COOKING ON THE GOLF COURSE
WALTER THOMPSON is a broken down cook, a tall, skinny boozer who never saved his money. Now in his seventies and lacking the energy to cope with the demands of busy commercial kitchens, he has abandoned his stoves and taken an undemanding job as a dishwasher to supplement his social security check.
"You should see those cooks over there at that joint," he told me. "I mean, it's unbelievable. Last Friday there's four of them walking around the kitchen all morning, talking and jabbering to each other. Come lunch time, Millie, she's our best waitress, rushes up to one of the line cooks and says, 'Where's the clam chowder?' The cook comes back in the kitchen and hollers 'Where's the clam chowder?'
"It was like a comedy, each one wanting to know if the other one had made the clam chowder. They had all morning to make it, but no one was in charge. I don't know how they can run a restaurant that way. Someone's gotta be watching the store, you know?"
"They didn't have any soup at all?" I said.
THE SECRET OF MINESRONE
"Oh, yeah, they had minestrone. We have that every Friday. The way they make the minestrone is they just take a big soup pot and dump in all the leftover soups from the week, all the leftover spaghetti too, and mix it all up and bring it to a boil and that's how they make their minestrone. I taught 'em how to do that. 'Cept I called it icebox soup.
"But on Fridays, you know, if you're half-way civilized you gotta have clam chowder. I never worked in a restaurant that didn't have clam chowder on Fridays. But these shoemakers just forgot about it. Nobody in charge — see what I mean? Then, come lunch time they're all running around saying they didn't know it was Friday. It wasn't like that in my day. Where have all the cooks gone?"
"Well," I asked, "did they get the chowder made?"
"Finally, yeah. I helped 'em out. One of 'em comes running back from the storeroom and says there ain't any clam soup base. So, a new calamity. These kids don't even know they've got everything they need right back in the storeroom. Good God, they've got canned clams, clam juice, you name it — and these jokers think they've gotta have clam base. I don't know where they get their training."
"Yeah," I admitted, "it's a hard job to learn."
THE TWO SECRET SEASONINGS
Walter made a face. "Hell, I just don't think there's any cooks coming up anymore. They don't want to learn. It ain't like it's a profession with them. They won't even read a book on it. Take this one shoemaker — the other day he's got this great big pot of spaghetti sauce and he's stirring it with a big wooden paddle, and I see him tasting it and tasting it. Finally, he comes over to me — he knows I used to cook — and he tells me he just can't seem to make it taste right."
Walter shakes his head and goes on, "So I taste it for him and it's real flat. I reach down in the bins, grab a handful of sugar and some salt and dump it in. The kid is amazed. He never thought of anything that simple. He thought he didn't have enough exotic herbs in it. Now he tastes it and thinks I'm a miracle worker.
GOTTA PART YOUR HAIR RIGHT
"Probably, next week, "Walter continued, "this guy will go out and try selling insurance for a while. Cooking was never a profession to him. He didn't even know there was anything there to learn. I can watch a cook work for two minutes and tell you if he’s a professional or not. It’s a certain way he holds a knife, a certain way he chops up vegetables. Maybe it’s the way he wears his apron, the way he walks or parts his hair. I can always tell."
"Well, Walter," I said, "why don't you take a cooking job there, maybe straighten the place out?"
"Naw, I don't want to work that hard anymore with all that responsibility. I had my day. Sometimes I think maybe I oughta step in and take charge — and you know I could do it — but then I get to thinking, ah, nuts, I don't want to do it anymore. Where's all the chefs we used to have who could walk into a kitchen and make it snap and crackle, make it a place you'd be proud to work in?"
I don't know," I said, "maybe they're all computer programmers now."
I teed up and suffered through his interminable comments on my stance, my grip, my hat. When he finally ran out of chatter, I sliced the ball over by the flag pole.
"Not bad for an old broken down cook," he cackled.
"I just wish you worked in my kitchen, smart guy. I'd take some of that starch out of your hat real quick."
"Hah!" said Walter, "I wouldn't work in no kitchen they'd let you in."
We walked up to our drives and I asked him, "How's that restaurant doing, otherwise?"
THE SECRET OF POACHED EGGS
Walter made a noise with his lips. "Get this! I'm workin' the other day, pearl diving, and this same cook comes up to me and says him and this other cook are having a big argument over what you put in the water to poach eggs. One of 'em says you put vinegar in it, the other one says, no, you gotta put in some lemon juice and maybe some salt and oil. And he asks me what I put in my poaching water. I mean, can you believe this? Where do cooks get these ideas?"
As he continued his non-stop chatter, I carefully lined up my shot and knocked it over in the bushes. "See what you made me do?" I complained. "Talking while I'm hitting."
"Nuts," Walter retorted. "You just don't have no talent." Then he went on about the kitchen. "Anyway, this incompetent assassin wants to know what I put in the poaching water and I tell him I don't put nothin' in it. If you've got half-way fresh eggs you don't need to put anything in the water.
WHAT? NOTHING IN THE WATER?
"'Oh, no,' this cook says, 'you gotta put something in the water!'
"So I tell him if he knows all that, what's he asking me for? These young cooks," he continued disgustedly, "they hear something as a great tip - like doctoring up their poaching water - and from then on they swear by it and don't never investigate. So I tell this young greaseburner that all he has to do is take his skimmer and swirl the water — get it moving in a circle before he puts the eggs in. Then the swirling water pulls the whites together so they don't spread out all over. You don't have to put nothin' in the water."
"Good thing you told me," I said. "I don't know all those little professional tricks."
"You probably don't. I don't know how you manage to hang on to a chef's job, being' as dumb as you are." He sliced a three-wood into the woods and stomped in after it. I heard whacking sounds and saw dirt flying for about five minutes. He emerged from the woods wearing an innocent expression and said, "I guess I lay about two, don't I?"
LIARS ON THE GOLF COURSE
"Two! You were gone fifteen minutes, and you come out of the woods with your clubs all banged up and dirt all over your hat and tell me you're only layin' two?"
"OK. Three, maybe." He stopped talking long enough to hit a high fade that bounced off a boulder and landed on the green.
"Whoohoo!" Walter cried. "I hope you took notes on that swing. Did anybody get any pictures? I mean, am I good or what?"
"It was adequate, I guess."
"Adequate? What are you talkin' about? That was a wonderful shot. I cooked that baby. See, what I did was, I powerfully rotated my hands as I moved into the hitting area. In the furnace-like heat of the moment of truth, I poured the coal to 'er. You know, just like I poach my eggs."
