When I moved back to Oklahoma from Rhode Island I went to work for Coburn Optical. Their main line of business is the manufacturing of the machines that other companies use to modify lenses to mount in eye glasses. They also have a division that takes orders to modify and mount lenses. I was young, still working on my education, and my work experience had been in restaurants, factories and warehouses. I was a warehouseman there. I worked there from 1973 to 1976, leaving to move to Oklahoma City to pursue my educational goals.
My father had left his position with Kaman Aerospace and moved back to Muskogee, OK where my mother had been living for a while. Looking around for a job he found one with Coburn and started there shortly after I left. He moved up rapidly and after a while was managing the division that prepared lenses for other companies. Part of his responsibilities involved making buying decisions and interfacing with many different suppliers. As Coburn did not mind, my father was entertained by the suppliers in many different ways. I remember he went off-shore fishing once or twice as one of the principle suppliers was in Massachusetts. He was taken to play Sawgrass, the TPC golf course where they play the Players Championship every year, arguably the most important tournament on the professional schedule that is not a major. Sawgrass is known for its 17th hole, a par 3 with an island green. As my father recounted the tale he put a few balls in the water playing this hole, and then wisely walked around and dropped a ball on the green.
He had the opportunity to play in the pro-am at the Firestone Tournament, all expenses paid, but at the last minute he decided he did not need to embarrass himself that badly. Realty was that my father did not have a great golf game, but it was not that bad. He generally managed to get around a golf course without humiliation. He shot in the 80s, but if he was having an especially good day and the course was not too hard he would drop down in the high 70s. I am sure those pros had seen it all, but he stayed home.
His favorite trip, though, was the year he got to go to a practice round at The Masters. There are a few golf courses around the world that can be considered golf cathedrals, Augusta National would be at the top of my list. He got to prowl the grounds and at the end of the day he had his picture taken with the professional golfer, John Cook, who now is an announcer for the Champion’s Golf Tour. It was one of his favorite topics of discussion for many years afterwards and rightly so.
Let’s move forward a few years and change protagonist to yours truly. After much tribulation in Oklahoma I moved to Arkansas where my ex (then wife) had been for a year or so… much to her chagrin. I found a job with the Arkansas Department of Health serving as Sanitarian (health inspector) for Crawford County. I later would add Health Unit Administrator to my responsibilities. As my ex was prone to remind me every couple weeks when my check rolled in, I was not making a lot of money – and she was right. A few years into this gig, I started the process of working on yet another degree, this one in Computer Programming.
Meanwhile my ex was director of a residential foster care program. She would later move over to become director of a therapeutic foster care program, W.A.T.C.H. – Western Arkansas Therapeutic Childrens Home, an acronym of her invention of which she was duly proud. At the residential foster care program she had several house parents, two who became close friends of my ex and to some extent me, Bill and Jean. For the sake of me, I cannot remember their last name. Jean worked regularly as a house parent. Bill had an entrepreneurial streak and did several things while I knew them, some more successfully than others. I believe they may have become therapeutic foster parents when my ex started up the new program.
After Bill’s latest less than successful entrepreneurial effort, he started doing contractor sales for Sears (remember them). This he was very successful at. Meanwhile I was finishing my work on the degree in computing and soon would be finding a job at Rheem Manufacturing as a programmer on their mainframe working on their various accounting and manufacturing systems.
Bill was doing very well with sales, and won some sort of sales competition that had him going off to a resort with many other sales people. Part of the activities there were to be a golf scramble. While Bill had done many things in his life, golf was not one of them. In fact I think he had little or no interest in the game, either as a hobby or as a sport on TV. Somehow, he came up with a set of clubs and put in a 911 call in to me as he knew I played golf. I’m not sure he could not have picked a worst instructor, but my price was right, free. We went to a local driving range a couple times. I showed him the right way to how a golf club, and I gave him some basic golf swing theory/tips while watching him hit balls. We then went and played 9 holes of golf a very dumpy course that tolerated all comers…plus it was cheap. He went off to his sales conference, and apparently managed to not totally embarrass himself in the golf scramble.
As part of Bill’s work he frequently had to call in to talk to a lady in Georgia. They became fast friends. As it turned out this lady’s husband worked for the phone company and one his annual responsibilities was setting up the phone system for the press corp at the Masters. This was obviously way before cell phones became so ubiquitous. Part of this lady’s husband remuneration was several ground passes to the Masters Tournament. She called up Bill and told him they had some extra Masters tickets and would he like to go. Remember this was the guy who did not know the difference between a sand wedge and a seven iron just a few months ago. He said yes, and called me up asking me if I wanted to go too. Duh!
The kicker, though, was that I had just started at Rheem and I had no vacation time. In fact I was in arrears on vacation time, as my ex and I had a trip planned before I took the job at Rheem. They graciously allowed me to go on this trip even though I had only been there a short while.
I was in a quandary. A chance to go to the Masters generally does not come around for most folks, and especially for an Okie working in a remote corner of Arkansas. Do I quit my job and go, and look for a new job when I get back? Do I call in sick for several days? Oh what to do? There was no way in the world I wanted to miss out on this opportunity.
Fortunately, Bill solved my problem for me. He had misunderstood his friend in Georgia, and they had only a single ticket for him. He was absolutely mortified when he called me up to explain the situation. Needless to say I was disappointed, but I did not hold it against him. It did resolve my dilemma, though.
Bill went to the Masters and spent two days walking around the grounds, following pro golfers that he only recently discovered existed. Much like my father, he was blown away by the experience, and it was something he loved to talk about for a good while afterwards.
Someday, perhaps, maybe…