golf

July 5, 2023

Golf Prep

Preparations for the upcoming round of golf at the family reunion continues. I’ve been varying my routine:

A bucket of balls at the driving range

Irons at the park

Chipping at putting at the practice green

Chipping plastic balls in the back yard

I planned on playing a practice round at the nearby socialist course, but it costs $27 for nine holes, $43 for 18! And the weekend rates are higher! I won’t pay it.

I’m hitting the ball reasonably straight, but just not with any distance. The putting and chipping are very good. I like thinking through how to hit a good shot or make a putt. It completely empties my mind of everything else. Golf can do that for a mind in a way tennis cannot. But $27 for nine holes! I bet the round at the family reunion on a corporate course will cost $200.

When I consider golf, all the current evil connected to it these days, the Saudis and Trump, it makes me loathe the sport. It wasn’t like that when Dad and I played about a thousand rounds together in my youth.

I look forward to playing with my cousins. They have to ride in carts because of various ailments and I always said when I couldn’t walk or carry my bag on a course, I wasn’t playing golf. I told this somewhat jokingly to one of the cousins and said we’ll compromise: you ride halfway to the ball, choose the club you think you’ll use, then take it from there. I thought that quite reasonble.

If I can just keep it down the middle of the fairway with the driver, I’ll be fine.

My goal: one regulation par.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.