All this chatter took place while I was shankng a five-iron into the bushes.
"You didn't powerfully rotate your hands!" Walter cried. "No wonder you can't poach eggs!" ##
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
THE SECRET OF THE GOLF SWING
It looks like my problem with the golf swing has finally been solved — and by the oldest, simplest advice in the world:
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BACK OF THE BALL AND HIT THE HELL OUT OF IT!
HERE IS THE ONLY REFINEMENT:
As you take your stance, turn your head a bit to the right and look at the back of the ball. By keeping your head turned a bit to the right, it will be easier to keep your eyes on the ball and keep your head still while you hit down and through the ball with the ferocity of an enraged gorilla.
Remember, your head is attached to your shoulders. When the head goes up, so do the shoulders, which of course brings the hands up too, and that’s why you top the ball and hit that low, skittering shot that kills your score.
So keep your eye on the back of the ball. Then just make your swing and let the ball get in the way of the terrible blow.
After all this careful instruction, don’t come crying to me if you go out there and stink up the course.
Once again the sage of Auburn has spoken. Now quit bothering me.
Vince
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BACK OF THE BALL AND HIT THE HELL OUT OF IT!
HERE IS THE ONLY REFINEMENT:
As you take your stance, turn your head a bit to the right and look at the back of the ball. By keeping your head turned a bit to the right, it will be easier to keep your eyes on the ball and keep your head still while you hit down and through the ball with the ferocity of an enraged gorilla.
Remember, your head is attached to your shoulders. When the head goes up, so do the shoulders, which of course brings the hands up too, and that’s why you top the ball and hit that low, skittering shot that kills your score.
So keep your eye on the back of the ball. Then just make your swing and let the ball get in the way of the terrible blow.
After all this careful instruction, don’t come crying to me if you go out there and stink up the course.
Once again the sage of Auburn has spoken. Now quit bothering me.
Vince
Friday, July 18, 2008
BE A CATSKINNER!
FOR A FUN WAY TO MAKE A TON OF MONEY AWAY FROM THE GOLF COURSE, CHECK OUT THIS DEAL!
CAN YOU SKIN A CAT?
If so, why not make your fortune in Cat Ranching?
Your name has been carefully selected from a list of alert entrepreneurs like yourself — people of action who know how to get off their duff and MOVE when opportunity presents itself — people who are quick to strike while others wander aimlessly along the beaten path wondering what happened to their dreams of riches.
IMAGINE YOURSELF AT THE RIVIERA sunning your pampered body on your yacht. Others have done it. So can you!
CAT RANCHING is the opportunity you have been searching for to make it possible to spend your idle days cruising around in your 50-ft. yacht to thrill the natives (read, poor saps) gawking on the beach.
Listen to me, my friend, I’ve been around the block and through the hoops and I know what I’m talking about. If you pull off only one financial coup this year, this should be it!
CAT RANCHING is the best business opportunity I’ve ever seen to make it possible for an alert business person like you to go downtown and simply pick out the biggest honking Mercedes in the showroom and park it in your driveway.
Your dumbfounded competitors will go crazy trying to figure out how in hell a born loser like you ever did it!
Hah! Who is the loser now, huh?
Do not confuse this LEVEL-HEADED, ROCK-SOLID OFFER with other, fraudulent enterprises that may have wiped you out a time or two. This is the McCoy! You will wonder why no one ever thought of it before.
But that’s the way with revolutions — they are simply unbelievable!
Remember — when the slow-witted act, opportunity has already passed them by.
Now here’s the fantastic deal you have spent a lifetime searching for:
We are building a cat ranch in the beautiful foothills of northern California. And we are not fooling around. We plan to start out big-time with 50,000 cats. Yes, that’s right—fifty thousand of those furry little moneymakers!
DID YOU KNOW . . . that cat skins can sell for as much as two dollars each? And think about this: A dozen men can easily skin 500 cats a day. From this conservative estimate YOU, as the owner of your very own Cat Ranch, can expect to rake in big bucks each and every day!
Even more if you help out with the skinning!
Do not hesitate to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally get your reward after a lifetime of broken hearts and missed opportunities simply because you figure the cost of feeding the cats might be prohibitively expensive.
NOT SO! Feeding the cats is no problem at all. You see, we are planning to build a RAT RANCH next door with 50 thousand rats. Rats breed many times faster than cats. So we can easily feed the cats a rat or two every day.
But, you say in sober (SOBER!) reflection, won’t it cost a lot to feed all those rats? Absolutely not! As you probably guessed, we feed the rats with dead cats. The cats are all skinned and ready to eat anyway. You see the brilliance of our plan? It’s all self sustaining! Better than government work!
NOW GET THIS! Here’s what it all boils down to:
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and we get the cat skins for (YOU GUESSED IT) nothing!
You see how beautiful? You can just sit back and let your CAT EMPIRE build itself.
DON’T BE LEFT OUT! ☜☜☜
This is a limited offer. ACT NOW to start your very own cat-skinning business before you screw up again.
GRAB AHOLD OF THIS MAGICAL INSTANT IN ETERNITY. Do not let it pass you by.>
ACT AT ONCE OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL. ###
CAN YOU SKIN A CAT?
If so, why not make your fortune in Cat Ranching?
Your name has been carefully selected from a list of alert entrepreneurs like yourself — people of action who know how to get off their duff and MOVE when opportunity presents itself — people who are quick to strike while others wander aimlessly along the beaten path wondering what happened to their dreams of riches.
IMAGINE YOURSELF AT THE RIVIERA sunning your pampered body on your yacht. Others have done it. So can you!
CAT RANCHING is the opportunity you have been searching for to make it possible to spend your idle days cruising around in your 50-ft. yacht to thrill the natives (read, poor saps) gawking on the beach.
Listen to me, my friend, I’ve been around the block and through the hoops and I know what I’m talking about. If you pull off only one financial coup this year, this should be it!
CAT RANCHING is the best business opportunity I’ve ever seen to make it possible for an alert business person like you to go downtown and simply pick out the biggest honking Mercedes in the showroom and park it in your driveway.
Your dumbfounded competitors will go crazy trying to figure out how in hell a born loser like you ever did it!
Hah! Who is the loser now, huh?
