How it all began

The first club I ever put my hands on was an old wooden 5-wood with the plastic insert on the face.  I was around 10, scrawny and full of more energy then any parent should ever have to handle.  The club came from my father's golf bag, which at the time had not been used but maybe once a year for a long time and sat in the barn collecting dust and debris as things tend to do in barns.  As was not all that strange in the back woods of small town Maine, myself and my brother were home alone.  Now before you go saying, "why would his parents leave him home alone at his age?" I'd better explain what "small town Maine" means.  If you have ever read a novel by Stephen King you likely know, but for those of you who have never partaken in his books this should sum it up.  During the summertime the population averaged around 5,000 people and sometimes more.  Once winter came the actual residents of the town numbered somewhere closer to 500 people.  My nearest neighbor was more than a mile away and to get to the bus each morning I really did have to walk a 1/2 a mile up-hill in the snow.  You have likely heard of one-room school houses, for instance the one from "Little House on the Prairie" or "Anne of Green Gables."  Well, in my little town we were an upgrade from this -  which increased the school to two rooms.  One room for K-2nd grades, and the adjoining room for 3rd-5th grades.  My family and I moved to the town during my 3rd grade year and at that time my class consisted of myself and four other classmates. (Must have been a warm winter in town the year I was conceived.)  Life was quiet and leaving the kids home alone at younger ages was certainly more common.  What trouble can kids really get into that far out in the woods?

So, I was home alone with my father's 5-wood wondering exactly how one should swing such a contraption.  I knew the basic principle, put a ball on a stick in the ground and swing the club over your head before hitting the ball.  Of course, the first time I tried to swing the club I quickly realized that trying to keep that four foot pole with a weight on the end of it steady as I swung was not going to be easy.  I have mentioned that at the time my father was really not playing a lot of golf, so unfortunately for him there were no golf balls in his bag and I was forced to improvise.  There were of course plenty of tees, which came in handy when all we found to replace golf balls were round rocks.

It took a few swings before I was ever able to connect with the rocks.  I am sure that my stance probably looked very similar to a little league base ball stance and less like anything a golfer would do.  Stance and swing aside, the first time I connected with a little round rock was brilliant. This was my first experience with the satisfaction that is known by all golfers of making that perfect connection with the ball and watching it fly away.  It flew straight, high and long (I say long but it was probably more like 80 yards.).  I won't say that I was able to hit every shot perfect.  There were many that came off the toe and probably came close to breaking windows, but at the time I did not care.  I was having way too much fun.  It's too bad real golf balls could not be more like solid little round rocks.  I don't remember any kind of slice on those shots that we took, when I did connect with the ball they flew straight and into the woods.  As I am sure you can imagine, the golf clubs of the early 90's were not necessarily built for hitting rocks as hard as you could into the woods.  It was not long into our latest escapade that the "crack" of hitting the rocks turned to "crunch" and little white pieces of plastic went flying through the air.  A corner of the plastic face plate in the head of the club had broken.  We of course stopped at this point and looked at each other with a "oh crap, now what?" expression.  Back into my father's bag the club went with nothing said to anyone about what we had done.

Months later the club was found and I forcefully confessed to using it as a rock thrower one afternoon.  My punishment was one of irony and in my opinion pure brutality.  The club was passed down from father to son and became the first part of what would later be my first set of clubs.  It was years later before I seriously picked a club up again.

Cheers to all!