Butler Ellis Parker
The Adventures of a Suburbanite

“If you want to say anything ugly, say it quick,” he said, “for I’m in a rush to catch a train, and if I just catch it, I can just catch the ferry, to catch a train for Chicago. I can’t stop now – ”

“Get in the buggy,” I said heartily, “we will drive you to the station. Isobel and I are going on a little picnic. Put your suit case in the back, with ours. We always carry our lunch in a suit case when we go picnicing. Hop in!”

“Well, it is kind of you,” said Rolfs rather sheepishly. “I hope you did not feel hurt by what I said last night about pigs. I feel rather strongly about pigs.”

“Rolfs,” I said as I gathered up the reins, “I am not a man to nurse hard feelings, but I must say – ”

“Look here!” said Rolfs, “I did not get into this buggy to listen to – ”

“You can get out again,” I said inhospitably, “any time you do not like straight, honest talk. I mean nothing unneighbourly but when a man accuses – ”

Without another word Rolfs jumped out, and grabbing his suit case, walked haughtily away. I could not forbear giving him a little dig.

“Bon voyage, Rolfs,” I called. “Don’t get pigs on the brain to-night again!” and Isobel and I laughed as we drove away.

When the farmer saw us drive into his yard he seemed surprised, but he was nice about it. He said he was willing to pay us back half what we had paid him for Chesterfield Whiting, but we would not hear of it.

“No,” I said firmly, “we have had our money’s worth of pig!”

Then I opened the suit case.

It contained, among other things, a suit of pajamas, a tooth brush, four shirts, six pair of socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, a book entitled “The Complete Rights of the Citizen,” and twelve collars. But no pig.

All the articles were of good quality, and most had Rolf’s initials on them. I must say the suit case contained a nice assortment of haberdashery. But no pig. Not that I blamed Rolfs for not packing a pig in his suit case, for he was going to Chicago where there are stock yards full of pigs, if he should happen to want one. And a suit case is no place for a pig, anyway. Imagine the feelings of a man in a sleeping car when he has buckled the curtains of his berth around him, and has partly undressed behind them. And then imagine him reaching down and opening his suit case, expecting to find a suit of pajamas, and finding, instead, a pig. Imagine him when the pig – a Chesterfield Whiting pig – springs lightly forth and gives voice to his homesickness!

IX. THE ROYAL GAME OR SEVERAL DAYS AFTER THE PIG EPISODE

I refused to start for Port Lafayette in Millington’s automobile, although he used to lean over the fence and beg me almost tearfully, but one fine morning he came over, and he looked so haggard and careworn that I took pity on him.

“John,” he said, as he led me to his garage, which was on the back of his lot, “I am sure this automobile of mine is bewitched. I cannot think of anything else that would make it behave as an automobile in good health should, and I give you my word of honour that it is acting in perfect rhythm, never slipping a cog nor missing fire. Of course, with the machine behaving in that unaccountable manner, I would not dare to start for Port Lafayette, but I want to run you around to the Country Club. You ought to be in our Country Club, and I want you to see it, and I want you to tell me what you think about this automobile of mine. I can’t understand it!”

I have often noticed three things: I have noticed that a boy is never really happy until he owns a dog; I have noticed that a flat-dweller is never content until he owns a phonograph; but above all I have noticed that the commuter – the man that lives in the sweet-scented, tree-embowered suburbs – is restless and uneasy until he joins the Country Club. So I accepted Millington’s invitation.

We ran out of his yard and half a block up the street, Millington listening carefully all the while, and we could not hear a sound of distress in any part of the automobile. Millington stopped the car and got out.

“I am going to walk to the Club,” he said. “I won’t trust myself in that car. As for you, as it was entirely for your sake I proposed this little run to the Club, I am going to put the machine in your charge, and you are to run it around the block until it resumes its normal bad condition. From what I know of you and the remarks you have made while I have tried to repair the engine, I believe you will soon have it making all sorts of noises, and,” he added, “perhaps it will be making a noise it never made before.”

Then he showed me how to start, and what to touch if a tree or telephone post got in my way, and then he went on to the Country Club.