Do not confuse this LEVEL-HEADED, ROCK-SOLID OFFER with other, fraudulent enterprises that may have wiped you out a time or two. This is the McCoy! You will wonder why no one ever thought of it before.
But that’s the way with revolutions — they are simply unbelievable!
Remember — when the slow-witted act, opportunity has already passed them by.
Now here’s the fantastic deal you have spent a lifetime searching for:
We are building a cat ranch in the beautiful foothills of northern California. And we are not fooling around. We plan to start out big-time with 50,000 cats. Yes, that’s right—fifty thousand of those furry little moneymakers!
DID YOU KNOW . . . that cat skins can sell for as much as two dollars each? And think about this: A dozen men can easily skin 500 cats a day. From this conservative estimate YOU, as the owner of your very own Cat Ranch, can expect to rake in big bucks each and every day!
Even more if you help out with the skinning!
Do not hesitate to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally get your reward after a lifetime of broken hearts and missed opportunities simply because you figure the cost of feeding the cats might be prohibitively expensive.
NOT SO! Feeding the cats is no problem at all. You see, we are planning to build a RAT RANCH next door with 50 thousand rats. Rats breed many times faster than cats. So we can easily feed the cats a rat or two every day.
But, you say in sober (SOBER!) reflection, won’t it cost a lot to feed all those rats? Absolutely not! As you probably guessed, we feed the rats with dead cats. The cats are all skinned and ready to eat anyway. You see the brilliance of our plan? It’s all self sustaining! Better than government work!
NOW GET THIS! Here’s what it all boils down to:
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and we get the cat skins for (YOU GUESSED IT) nothing!
You see how beautiful? You can just sit back and let your CAT EMPIRE build itself.
DON’T BE LEFT OUT! ☜☜☜
This is a limited offer. ACT NOW to start your very own cat-skinning business before you screw up again.
GRAB AHOLD OF THIS MAGICAL INSTANT IN ETERNITY. Do not let it pass you by.>
ACT AT ONCE OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL. ###
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
GOLF’S WORST CHOKER STRIKES HIS FINAL PUTT
A GOLFER'S TALE OF TRAGEDY AND REDEMPTION

THIS SHORT GOLFING STORY tells the terrible tale of the world’s greatest choke artist - plus some sage advice on hitting the downhill snake.
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FLAPJAW JIM tilted his bullet-shaped head back on his scrawny neck and took a long pull on his beer. He cleared his throat importantly and addressed the crowded 19th hole bar:
”You shoulda seen the putt I sank on the last hole. A lotta guys choke on those downhill snakes; they’re afraid of hittin’ ’em too far past the hole. But that’s for losers. I always RAM those downhill ten-footers. I don’t give ‘em a chance to break. I just give ‘em a good rap right into the back of the hole. Of course, that takes nerve, which some guys ain’t got!”
Flapjaw snickered and gave his partner Downtown Brown the elbow. The bar crowd groaned.
WHAT CAUSES THE CHOKE!
Bald, built like a rassler gone to fat, Downtown Brown grandly waved his Popeye forearms and puffed on his cigar. “Fear!” he pronounced, “it’s just plain old fear that causes all these amateurs to choke. It’s all in the mind. You gotta have confidence that when you lay the lumber on that pill it is gonna eat up some by-God REAL ESTATE!”
He turned to his rotund partner and added, “Like that drive I cut the corner with on No. 5, right, Flappy? Did that screamer break their backs or what? When is the last time you saw me choke on a clutch shot like that, huh?”
Flapjaw Jim leaned his short, round frame back on the bar in casual disdain and inhaled another Bud. “Never, old buddy. That affliction strikes only the faint-hearted, never the bold and brave. "Remember when poor old Dumbrowski went chicken at Pebble Beach last year on that 550-yard last hole? All he needed was a lousy eagle. But he took the gas and wimped out - lost by one shot. Pure case of nervous apoplexy.”
The bartender swiped his bar rag across the mahogany. The bright boozer veins in his cheeks got redder in his incredulity as he went into his imitation of a Jackie Gleason drunk and exploded, "Yeah, I seen it. Dumbrowski took the gas and went choke city!”
"Yep,” Flapjaw continued, “on that short little par five, too. Oh, he hit a pretty fair country drive, all right, and managed to scrape it on the green in two with a 7-iron, but he wimped out on the putt and left it three inches short. Had to settle for a bird!”
The bartender’s eyes popped out. He pulled his apron up over his stupendous gut and sneaked down a fast double vodka. "What a loser! I woulda jumped ALL OVER that putt. I RAM those babies right in the hole.”
Meanwhile, sitting at the end of the bar enduring the play by play recounting of their shame at losing, again, to the two loudmouths, Ernie and Slim quietly nursed their beers.
Ernie’s forehead looked like fifty miles of bad road. His haunted eyes held the fatalistic expression of a man whose ruined life held him in the crushing grip of doom. What was the use of living? Why go on when all that lay before him was humiliation and self loathing?
FLAPJAW MOUTHS OFF TO THE WRONG GUY
Flapjaw slid off his stool and walked over to Ernie and said, “Of course, I ain’t saying you and Slim ever choke. That's not why we clean your clock every Sunday. You just gotta learn to move your left hip smartly at the hole, pull down with your left hand, keep your head rock steady, and delay the hit until the moment of truth, then hit the hell out of the ball, like me and old Downtown Brown do."
He grinned at the crowd. They laughed half-heartedly, not really comfortable with what they saw as a bad turn in what would normally be good-natured ribbing.
With his husky frame and the broad, sloping shoulders of an athlete, Ernie was not a small man. He could have picked up Flapjaw and tossed him out the door. But being mild mannered by nature he simply stood up and shoved his tough, athlete’s face within inches of his tormentor’s moon-round visage. Flapjaw's chin dropped and he stepped back. And Ernie, just using his chest, marched Flapjaw backward into the wall.
Then the mild-mannered golfer walked away, leaving Flapjaw frozen against the wall, his face gone white.
As he went out the door, Ernie heard Flapjaw call out halfheartedly: “He didn’t scare me none.” Jeering laughter followed that disclaimer.
BACK TO THE BLASTED GOLF BOOKS!
At home that evening, Ernie pondered his latest golf book, a 400-page tome entitled:
THE FIVE CRUCIAL MOVES YOU MUST MAKE TO WALLOP THE BALL INTO ETERNITY!
