their watches. “Since our group is small, we may have to lay down some fire of attrition. Shock them, awe them.” He pulled his mighty firearm from his tunic.             “Whoa, whoa, Major. We can’t go shooting at them. That’s crazy!”             The gun swiveled a bit in their direction. “Is defending one’s home crazy? Is believing in law and order crazy? Is not a golf course one of the last sacred places left? My god, man. In the end, have you no spine?” He turned back to the advancing enemy as the Falcon Fire four slipped into the shadows of the course.             Just as the first of the ravening horde stepped into Red River Street and just as Major Saul raised the barrel of his pistol, a battered small pickup truck pulled into no man’s land and stopped. The bed was filled with ice and a hundred bottles of beer and a half-dozen jars of pig knuckles and pickled eggs.             “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Paul B, stepping from the truck. “Help yourselves. Take it all. But let’s let the toffs over at the golf course have their fun. What do you say?”   © Red Wassenich June 2008 Back Nine home page | Back Nine table of contents | Next story If you would like to be notified when a new story appears, send us an email at backninestories@gmail.com. Back Nine: The Austin Golf Club Stories Web site founded April 2008 All stories copyright of the authors. May not be reproduced without permission (the stories, not the authors).