I was much touched by this evidence of Millington’s faith in my ability to bring out the bad points of his automobile, and as soon as he disappeared I set to work, and I had hardly gone twice around the block before I had it knocking more loudly than ever I had heard it knock. But I was resolved to show Millington that his trust was not misplaced, and I ran the nose of the machine into a tree, threw on the high speed suddenly until I heard a grinding noise that told me the gears were stripped. Then I left the car there and walked on to the Country Club.

A Country Club is an institution conducted for the purpose of securing as many new members as possible, in order that their initiation fees may pay for the upkeep of the golf green. Aside from this, the object of the club is to enable the men that mow the grass to make an honest living by selling the golf balls they find while mowing the grass.

The Membership Committee, on which Millington served, is a small body of men whose duty it is to learn, as soon as possible, who that new man is that moved into Billing’s house, and to get twenty dollars in initiation fees from him, before he has spent all his money for mosquito screens.

When Millington said to me, in the way members of Country Clubs have, “You ought to be in our Country Club,” I was tickled. I did not know then that Millington was on the membership committee, and his willingness to admit me to fellowship seemed to show that I had been promptly recognized as a desirable citizen of Westcote; a man worth knowing; one of the inner circle of desirables. What more fully convinced me was the eagerness of Mr. Rolfs.

“We must have you in,” said Rolfs. “I have been speaking to several of the members about you, and they are all enthusiastic about taking you in. Of course, our green is a little ragged just now, but when we get your mon – when – of course, the green is a little ragged just now, but we expect to have it trimmed soon, very soon.”

Isobel was delighted when I told her I contemplated joining the Country Club. She said it would do me all the good in the world to play a game of golf now and then, and when I mentioned that I thought of taking family membership, which would admit her to all the club privileges, she was more than pleased. So were Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington. I forget how many more dollars a family membership cost. They shook hands with me warmly, and Millington said something to Rolfs about their now being able to dump another load or two of sand on the bunker at the sixth hole. They also said the ladies would be delighted. Many, they said, had asked them why Isobel had not joined.

Then they mentioned earnestly that the initiation fee and the first year’s dues were payable immediately. They even offered to send in my check for the amount with my membership application.

I had never played golf, but Millington said he would lend me an excellent book on the game, written by one of the great players, and Rolfs offered to pick me out a set of clubs. He was enthusiastic when we went to the shop where clubs were sold, and I must say he did not allow the clerk to foist off on me any old-fashioned, shopworn clubs. He said with pride, as we left the shop, that, so far as he knew, every club I had secured was absolutely new in model, and that not one club in the lot was of a kind ever seen on the Westcote course before. Some he said, he was sure had never been seen on any course anywhere.

He said my putter would create great excitement when it appeared on the course. I must give him credit for being right. The putter was, perhaps, too much like a brass sledge-hammer to be graceful, and I found later that it worked much better as a croquet mallet than as a tool for putting a golf ball into a hole, but it was fine advertisement for a new member. Members who might never have noticed me at all began to speak of me immediately. They referred to me as “that fellow that Rolfs got to buy the idiotic putter.”

The golf course at our Westcote Country Club is one of the best I have ever seen. It is almost free from those irregularities of ground that make so many golf courses fretful. In selecting the ground the Committee had in mind, I think, a billiard table, but as it was impossible to secure a sufficiently large plot of ground as level as that near Westcote, they secured the most level they could and then went over it with a steam grader. The envious members of the Oakland Club speak of it as the Westcote Croquet Grounds.

The first day I appeared at the club I saw that golf was indeed a difficult game, particularly after Mr. Millington had explained how it was worked. He began by remarking that, of course, I could not expect to do much with “that bunch of crazy scrap iron” – that being the manner in which he referred to the up-to-date clubs Rolfs had selected for me – and that no man who knew anything about golf ever used the red-white-and-pink polka-dot balls, which were the kind Rolfs had advised me to buy. Then he looked through my clubs scornfully and selected my putter.

“Usually,” he said ironically, “we begin with a driver, and drive the ball as far as we can from this place, which is called the driving green, but I think this tool, in your hands, will do as well as anything else in your collection of kitchen cutlery. What do you call this tool, anyway?”

I looked at the label on the handle and read it. I told Millington it was a putter, but he would not believe me. I showed him the label, which said quite plainly “putter,” but he was still skeptical. He did not deny positively that it was a putter; he merely said, “Well, if this instrument of torture is a putter, I’ll eat it.”