The book advised: 'Visualize the shot. Don't hurry your swing — the ball's not going anywhere until you hit it. Take the club back all in one piece. Pull down with your left hand. Move your left hip smartly at the hole.”
Baloney! Ernie said to himself. How come they never tell you what to do AFTER you move your left hip smartly at the hole? What Ernie wanted to know was how to hit the blasted ball! He threw the book in the corner and vowed to give up the game. But then he remembered he had promised Slim he'd show up next Sunday, and he was honor bound to do so.
The devil with it! He didn't care anymore. One more round and he would be out of the game for good. Life would indeed be simple without all that heartbreak.
NEXT SUNDAY, THE MIRACLE!
That unforgettable Sunday morning, as he teed up his ball, Ernie vowed that this was to be his last round forever. In that mood he didn't think about anything before or during the swing, didn't even try to remember what the books said. He didn't care anymore. This was the end. He just ripped it.
TEE SHOT GETS BOMBED!
Ernie's first tee shot whistled over the fairway traps and came to rest where no ball had ever dared, too far to be believed. Continuing the round his irons burned the very air, screamed across lakes, curved around trees in brilliantly designed trajectories.
Meanwhile, afraid of putting the hex on his partner's fantastic performance, Slim kept his mouth shut, except to twirl his drooping mustache and say occasionally to Flapjaw or Downtown Brown, "You're away."
Only Ernie's miserable putting kept his opponents in the game. Plus the fact that his irons were overshooting the greens and he had to shoot back at them. And Slim was so dumbfounded at his partner's heroics that he forgot to concentrate on his own game. Slim kept on dumping shots, gouging out slabs of turf and three-putting with great consistency.
In shock now at Ernie’s reborn game, Downtown Brown and Flapjaw went off their game, Flapjaw actually duck-hooked one into the bushes, and Downtown Brown shanked one into the creek.
The four golfers came to the last hole, a par five, all even. Slim and Flapjaw had both run into trouble and were out of it. Meanwhile, Downtown Brown had put the pressure on Ernie with a one-putt birdie.
But Ernie had bombed the biggest drive of his life, then smoked a six-iron up on the green ten feet past the hole. and from that spot the ball had spun back and actually bounced off the pin. All the born-again golfer had to do now was sink a simple little five-incher for an eagle which would win the match!
Of course, such a short putt would be impossible to miss!
Slim chuckled with delight. He wasn't worried about jinxing Ernie now. "By God, partner,” he said, "I'm glad I was here to see it. You really got your game together today."
Slim knew for sure he and Ernie had the game won now. Even if the world suddenly came to an end, even if Ernie got struck by lightning, those happenings would make no difference now. His partner was certain to sink that putt. So short it was.
Meanwhile, news of the impending historic event had emptied the bar. Drinks in hand, the crowd of spectators surrounded the green, waiting for the final killing stroke that would shut the braggarts up forever.
Laughing and joking with the crowd, Ernie made a big show of surveying the five inches of real estate over which the ball had to travel before it went kerplunk in the bottom of the hole.
Slim helped out by crouching down on his knees and shutting one eye as he peered down the line. He held up a finger to check the wind.
And Ernie, going along with the gag, paced off the five inches and went through a big routine of holding up his putter and squinting along the shaft.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
Slim saw a cloud pass over his partner’s face. It looked like Ernie had suddenly realized the importance of the final doomsday stroke, and had realized that everyone — his partner, the bar crowd, even the bartender — all were depending on him. He had to make the putt.
Of course it was impossible to miss — unless he fell over in a faint and broke his leg. And how likely was that to happen?
Flapjaw and Downtown Brown used every trick they knew to disturb his concentration!
As Ernie bent over the ball, Flapjaw started jingling coins in his pocket. Downtown whipped out a big white handkerchief and blew his nose, BLAT!
Ernie heard Downtown Brown stage-whisper to Flapjaw, "I guess we're done for, partner. Nobody could miss a little putt like that — unless of course he CHOKES!"
Next, in a dramatic performance worthy of a Broadway tragedian, Flapjaw fell to the green and clutched his throat. He writhed and gasped for air. "Gah!" he went. "I’m choking! Gah, gah! Air, gimme air!"
The spectators booed in disgust. Such tactics went beyond the limits of fair play. The crowd seemed to be lusting for Ernie to flash his steel and polish off the drama.
But just then, Ernie noticed a little red and green bug crawling on his ball. Annoyed at this interruption in his concentration, he took a little one-handed swing to scare the bug away.
BUT NO! Incredibly he missed the bug and hit the ball. The dimpled spheroid shot across the green, bounded into the trap and buried in a footprint under a big maple leaf.
Slim didn't say a word. He just dropped his twenty bucks on the green and walked away.
In a daze, Ernie followed Slim into the locker room and tried to explain to his partner about that bug. But no. Slim's accusing eyes said Ernie had choked in the clutch.
Next weekend, when Ernie stepped inside the clubhouse, somebody hollered, "Hey, look who's here, it's the old choke artist. Get back! Back! It might be catching!" And some other joker would clutch his throat and gasp, "Gah! Gah!"
Now known state-wide as the Choker of Black Oak Golf Course, Ernie couldn't get a game. Finally that missed putt drove him out of town. He fled to Texas and signed up to play under an assumed name, but even there the curse of the choker followed him. If he walked up to a group and asked to play along, they would immediately fall to the ground, clutching their throats, gasping for air.
Finally he played alone, desperately fine-tuning his game, hoping the local hero would challenge him.
But now he found that even his game had deserted him. Where were the booming drives? Where the crisp irons? All gone. How could life go on?
Desperate, friendless, jobless, the bewildered, golfer trudged up back roads to cow pasture courses in Oklahoma. Even there, where wildcat oil drillers in overalls played pasture pool among dry holes, the word had got around.
ENTER THE OKLAHOMA CHOKEBIRD!
Every time Ernie put a hopeful smile on his face and approached a group of golfers to ask if he could play along, those wise-guy Okies would flop in the dust and go into what was known locally as the Oklahoma Chokebird Razzmatazz. The Chokebird was a clever little insect eater who lived mainly by eating ladybugs, and had developed the survival trick of luring predatory foxes away from its nest by flopping in the dust and gasping for air as though choking to death, which fooled the fox every time into thinking the Chokebird would be an easy lunch.
Nearby golfers who witnessed the players go into their well-rehearsed version of the Oklahoma Chokebird Razzmatazz, backed away in horror, knowing for certain that the man who was getting the old Chokebird routine was a golfer to be avoided at all costs for fear of contamination.
