Skip to primary content

Wave | Sep 01 2006

Do you remember the miniature golf course behind the bowling alley on Roosevelt Boulevard? I used to go there when I was 12 or 13. It was something like two miles away. Maybe I exaggerate: a mile and a half. But it seemed really far, in the dangerous sense of far. I think I got there on my bike, the yellow Schwinn Banana Peeler, although I don’t actually remember this; it’s more a deduction. A lot of what I believe about the past is based on deductions, not memories. And then, of course, these deductions eventually turn into memories. I mean they start to seem like memories, and I forget they began as deductions, and then they really are memories in the sense that when I think about the past, I see them in my mind’s eye, as though they really happened, which, who knows, perhaps they did. I’ve probably mention this before, haven’t I?

I would play two rounds, sometimes three, but only pay for one. The trick was to skip the 18th hole, which would gobble your ball. I don’t know if the guy ever noticed what I was doing. Probably he did but didn’t care. I don’t really remember him, but I have the idea that he was old, whatever old meant then. 40? He would sit in the green hut, for lack of a better term, which was on your left as you walked in. I remember the hut. It had an opening on one side (the side facing the first hole) through which the guy would take your money and give you your ball and scorecard and pencil. The putters were around the corner.

Probably he saw what I was doing but didn’t care.

Once I finished playing, I would go next door to the Kentucky Fried Chicken (this was before they were called KFC) and have a “Special Dinner”: two pieces of chicken (a thigh and a wing?), french fries, a biscuit, and possibly a soda. It was grand.

I always went by myself. In retrospect it was important, a significant foray into the larger world, as it were. It’s no surprise, then, that whenever I pass a miniature golf course, a powerful wave of emotion surges inside me—it’s a positive feeling; happiness, basically; although it can be overwhelming at times—which, if you didn’t know the story, might seem a little bizarre.