Mr. Millington then made a little mound of sand which he took from the green sandbox, and set one of my golf balls on top of the mound. This, I soon learned, is called “teeing” the ball.

“Now,” said Mr. Millington, “I will explain the game. When the ball is teed as you see it here, you take the club and hit the ball so it will travel low and straight through the air as far as possible toward that red flag you see yonder. The ball will alight on the fair green. You follow it, and hit it again, and it should then alight fairly and squarely on the putting-green. You then follow it, take the pole that bears the flag out of the hole you will find there, and gently knock your ball into the hole. That is all there is to the game.”

“But what shall I do,” I asked, “if my first knock at the ball carries it beyond the flag?”

Mr. Millington glanced at the patent putter I held in my hand, and sighed.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but the rules of the game permit one to grasp the club with both hands.”

“I guess,” I said airily, “until I get the swing of it I will grasp the club with one hand. I only use one hand in playing croquet.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Millington, “if you knock the ball past the flag I will eat the flag. I will also eat the ball. Also the thing you call a putter. If you knock the ball half way to the flag, I will eat all the grass on this golf course.”

“Be careful, Millington,” I warned him. “You may have to eat that grass. Now, stand back and let me have a fair whack at the ball.”

With that I swung the putter around my head two or three times, to gather the necessary impetus, and then hit the ball a terrible whack. I put my full strength into the blow, for I wanted to show Millington that I had the making of a golfer in me; but when my putter ceased revolving around me Millington seemed unimpressed. I put my hand above my eyes and gazed into the far distance, hoping to catch sight of the ball when it alighted. But I did not see it.

“Millington,” I said, “did you see where that ball went?”

“I did,” he said, turning to the left. “It went over there, into that tall grass. It is a lost ball. Every ball that goes into that tall grass is gone forever. I have never known any one to recover a ball that fell in that tall grass.”

Then he stepped proudly to the sand-box and made another tee.

“Hand me a ball,” he said, “and I will show you the proper way to hit it.”

I gave him a ball and he placed it carefully on the tee. Then he grasped his driver in both hands, snuggled the head of it up to the ball lovingly, drew back the club and struck the ball. I was not quick enough to see the ball go, but Millington was.

“Fine!” he exclaimed. “I sliced it a little, but I must have got good distance. I must have driven that ball two hundred yards.”

“But where did it go?” I asked.

“Well,” said Millington, “I did slice it a little. It went off there to the right, into that tall grass. It is a lost ball. I have never known any one to recover a ball that fell in that tall grass. But let me have another ball and I will show you – ”

I told Millington I guessed I would lose a couple of balls myself while I had a few left, if it was not against the rules. He said no, a player could lose as many as he wished; in fact many players lost more than they wished.

I found this to be so. We played around the nine holes and I made a score of 114, and Millington was delighted. He said it was a splendid score to turn in to the handicapping committee, and that he wished he could make a large, safe score like that. He said no one in the club had ever made more than 110 and that the average was about 45. Then he said I need not lose hope, for at any rate I had not lost a ball at every stroke. He said he had imagined when he saw me play that I would lose a ball at every stroke, for my style of playing – my “form” he called it – was the sort that ought to lose me one ball for every stroke.

When I reached home I found Isobel awaiting me, and, without thinking, I blurted out that I had lost thirty-eight golf balls. Her mouth hardened.

“John,” she said, “I have been talking with Mrs. Rolfs and Mrs. Millington about this game of golf, and what they say has given me an entirely different opinion of it. When I advised you to take it up I had no idea it was a gambling game, but they both tell me the matches are often played for a stake of balls. Mrs. Rolfs says her husband has accumulated eighty balls in this way, and Mrs. Millington says her husband has laid up a store of over fifty. And now, when you come home and tell me you have lost, in one afternoon, thirty-eight golf balls, at a cost of fifty cents each, I feel that golf is a wicked, sinful game. I do not want to seem severe, but I do not approve of gambling, and if you continue to lose so many golf balls you will have to give up the game.”

X. ADVANCED GOLF

THAT evening Millington dropped over to chat for a few minutes, and he was in good spirits. He told me he had found the automobile where I had left it with its nose against the tree, and that it had been necessary to hire a team to pull it home. Isobel said she would never forget the pleased expression on Millington’s face as he saw the helpless machine being towed into his yard, and between what both of them said I felt rightly proud at having lifted such a load from his mind.