ROCK BOTTOM!
Flat broke and downhearted, Ernie holed up in a skid row flophouse and paid for his tiny room by pushing a broom and emptying slop buckets. On Tuesdays the management gave him a ham sandwich. Maybe.
The fugitive from Black Oak knew that swift action was needed. Somehow he had to fight his way back to dignity. But how?
At a library he found fifty books on the Science of Hitting a Golf Ball. Maybe in those slick pages he would rediscover the elusive secret of the golf swing. He’d had the secret once. Where did it go?
But the large technical tomes all said the same thing: Don't hit too soon. Don't move your head. Don't let the right hand overpower the left. Don't breathe. And whatever you do, DON'T CHOKE! Like that was news!
COULD AN OLD BOOK BE THE ANSWER?
By mere chance, tucked away behind the massive volumes of Scientific Instruction he found a little red book dusty and worn, its spine cracked with age, No more than a pamphlet, really.
HOW TO STRRRIKE A GOLF BALL proclaimed the title, written by Scotty Cruikshank. The slim booklet seemed to call out to Ernie: "Please pick me up!" But what could such a tiny book hold? How could it contain enough technical information to explain the mind boggling intricacies of the golf swing?
Inside the cover he noted the date of publication: 1875. Hmm. Such a long time ago. Could the golf swing have changed so much over the years?
He studied the first page - there were only two. The heading at the top of the page said: HOW TO STRRRIKE A GOLF BALL. Then followed a list of a mere five instructions, apparently all that the Scotsman deemed necessary. Ernie thought this was strange, since he was used to reading large volumes with 40 pages on how to hold the club, 50 pages on the back swing, and long explanations, with diagrams, of what to do with one's feet.
Reading the little Red Book’s brief instructions on how to smash the long ball, Ernie had a sudden realization — Cruikshank’s simple words explained exactly what Ernie had been doing without realizing it when he hit all those great shots before that little red and green bug ruined his life.
On the second page of the book Ernie studied everything the Scotsman had learned about putting in his long career, especially all he had learned about those 15-foot downhill snakes.
Ernie had it now. The secret of the swing! He checked out the book and shoved it in his hip pocket.
OH NO! AN ACTUAL JOB!
Now at last he was ready to go back and regain the respect of his partner Slim. And shut up Flapjaw and Downtown Brown for all time. But first he had to make some traveling money, and to do that he needed a disguise. He grew a beard and put on dark glasses. Next he went to work as a caddie at Burning Hills Golf Club.
ON HIS WAY BACK AT LAST!
The first golfers he carried for were a fat, merry little undertaker and a tall, mournful stockbroker. Both of them had instruction books in their hip pockets. After long study of the manuals during the week, both hackers confided in Ernie that they were sure today was the day when it would all come together. Why, even the course record might be in danger! So well had they studied their instruction books.
But the merry little undertaker’s swing still had the built-in affinity for creeks and trees. His first few snap hooks made him frown at the puzzle of how a golfer with his knowledge of the game could hit the ball so crookedly. After all, he was carefully following the instructions contained in his book.
But as ball after ball bounced off oak trees and splashed in the water his frown turned into a clown’s mask of tragedy.
Finally, while the stockbroker was off to one side practicing his swing. the undertaker sidled up to his caddie and whined in his ear, "Listen — you caddies know all the secrets about how to stop all those hooks and dumped shots. What am I doing wrong?"
Ernie said, “Sir, If I tell you, you won't believe me."
"Oh, don't worry about that. I'll take it to the grave. I know it's all trickery and delusion, and the pros don't ever tell us the real story because they're afraid we'll turn pro and get some of that easy money ourselves."
Ernie shrugged his muscular shoulders and said, "All right, but you must promise never to tell anyone else."
"Oh, no problem, but I don't want you to make any radical changes in my picture swing. I've spent a lot of money on it."
Ernie said, "All right" and bent down and whispered the Scotsman’s ancient secret into the round little undertaker’s ear.
"You sure?" said the undertaker. "That doesn't sound like much of a tip to me. And where'd you get that Scottish burr all of a sudden?"
"G'wan, give it a try, laddie."
The undertaker took his stance. He lurched his round little body back and smacked a rocket. The ball soared 300 yards, faded slightly and landed in the center of the fairway.
Hysterical with joy, he whooped and hollered, "No hook! Yippee! I'm goin' on the tour!"
Meanwhile the morose stockbroker, after hitting a series of wild slices into oblivion, had sunk into a raging madness of the mind. But seeing his partner bomb one down the middle he figured that if the caddie could straighten out a basket case like the undertaker, maybe, just maybe . . .
He went over to Ernie and said, "Uh, listen, I don't want my natural killer swing tampered with, but maybe you could give me a few minor suggestions on how to lash into the pill."
Ernie took the stockbroker aside and laid the secret on him, including the burr. The stock broker made a face. "I don't believe any of that. It contradicts everything I've spent a lifetime learning about the intricacies of the golf swing." He thought a minute, then said, "But what the hell, nothing else has ever worked. I'll give it a try just for laughs."
The stockbroker looked all around to be sure nobody was watching him. He seemed to be afraid of making a fool of himself with a raw, amateurish swing.
BOMBS AWAY!
He whipped his long frame into the shot. The sharp CRACK! echoed from the distant hills. Flocks of startled blackbirds exploded from the trees. The ball screamed in a low, distance-eating draw, then rose majestically as it zoomed around the dogleg.
Far in the distance they heard an incredulous scream: "Good Lord, someone's driven the 400-yard 10th hole!"
During the next holes, the two reborn golfers outdid each other, slamming prodigious shots that had every golfer within 400 yards running for cover.
CONTEMPT GETS EVOKED!
But on the greens in front of the buzzing crowd drawn by the news, their performance evoked contempt. The rotund undertaker, after reaching the 460 yard 13th with a 4-iron and a sand wedge, yipped a three footer that skittered off the green into a trap. Three more strokes and he was down in six for a double bogey.
And the long, tall stockbroker, after driving over Lake Invincible and getting on the fearsome 580-yard 18th with a sand wedge, four-putted from three feet. In tears, the stockbroker wailed, "Ernie, you gotta do something. What's the good of hitting all these great long shots if we can’t get the ball in the hole? What are we doing wrong?"
