"Hole-In-One"

Okay, I hadn’t written one in a while, and this memory comes from my days on the ol’ Baglady when me and my running mate Smithee used to hang our Dixie Cup at the Quarterdeck and play like a couple of Barnacle Billies out on the town enjoying the heck out of whatever cheap fun we could find in the San Diego area. Back in those days, we had to manufacture our own recipe for fun as we never heard of any Welfare and Recreation Department.

Back then they had a 3 par golf course across the way on the “Dry Side” of San Diego 32nd Street Naval Base. In the days before promoting sobriety, proper behavior, discouraging smoking, and putting swabbies in stupid aquaflage uniforms, we could down a few cold ones and smoke a pack on the course before heading out on the town for our carnal delights. This was one of our orinial forms of morale, welfare, and recreations.

Here you could catch the sounds of vocabulary not suited for your typical home grown Wally & Beaver Cleaver. We’d load up our golf bag while drinking ourselves dry and hooking and slashing balls in every which direction. We rented our clubs, which were usually substandard and any self-respecting golfer wouldn’t be caught dead with at a headhunter’s convention. I remember the putter was about good for nothing but scratching the major league leper fungus between our toes and throwing at the bushes when they didn’t perform well… kind of like a John McEnroe tantrum at every green!  

At the consistent run of one beer per hole, we were already about two beers in when we got to the 3^rd green. Now I know many of you out there say it makes no damned sense to wear a ball cap with the brim on the back of your head like a Lilly assed teenager. But I’m here to tell you, I had a Florida Gators' visor, just like “The Ball Coach” Steve Spurrier, and I would wear that backward out on the course to prevent me from getting self-barbequed on the back of my neck! I got plenty of static from all the MO, Larry, and Curly’s onboard the ship…

“Alright, which one of you fuckers took my visor hat thing-ma-bob?”

“Why do we gotta be fuckers?”

“I meant that as a term of endearment, because I love yall."

… but I didn’t give a damn, that’s just the way we played. Anyway, I digress…

We were on the third hole, when I wacked myself one hell of a drive down the fairway. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen… except for them pantyless ladies dancing on the glass catwalk at the “A-Club” in Tijuana! Smithee and I both watch as my ball slammed the flag pole over the hole and looked like it has slung off somewhere into the rough. I thought, “I’ll be damned.”

We both walked the green like a FOD Walkdown looking for that ball as we had no idea where the hell it took off too. Smithee got the good graces to go to the hole and look … and I’ll be damned if he didn’t find my ball right in the bulls-eye! I swear to Neptune and his harem of mermaids!!! Anybody that knows Smithee can ask him to back it up. It’s the only Hole-in-One I’d ever made… including put-put golf!

Every SOB and his brother I tell that story to says that’s damned near impossible and that I’m full of shit! Well, after all of these years, Smithee confirmed it for me on this here Facebook.

At some point we tried our luck at the Balboa Golf Course and I swear a damned chipmunk came down from a tree and stole my ball! I never seen such a thing in my life. He just came right down the tree and grabbed the damned thing before running back up the tree. If I’d known any better, I could’ve sworn he was giving us the bird from up there in that tree… That’s a no-shitter and I’m sticking to it!!!