Virgil:
I have yet another chapter to add to your Saddlebrooke Golf Club management storybook:
Today I went to the driving range at 1 p.m. to hit some balls. Place was packed because of a 1:30 p.m. shotgun. The sign on the ball dispenser says "Range Closed between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m."
Huh? Well, okay, can't get on before 1:30 because there are too many golfers, can't get on after 1:30 because it is closed. That's okay. I could sure use some practice chipping and putting so I will work on that until 2:30 when the range reopens and then I can hit this big basket of yellow range balls I rented.
I go to work. Pitching and chipping, B-; putting, B+
At 2:30, the sprinklers are still soaking the tee area of the driving range so I join a couple of nice retired fellows and wait for permission to start banging balls. One fellow worked for DOW Chemical all his life and was reposted every 2 and a half years, so he's lived just about everywhere in the US DOW is. Favorite post was Hong Kong. Out of all the places in the country, he chose Tucson to retire and has been here for four years and never regretted it.
Meantime, the sprinklers sprinkle on and some of the seniors are getting edgy and start to make their moves onto the periphery of the soaking driving range. I join them. It is 2:40. A man in a maintenance cart pulls up.
"Look out, buddy," he says. "I have to turn some more sprinklers on. You're going to get wet."
"But this was supposed to reopen at 2:30," protests a golfer in tan shorts and yellow baseball cap. "That's what the sign says."
"Oh," says the Man, as he cranks the handle. "That ain't right." He then drives quickly away to perform other important duties.
We have a big basket of yellow range balls in our garage right now. Whenever the range decides to reopen I will return and hit them and try to imagine I am just in somewhere in Wonderland and not stuck in The Third World.