"Yeah," said the formerly merry little undertaker. "You gotta teach us how to putt. Before you came along, at least we had the comfort of anonymity. Now we're famous as the two biggest choke artists in town."
Oh, that awful word! Ernie flinched and dropped on a bench. He wrinkled his brow and clenched his big fists. "Sorry, gentlemen, I can't do that."
"It's money, huh?" said the undertaker. "Listen, you think I plant all those stiffs in the ground for nothing? I got money, lots of it. How much ya want? A hundred? Five hundred?"
"No," Ernie replied, grim-faced and trembling. "I do not teach the Mystical Art."
Over the next months, the putt-challenged instructor taught dozens how to hit the long ball. They paid him in coarse Eastern long green.
Now the news hit the sports pages:
CADDIE DISCOVERS SECRET OF LONG BALL — CLUELESS HACKERS MOB WIZARD — SUPER BOMBER REFUSES TO INSTRUCT FLAT STICK.
And of course the tabloids got hold of the story and exaggerated it. They claimed the famous instructor's students had to tee off in Texas to hit Oklahoma.
But what good was the long ball when the longknockers were all shooting back at the greens and could not score?
The Black Oak refugee’s plan was working, He was almost ready finally to begin phase two of his climb from the pit of horror named CHOKER!
The bearded wizard from Auburn stuck around just long enough to create 16 long-ball champions and, incidentally, earn the price of a silver Corvette with a golf bag hood ornament. He had to leave town at midnight to evade hundreds of rich golfers flying in from New York to learn the secret of the long ball.
Meanwhile, the former choke artist’s international acclaim had reached as far as his home golf course at Black Oak.
Shortly after escaping Oklahoma he cruised up to Black Oak and parked his Corvette in front of the huge crowd which had been alerted to his arrival and now awaited him in front of the clubhouse. He waved In ducal disdain.
Lurking in this sea of adulation were Flapjaw Jones and Downtown Brown. Neither was cheering.
Slim was there too. "It's great to see you back, Partner. I heard about what happened in Oklahoma and I want to apologize for thinking you ever took the gas."
Ernie said, "Aw, don't give it a thought, pard. Come on, let's go challenge Flapjaw and Downtown Brown to a grudge match. With everybody watching they won't be able to turn us down."
A shadow passed across Slim's face. "You sure, Ernie? I mean, we all know you can sock the ball, but how about your putting? I wouldn't want to see you go through all that misery again."
"No problem, Slim. I've got a plan."
It took only minutes to shame their foes into accepting the challenge. Surrounded by hundreds intent on witnessing high drama, they teed off. All went according to plan. On the first green Ernie’s ball was ten feet from the hole. So great was his reputation that he simply turned to Flapjaw and shrugged his shoulders. "Do you really want me to putt this gimme?"
"Oh no" replied Flapjaw. "I wouldn't dream of making you putt a gimme like that. It would be impossible for a golfer of your caliber to miss."
Ernie winked at Slim and picked up his ball. Meanwhile, Flapjaw and Downtown Brown were playing at the top of their games, and Ernie needed all those conceded putts because he kept flying the greens and having to shoot back at them. But once on the green He just picked up his ball.
Until the last hole.
Ernie had a 40-foot downhill, side-hill snake. If his opponents conceded the putt as usual, he and Slim would win the grudge match. He waited, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Well," he asked Downtown Brown, "do you give up?"
Downtown Brown said hesitantly, "Sir, since this putt is for the win, I wonder if you wouldn't mind going through the formality of giving it a rap?"
"Yeah," said Flapjaw. "Make the rascal putt it."
The world-famous instructor of the long ball felt the old familiar pang of fear in his gut. He hadn't stroked a pressure putt for six months. It all flooded back to him now: the little bug on his ball, the horror when he realized that in trying to scare off the bug he'd knocked the ball off the green. And especially he remembered the humiliation when golfers flopped in the dirt and laid on him the curse of the Oklahoma Chokebird.
THE BUG IS BACK!
Knees shaking, forcing himself to concentrate, he surveyed the putt. But just then he noticed a little red and green bug crawling on the ball. It looked like the same damn bug. Intending to scare the bug away, he took a one-handed swing at it. Oh no! He'd done it again! The ball streaked uphill across the green, hopped over a twig, broke right, broke left, moved across the slope and then began a long, slow descent. A miss! By two feet!
BUT NO! Just then Ernie heard a familiar squawk that sounded eerily like one he'd often heard coming from the trees at Burning Hills Golf Course in Oklahoma.
Twittering and singing, the bird that would later be identified as an Oklahoma Chokebird - probably blown off course in a tornado - swooped down and picked the ladybug off the rolling ball! Its center of gravity altered, the ball swerved and rattled in the cup.
Sometime during the three-day party that followed, Ernie took Slim aside and showed him the copy he'd made of the Scotsman's ancient book:
Slim studied the first page on which Scotty Cruikshank had written his list of five commandments:
1. Dinna think! Dinna listen to the divil whispering in thy head.
2. Drrraw back the turrrible hickory stick with fearsome intent.
3. Dinna keep thy head down. Look around and note where the green is located.
4. Dinna move thy left hip smarrrtly at the hole. None ‘a that!
5. Whack the divil out of the ball!
The second page was entitled:
THE FOINE ART OF PUTTING
But under that heading the page was blank—except for the following:
“EDITOR’S NOTE:
“Although Mr. Cruikshank worked on this putting section for years, he finally abandoned the task when he realized ‘twas the work of the divil!”
Below the editor’s note, in silent endorsement over the years, some modern day students of the game had signed their names:
Bobby Jones
Gene Sarazen
Byron Nelson
Sam Snead
Ben Hogan
Arnold Palmer
Lee Trevino
Gary Player
Tom Watson
Jack Nicklaus
Tiger Woods
Vince Johnson
The reader will no doubt be glad to hear that the above story is the end of the final, final word on how to strrrike a golf ball.##

THIS SHORT GOLFING STORY tells the terrible tale of the world’s greatest choke artist - plus some sage advice on hitting the downhill snake.
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FLAPJAW JIM tilted his bullet-shaped head back on his scrawny neck and took a long pull on his beer. He cleared his throat importantly and addressed the crowded 19th hole bar:
”You shoulda seen the putt I sank on the last hole. A lotta guys choke on those downhill snakes; they’re afraid of hittin’ ’em too far past the hole. But that’s for losers. I always RAM those downhill ten-footers. I don’t give ‘em a chance to break. I just give ‘em a good rap right into the back of the hole. Of course, that takes nerve, which some guys ain’t got!”
