May 2020 May 2020 | Page 55

I just turned fourteen and was tired from shucking corn and working my overalls off till my worn rear end shone in the moonlight, just to keep the farm profitable. One sunny morning I decided to take the day off from working in the corn field stripping off ugly husks and play my first game of golf at Fred’s place. No one would miss me as the corn was sky-scraping tall enough to hide even a mon- ster scarecrow. We use them to scare the starving birds away from the crops. Stud our roaming male horse was kept for pulling and car- rying loads of stuff. I figured to save myself a one-hour gravel road walking trip and get more time to golf; stud would taxi me over in a few minutes. An idle three-wheel cart could be made into a one-horse pulled golf cart with just enough room to carry me, a shovel, a tarp. a tire air pump and Grandpa Moses’ prehistoric golf club bag. Fifteen minutes out and the dang single front tire started to lose air. Stud was busy eating the grass at the side of the road while I pumped him full of air (the tire not the horse) and wrapped him like an ancient black mum- my with plenty of duct tape. Fortunately, Grandpa Moses kept more rolls of duct tape in his golf bag than the 3 sticks for hitting the balls. Ex- cuse me, folks, the worn-out tag on the bag says they are official Golf Klubs. Don’t ask what kind of Klubs they were because they all worked for me one way or the other. Whatever one reached my hand first was the lucky stick to hit that dang ball sooner or later. A note from the Author: It has been so much fun playing with words to bring about amusing and entertaining stories portraying people and other living things as out of the ordinary. So, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote for over sixty- five years. Each article was stored away in a box never to see the light of day until now. Stud pulled my three-wheel golf cart willingly to the fifth hole. Then for some stupid reason, he trotted straight into a shallow hole in the ground filled with white sand and a rake. Dang horse dug around with his left horny hoof and we salvaged five golf balls. Stud dropped five manure balls, I raked plenty of white sand over them and we high tailed it to the next hole. I yelled fore but no one answered so it looked like the coast was clear. When we got to the eigh- teenth hole two hours later I just remembered my score- card never got used. I figured 100 was a nice round number so the card got done prop- er like. I hit the ball into the last hole after eight whacks; some times they didn’t count because they were practice ones. The course had lots of wildflowers and sweetgrass growing alongside the paths which made Stud a happy caddie horse. He ate a bunch of posies and I loaded our golf cart with a large quantity of grazing food for our cows and sheep and we called it a day. The next morning my pa asked if I wanted to head out to Fred’s Cabbage Square Golf Course and learn how to play golf. What a coincidence. Was this a chance happen- ing or was it intentional? You know what, I learned a big lesson. Always tell the truth, I did and blamed it all on my first golf cart pulled by a horse. The Golf Cart Chron- icles By Suzy James Series 1, 2 and 3 now available for purchase at www.itsnever2late- books.com MAY 2020 55