“Now,” said Millington cheerfully, “we can all start for Port Lafayette in the morning. I will get up at four to-morrow morning and tinker at the motor, and by nine, or ten at the latest, we will be ready to start.”

At ten the next morning, therefore, Isobel and I went over to Millington’s garage, but our first glimpse of him told us all was not well. He was sitting on the garage step with his head buried in his arms, while his wife was sitting beside him, vainly endeavouring to console him. For awhile he made no response to my queries, and then he only raised his mournful face and pointed at the automobile. He was too overcome for words, and his wife had to give us the awful facts.

“This morning at four,” she said, “Edward came out and prepared to do what he could to repair the motor you had so kindly put to the bad. He was then his usual, cheerful self. He leaped lightly into the chauffeur’s seat, touched the starting lever, and, to his utter distress, the automobile moved smoothly out of the garage and down the driveway, without a single misplaced throb or sign of disorder. There was nothing the matter with the automobile at all. Not a thing to repair. It was as if it had just come from the factory. Of course he immediately gave up all idea of the little run to Port Lafayette. Now, there is only one thing to be done. You must take the machine and run it around the block until it is in a fit condition to be repaired. I am afraid you did not do a good job yesterday.”

Although I felt rather hurt by the last words, I was not a man to desert Millington in his need, and without a word I jumped into the automobile and started. That morning I put in some hard work. It seemed that the automobile had repaired itself so well that nothing would ever be the matter with it again, but by persistent efforts and by doing everything an amateur could possibly do to ruin an automobile, I succeeded in developing its weak spots. Not until noon was I satisfied, but when the horses at last pulled the automobile into Millington’s garage I felt I had done my duty. I had mashed the hood and cracked a cylinder, dished the left front wheel and absolutely ruined all the battery connections. I would have defied any man to make that automobile run one inch. It had been hard work, but I was amply repaid when Millington threw his arms around me and wept for joy on my shoulder. He was not usually a demonstrative man.

“Next week, or the week after, John,” he said cheerfully, as he took off his coat, “I may have the machine patched up a little, and we will take that little run out to Port Lafayette. I feel that the trip has been delayed too long already, and I shall get to work at once.”

“If you wish,” I said, “I will lend you Mr. Prawley to hold things while you work on them.”

“Prawley?” said Millington. “Prawley? That man of yours? No, thank you, John. That man Prawley is so fearful of automobiles that he trembles at the sight of a pair of goggles. He would die of fear if we forced him into this garage.”

I left Millington whistling over his work, and that afternoon I took my putter and went to the golf grounds alone, for I had spent half the night reading the golf book Mr. Rolfs had lent me, and I saw I had not gone at the game in the right way. I knew now that I should have held my club with my right hand more to the right – or to the left – and my right foot nearer the ball – or not so near it – and with the head of my club heeled up more – or not so much. The directions given by the book were very explicit. They said a player must invariably lay his thumb along the shaft of the club, unless he wrapped it around the shaft, or let it stick up like a sore toe, or cut it off and got along without it, or did something else with it. The book seemed to imply that the proper way for a beginner to learn golf was to lock himself in a dark closet and indulge in silent meditation until he became an expert player, but the closets in my house were so narrow and shallow I felt I could not meditate broadly in them. So I went to the Country Club.

I met young Weldorf there, and as soon as he saw me he immediately proposed a round. He said he had wanted to play a round with me ever since he had heard of my clubs. He said he hoped I would not mind his dog being along, for the dog took a lively interest in the game of golf.

So I told Weldorf I loved dogs and that I thought a dog or two scattered around the links added greatly to the picturesqueness of the game. Weldorf’s dog was a rather thin dog, of the white terrier kind, with black spots, and Weldorf explained that the reason there were bare, flesh-coloured spots on the dog was because he was just recovering from an attack of mange.