Flapjaw snickered and gave his partner Downtown Brown the elbow. The bar crowd groaned.
WHAT CAUSES THE CHOKE!
Bald, built like a rassler gone to fat, Downtown Brown grandly waved his Popeye forearms and puffed on his cigar. “Fear!” he pronounced, “it’s just plain old fear that causes all these amateurs to choke. It’s all in the mind. You gotta have confidence that when you lay the lumber on that pill it is gonna eat up some by-God REAL ESTATE!”
He turned to his rotund partner and added, “Like that drive I cut the corner with on No. 5, right, Flappy? Did that screamer break their backs or what? When is the last time you saw me choke on a clutch shot like that, huh?”
Flapjaw Jim leaned his short, round frame back on the bar in casual disdain and inhaled another Bud. “Never, old buddy. That affliction strikes only the faint-hearted, never the bold and brave. "Remember when poor old Dumbrowski went chicken at Pebble Beach last year on that 550-yard last hole? All he needed was a lousy eagle. But he took the gas and wimped out - lost by one shot. Pure case of nervous apoplexy.”
The bartender swiped his bar rag across the mahogany. The bright boozer veins in his cheeks got redder in his incredulity as he went into his imitation of a Jackie Gleason drunk and exploded, "Yeah, I seen it. Dumbrowski took the gas and went choke city!”
"Yep,” Flapjaw continued, “on that short little par five, too. Oh, he hit a pretty fair country drive, all right, and managed to scrape it on the green in two with a 7-iron, but he wimped out on the putt and left it three inches short. Had to settle for a bird!”
The bartender’s eyes popped out. He pulled his apron up over his stupendous gut and sneaked down a fast double vodka. "What a loser! I woulda jumped ALL OVER that putt. I RAM those babies right in the hole.”
Meanwhile, sitting at the end of the bar enduring the play by play recounting of their shame at losing, again, to the two loudmouths, Ernie and Slim quietly nursed their beers.
Ernie’s forehead looked like fifty miles of bad road. His haunted eyes held the fatalistic expression of a man whose ruined life held him in the crushing grip of doom. What was the use of living? Why go on when all that lay before him was humiliation and self loathing?
FLAPJAW MOUTHS OFF TO THE WRONG GUY
Flapjaw slid off his stool and walked over to Ernie and said, “Of course, I ain’t saying you and Slim ever choke. That's not why we clean your clock every Sunday. You just gotta learn to move your left hip smartly at the hole, pull down with your left hand, keep your head rock steady, and delay the hit until the moment of truth, then hit the hell out of the ball, like me and old Downtown Brown do."
He grinned at the crowd. They laughed half-heartedly, not really comfortable with what they saw as a bad turn in what would normally be good-natured ribbing.
With his husky frame and the broad, sloping shoulders of an athlete, Ernie was not a small man. He could have picked up Flapjaw and tossed him out the door. But being mild mannered by nature he simply stood up and shoved his tough, athlete’s face within inches of his tormentor’s moon-round visage. Flapjaw's chin dropped and he stepped back. And Ernie, just using his chest, marched Flapjaw backward into the wall.
Then the mild-mannered golfer walked away, leaving Flapjaw frozen against the wall, his face gone white.
As he went out the door, Ernie heard Flapjaw call out halfheartedly: “He didn’t scare me none.” Jeering laughter followed that disclaimer.
BACK TO THE BLASTED GOLF BOOKS!
At home that evening, Ernie pondered his latest golf book, a 400-page tome entitled:
THE FIVE CRUCIAL MOVES YOU MUST MAKE TO WALLOP THE BALL INTO ETERNITY!
The book advised: 'Visualize the shot. Don't hurry your swing — the ball's not going anywhere until you hit it. Take the club back all in one piece. Pull down with your left hand. Move your left hip smartly at the hole.”
Baloney! Ernie said to himself. How come they never tell you what to do AFTER you move your left hip smartly at the hole? What Ernie wanted to know was how to hit the blasted ball! He threw the book in the corner and vowed to give up the game. But then he remembered he had promised Slim he'd show up next Sunday, and he was honor bound to do so.
The devil with it! He didn't care anymore. One more round and he would be out of the game for good. Life would indeed be simple without all that heartbreak.
NEXT SUNDAY, THE MIRACLE!
That unforgettable Sunday morning, as he teed up his ball, Ernie vowed that this was to be his last round forever. In that mood he didn't think about anything before or during the swing, didn't even try to remember what the books said. He didn't care anymore. This was the end. He just ripped it.
TEE SHOT GETS BOMBED!
Ernie's first tee shot whistled over the fairway traps and came to rest where no ball had ever dared, too far to be believed. Continuing the round his irons burned the very air, screamed across lakes, curved around trees in brilliantly designed trajectories.
Meanwhile, afraid of putting the hex on his partner's fantastic performance, Slim kept his mouth shut, except to twirl his drooping mustache and say occasionally to Flapjaw or Downtown Brown, "You're away."
Only Ernie's miserable putting kept his opponents in the game. Plus the fact that his irons were overshooting the greens and he had to shoot back at them. And Slim was so dumbfounded at his partner's heroics that he forgot to concentrate on his own game. Slim kept on dumping shots, gouging out slabs of turf and three-putting with great consistency.
In shock now at Ernie’s reborn game, Downtown Brown and Flapjaw went off their game, Flapjaw actually duck-hooked one into the bushes, and Downtown Brown shanked one into the creek.
The four golfers came to the last hole, a par five, all even. Slim and Flapjaw had both run into trouble and were out of it. Meanwhile, Downtown Brown had put the pressure on Ernie with a one-putt birdie.
But Ernie had bombed the biggest drive of his life, then smoked a six-iron up on the green ten feet past the hole. and from that spot the ball had spun back and actually bounced off the pin. All the born-again golfer had to do now was sink a simple little five-incher for an eagle which would win the match!
Of course, such a short putt would be impossible to miss!
Slim chuckled with delight. He wasn't worried about jinxing Ernie now. "By God, partner,” he said, "I'm glad I was here to see it. You really got your game together today."
Slim knew for sure he and Ernie had the game won now. Even if the world suddenly came to an end, even if Ernie got struck by lightning, those happenings would make no difference now. His partner was certain to sink that putt. So short it was.
