The Journey Resumes and Begins
January, 2025
The invitation seemed harmless enough. Who would have considered that the brief exchange in the hallway of Dover High School would transform my life at the age of 58? I’m a high school teacher and one of my colleagues stopped me as I was heading into the main office. It was June, 2023, and the end of the school year was the following week.
“Hey, Eric. Any thoughts on playing golf this Sunday morning? Our fourth for this season can’t make it. You don’t have to play every week. But there is an open spot. We tee off early. 5:30 AM.”
Golf. The game where one uses metal sticks to hit a little ball around a tract of grass, trying to knock said ball into holes by using the fewest amount of swings. Golf widows might describe the game as why they don’t see their husbands on the weekend. I told myself a long time ago that I didn’t want to be that kind of father or spouse.
And I wasn’t.
In the previous twenty-five years, I had played less than five rounds of golf. My summers were spent on fields as a coach of my kids’ teams or watching them play. Anything to do with family. The idea of spending weekend hours on a golf course never crossed my mind. The sport was like an old flame. You know what I mean. Lots of fond memories, but most certainly buried in the past. Not once had I considered picking it up again.
“Sure,” came flying out of my mouth, which surprised the hell out of me.
Who blurted those words?
I’d have to dig my clubs out from the basement. Did I have golf balls left in the bag? It had been a long time. Honestly, I really wasn’t ready.
On the way home, I figured I’d just cancel on them the next day. Golf was not something I wanted to get into. Did I want to get up that early on a Sunday, and pay money to get frustrated? It would be easy, just tell them that I couldn’t make it and move on with my life.
Walking into the kitchen, I jokingly said to my wife, “Guess what? I got asked to play golf on Sunday.”
“Good, I’m glad. Go have fun.”
My wife was supporting this?
“I’m going to say no tomorrow,” I insisted.
“Just go play,” she said.
I’m writing this in January, 2025, and there are times when she exhales and gently says, “I wish I hadn’t encouraged you to play golf.”
Since I accepted that invite, the game has consumed me in different ways. Bought new clubs. Regularly watched golf on tv and YouTube. Made sure to include golf on vacation trips. Written articles related to the sport. But most importantly, it has been the vehicle to get me to spend quality time with my father and rekindle friendships…..
January, 2024
The text messages were fast and furious. Lots of sarcasm, but serious planning. Howard and I were making something happen.
Howard. He’s the other half of this crazy idea.
We grew up in a small town in north central Massachusetts - Baldwinville. Which is a precinct of the metropolis known as Templeton. You are obviously wondering about the other precincts. Otter River, East Templeton and Templeton Center are the other three and I can almost guarantee that you’ve never been there, unless you are a native. If you happen to be traveling west on Route 2, admiring the old furniture factories in the Chair City of Gardner, then realize the highway has dropped to one lane in Athol, you have missed the exit to our childhood home.
Howard and I met in fourth grade, and have been friends ever since. Our high school was so small that we had the same classes together for all six years. Yes. Six years. Same classes. Narragansett Regional High School housed grades 7-12 and in 1977, one learns a lot as a seventh-grader having a locker near a senior.
During this time, besides taking every academic class together, we did school sports, as well as a few summer jobs. But it was golf that truly connected us. Like a lot of youngsters, each of us got the bug from our father. When I was in second grade, my family lived in central New York for a year when my dad took a new job. This was when he brought me on the golf course for the first time. The following year, we moved back to Baldwinville, the area I still call home. There were golf courses on either side of Baldwinville. Gardner Municipal and Winchendon School Golf Club. As a family, we were partial to Winchendon, as there were tennis courts, something my parents enjoyed doing together, since my mom was NOT a golfer. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, my parents would drop me off at the Winchendon clubhouse, then head across the street to play tennis with friends. I’d get to play a brisk 18 on the Donald Ross design.
While I was toiling in Winchendon, Howard and his dad were playing a different Donald Ross course, Petersham Country Club, a very cool nine-hole layout. Once we hit middle-school age and became more independent, our parents agreed to regularly drop us off at Gardner Municipal. Most often with a lunch. What could be better? Eighteen in the morning. A soggy PB+J. Eighteen more in the afternoon. We had a blast. At the conclusion of the movie, Stand By Me, Richard Dreyfus says, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” Can’t we all relate to that?
Over the next few years, until we graduated, different people joined. High school friends, Aaron Pokki and Jay Skelton, both lefties. We would always walk, eschewing carts. Even on Gardner Municipal, with some serious ups and downs. I can’t remember who was better than whom. Just that we played a lot and enjoyed our time together.
Uniquely, high school teachers and coaches were part of our group. A sociologist can research and write an article about why there was an abundance of young teachers in the 70s.(related to the Vietnam draft?) But in our school district, we had many young men. During the fall of 1975, when we started fifth grade, one of our teachers was absent for a stretch. Butch Elwell was in the National Guard Reserve and called into duty to help monitor the school desegregation happening in Boston. On the golf course, the varsity basketball coach and geometry teacher, John Jasinski, was a regular. Other days it was Pete Gallant, our varsity baseball coach and sixth-grade teacher. We got to see these men as something besides teachers, all being positive role-models for us.
In June, 1983, we graduated, Howard and I going in different directions. You don’t really understand the gravity of it at the time. But things just really change. Especially back then, an age without social media. Howard ventured west to Western New England College to prepare for a career in accounting. I went east to Brandeis for a semester, then north to Bates. It would be a long time before we golfed again.
On that cold, January night, Howard and I texted about golf, but also the fact that we would be turning sixty the following year. One of us wrote, “Let's do some kind of celebratory golf event.” By the end of the exchange, we had a plan. Eighteen golf courses along Route 2, the road that joined Baldwinville with the rest of civilization. We could go from Taconic in Williamstown, on the New York border, to Red Tail, located in Devens, near Rte 495. That idea evolved to: eighteen courses we want to play. And we need to finish before Nov 22, 2025, the date Howard becomes sixty.
As the idea progressed, we came up with the title of “Gimme Three Putts World Tour.” When we were in high school, Southern rock was popular with some, and a few of our classmates had a garage band that played a lot of Lynard Skynard. They actually got the high school administration to let them play a concert one Friday afternoon. During school. Instead of going to class, we headed to the auditorium to watch these dudes bang out Sweet Home Alabama and most importantly, Gimme Three Steps. Over the next few years, Howard and I would chuckle about this in-school “concert.” Not long after said concert, we were on the course and someone three-putted, causing him (I think it was Aaron) to sarcastically sing out, “gimme three putts, gimme three putts mister,” mimicking the tune and making fun of himself. It is only logical that our golf moniker should take after something campy from high school. It’s those years we are trying to get back.
It would seem that this part of the essay is where I start going spiritual. I won’t. Golf as an metaphor is not unique in the world of older guys. Trips happen all the time. Google “golf trip to Scotland” and the number of agencies that will plan your venture number in double digits. The one thing our plan had going for it - it would bring us back together after raising children and establish careers in different parts of New England. Better late than never.
As of this writing, in the winter of 2025, we are eight courses into this ride. Both of us are having a heck of a time. For 2025, we have a Myrtle Beach trip planned, along with other surprises, including the (yet-to-be-determined) culminating event.
Cue the guitar riff - Gimme Three Putts!!