Weldorf drove first, and a beautiful drive it was, and with a gay bark the dog darted after the ball, but Weldorf spoke to him sternly, and he stopped short, although he still gazed after the ball yearningly. Then I drove. I exerted the whole of my enormous strength in that drive, and I think I surprised Weldorf. I know I surprised the dog. If I had been that dog, I, too, would have been surprised. There stood the dog, looking at Weldorf’s ball, wagging his tail and thinking of nothing, and here came my ball with terrific speed. Suddenly the ball hit the dog on the hip with a splashy sort of smack, and immediately the dog was impelled forward and upward, giving voice, as we dog-fanciers say. He gave voice three times while in the air, and when he alighted he put his tail between his legs and dashed madly away.

We were not able to retrieve the dog until we reached the third teeing ground, and then I apologized to him. He did not accept my apology. He looked upon my most friendly advances with unjust suspicion. He seemed to have no faith in my game, and kept well to the rear of me, but when Weldorf addressed him in a few well-chosen words he unlooped his tail and wagged it in a halfhearted sort of way. I decided to ignore the dog. I raised the hinged lid of the sandbox and took out a large handful of sand to form my tee, and letting the lid fall took a step forward.

Immediately the dog gave voice! Weldorf had to raise the lid of the sand-box before the dog was able to get his tail out, but as soon as he had reassumed full control of his tail he placed it firmly between his legs and dashed madly away. It is nonsense to have a golf dog with a long tail.

By the time we reached the sixth putting-green the dog had begun to get lonely, and assumed a cheerful demeanour. He returned to us with ingratiating poses, mainly sliding along the ground on his stomach as he approached, and I was glad to see him happy again, for I love dogs and I like to have them happy. He stood afar off, however, until he saw our balls on the putting-green. He knew that golfers do not “putt” as strenuously as they “drive.” Then he came nearer. I took the flag-pole from the hole and let it fall gracefully to the ground. Without an instant of hesitation the dog gave voice! It was a long flag-pole, made of a plump bamboo fish-rod, and when it fell it seemed to strike directly on the eighth dorsal vertebra of the dog, at a spot where he was not recovering very well from the mange.

Weldorf said he had no doubt the dog would find his way home, and we stood and listened until the voice the dog was giving died away in the far distance, and then we holed out. It is nonsense for a dog to have dorsal vertebrae.

When we reached the seventh hole I found that the grounds committee was already using my initiation fee, for the grass mowers were at work there, and a man with a rake immediately stepped up to me, and said in the most friendly manner that he would be willing to part with some golf balls for money, if I would say nothing about it to the Board of Governors. He had sixteen, nine of which I recognized as some of those I had lost the day before, and he very generously offered to let me have the lot at fifteen cents each. I purchased them eagerly, and the man who was driving the mower at once descended and offered me twelve more at the same price. Between there and the ninth hole numerous caddies appeared from behind trees and bunkers and offered me balls at ridiculously low prices, and I, quite naturally, took advantage of their offers.

When I reached home Isobel asked me how I was progressing with my game. “Well,” I said, “I return with forty-two more golf balls than I had when I went out.”

Instantly her face brightened. She congratulated me warmly and said she was sure Mrs. Rolfs and Mrs. Millington had overstated the evils of the game. She said she thought she could see an improvement in my health already. She advised me to keep at the game until my health was beyond compare.

I now know that the book Mr. Rolfs lent me is mere piffle and that, for a man who takes his golf in the right way, a broom or a hairpin is as good as any other tool. I enjoy the game immensely, and find it great sport. Often I come home with fifty golf balls, and my low record is eighteen – but that was a legal holiday and the grass mowers were on vacation. I have so many golf balls in the house already that Isobel talks of having an addition built over the kitchen for storage purposes. As my game has improved I have acquired such dexterity that I can buy balls from the caddies at the rate of four for twenty-five cents. If I practise regularly I believe I shall in time reach a point where I can buy balls for five cents each. By holes, my best score is thirty-eight balls, made at the eighth hole on July 6th, from the red-headed caddy and the fat mowing man. My low score is one ball, made August 16th, at the first hole. I never make a large score there, as it is near the club house and the caddies are afraid of the Board of Governors.

When golf is taken rightly it arouses the instincts of the chase in a man, and I now feel the same joy in running down a caddy and bargaining for found balls that others feel in hunting wild animals. Golf, taken thus, is a splendid game.

And I have found that if I use my putter only, and knock the ball but a few yards each stroke, there is no need of losing a ball from one end of the year to the other. But even then one must remember the cardinal rule of all golfers – “Keep the eye on the ball.”