I find golf ball after golf ball,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
only the best brands,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
on the beach called Whiskey Run,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
named after a botched bootlegging operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Balls shanked or duck hooked<\/p>\n\n\n\n
from the luxury links course on the cliffs above,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$350 a round,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republicans with JD Vance beards<\/p>\n\n\n\n
flying in from all over the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stash their mishits in my pockets<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for later use at my podunk proletarian course,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a 12-hole (!) layout,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$22 a round,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
coyotes and the caretaker’s chickens<\/p>\n\n\n\n
roaming fairways of weeds and molehills,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sand traps unraked for decades,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
greens less forgiving than most inferior human beings,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
playing with expensive clubs from my dead uncle,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the theologian who beat the shit out of his oldest son growing up<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and gave up on God at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes I pull out the Billy Casper Shotmaker driver,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
crafted from persimmon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
rip a tee shot with glee knowing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am the only golfer in the world hitting a Billy Casper driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cost me a buck at a Reedsport thrift store that benefits the developmentally disabled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No irony with the Billy Casper driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just like the feel and sound of wood crushing rich men’s balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one ever around when I tee off at dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I play my left-to-right fade game,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
decent off the tee,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
mediocre irons,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a great short game<\/p>\n\n\n\n
like my last round<\/p>\n\n\n\n
where I rammed in three 15-footers for par<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and chipped in for birdie from 90 feet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
heard nothing but wind whipping through<\/p>\n\n\n\n
the gallery of Sitka spruces,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a quiet roar I counted as applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wish I hadn’t thrown out my dad’s Doug Ford blade irons after he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d carry that 2-iron he could never hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never understood why he cheated at golf,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
foot wedge his favorite club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe it had something to do with that cold night on train guard duty<\/p>\n\n\n\n
as a 21-year-old Marine in the Korean War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A communist infiltrator behind the lines<\/p>\n\n\n\n
appeared in front of his sand-bagged emplacement<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and he fired a .30 caliber machine gun<\/p>\n\n\n\n
at point black range,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
spraying him with blood, bone and body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That might explain the cheating in most aspects of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or explain nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He never talked about combat until the months before died,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and I reminded him of the time in junior high<\/p>\n\n\n\n
when he told me clouds overhead,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
pointing to them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
as we played the first hole at Oregon City Golf Club,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
looked exactly like the clouds during a mortar barrage<\/p>\n\n\n\n
that he survived because he dug a foxhole better than most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember those clouds and sometimes search for that formation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
while playing golf alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I find golf ball after golf ball, only the best brands, on the beach called Whiskey Run, named after a botched bootlegging operation. Balls shanked or duck hooked from the luxury links course on the cliffs above, $350 a round, Republicans with JD Vance beards flying in from all over the country. I stash their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","category-sports","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10027,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions\/10027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}