Meanwhile, news of the impending historic event had emptied the bar. Drinks in hand, the crowd of spectators surrounded the green, waiting for the final killing stroke that would shut the braggarts up forever.
Laughing and joking with the crowd, Ernie made a big show of surveying the five inches of real estate over which the ball had to travel before it went kerplunk in the bottom of the hole.
Slim helped out by crouching down on his knees and shutting one eye as he peered down the line. He held up a finger to check the wind.
And Ernie, going along with the gag, paced off the five inches and went through a big routine of holding up his putter and squinting along the shaft.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
Slim saw a cloud pass over his partner’s face. It looked like Ernie had suddenly realized the importance of the final doomsday stroke, and had realized that everyone — his partner, the bar crowd, even the bartender — all were depending on him. He had to make the putt.
Of course it was impossible to miss — unless he fell over in a faint and broke his leg. And how likely was that to happen?
Flapjaw and Downtown Brown used every trick they knew to disturb his concentration!
As Ernie bent over the ball, Flapjaw started jingling coins in his pocket. Downtown whipped out a big white handkerchief and blew his nose, BLAT!
Ernie heard Downtown Brown stage-whisper to Flapjaw, "I guess we're done for, partner. Nobody could miss a little putt like that — unless of course he CHOKES!"
Next, in a dramatic performance worthy of a Broadway tragedian, Flapjaw fell to the green and clutched his throat. He writhed and gasped for air. "Gah!" he went. "I’m choking! Gah, gah! Air, gimme air!"
The spectators booed in disgust. Such tactics went beyond the limits of fair play. The crowd seemed to be lusting for Ernie to flash his steel and polish off the drama.
But just then, Ernie noticed a little red and green bug crawling on his ball. Annoyed at this interruption in his concentration, he took a little one-handed swing to scare the bug away.
BUT NO! Incredibly he missed the bug and hit the ball. The dimpled spheroid shot across the green, bounded into the trap and buried in a footprint under a big maple leaf.
Slim didn't say a word. He just dropped his twenty bucks on the green and walked away.
In a daze, Ernie followed Slim into the locker room and tried to explain to his partner about that bug. But no. Slim's accusing eyes said Ernie had choked in the clutch.
Next weekend, when Ernie stepped inside the clubhouse, somebody hollered, "Hey, look who's here, it's the old choke artist. Get back! Back! It might be catching!" And some other joker would clutch his throat and gasp, "Gah! Gah!"
Now known state-wide as the Choker of Black Oak Golf Course, Ernie couldn't get a game. Finally that missed putt drove him out of town. He fled to Texas and signed up to play under an assumed name, but even there the curse of the choker followed him. If he walked up to a group and asked to play along, they would immediately fall to the ground, clutching their throats, gasping for air.
Finally he played alone, desperately fine-tuning his game, hoping the local hero would challenge him.
But now he found that even his game had deserted him. Where were the booming drives? Where the crisp irons? All gone. How could life go on?
Desperate, friendless, jobless, the bewildered, golfer trudged up back roads to cow pasture courses in Oklahoma. Even there, where wildcat oil drillers in overalls played pasture pool among dry holes, the word had got around.
ENTER THE OKLAHOMA CHOKEBIRD!
Every time Ernie put a hopeful smile on his face and approached a group of golfers to ask if he could play along, those wise-guy Okies would flop in the dust and go into what was known locally as the Oklahoma Chokebird Razzmatazz. The Chokebird was a clever little insect eater who lived mainly by eating ladybugs, and had developed the survival trick of luring predatory foxes away from its nest by flopping in the dust and gasping for air as though choking to death, which fooled the fox every time into thinking the Chokebird would be an easy lunch.
Nearby golfers who witnessed the players go into their well-rehearsed version of the Oklahoma Chokebird Razzmatazz, backed away in horror, knowing for certain that the man who was getting the old Chokebird routine was a golfer to be avoided at all costs for fear of contamination.
ROCK BOTTOM!
Flat broke and downhearted, Ernie holed up in a skid row flophouse and paid for his tiny room by pushing a broom and emptying slop buckets. On Tuesdays the management gave him a ham sandwich. Maybe.
The fugitive from Black Oak knew that swift action was needed. Somehow he had to fight his way back to dignity. But how?
At a library he found fifty books on the Science of Hitting a Golf Ball. Maybe in those slick pages he would rediscover the elusive secret of the golf swing. He’d had the secret once. Where did it go?
But the large technical tomes all said the same thing: Don't hit too soon. Don't move your head. Don't let the right hand overpower the left. Don't breathe. And whatever you do, DON'T CHOKE! Like that was news!
COULD AN OLD BOOK BE THE ANSWER?
By mere chance, tucked away behind the massive volumes of Scientific Instruction he found a little red book dusty and worn, its spine cracked with age, No more than a pamphlet, really.
HOW TO STRRRIKE A GOLF BALL proclaimed the title, written by Scotty Cruikshank. The slim booklet seemed to call out to Ernie: "Please pick me up!" But what could such a tiny book hold? How could it contain enough technical information to explain the mind boggling intricacies of the golf swing?
Inside the cover he noted the date of publication: 1875. Hmm. Such a long time ago. Could the golf swing have changed so much over the years?
He studied the first page - there were only two. The heading at the top of the page said: HOW TO STRRRIKE A GOLF BALL. Then followed a list of a mere five instructions, apparently all that the Scotsman deemed necessary. Ernie thought this was strange, since he was used to reading large volumes with 40 pages on how to hold the club, 50 pages on the back swing, and long explanations, with diagrams, of what to do with one's feet.
Reading the little Red Book’s brief instructions on how to smash the long ball, Ernie had a sudden realization — Cruikshank’s simple words explained exactly what Ernie had been doing without realizing it when he hit all those great shots before that little red and green bug ruined his life.
On the second page of the book Ernie studied everything the Scotsman had learned about putting in his long career, especially all he had learned about those 15-foot downhill snakes.
Ernie had it now. The secret of the swing! He checked out the book and shoved it in his hip pocket.
OH NO! AN ACTUAL JOB!
Now at last he was ready to go back and regain the respect of his partner Slim. And shut up Flapjaw and Downtown Brown for all time. But first he had to make some traveling money, and to do that he needed a disguise. He grew a beard and put on dark glasses. Next he went to work as a caddie at Burning Hills Golf Club.
ON HIS WAY BACK AT LAST!
The first golfers he carried for were a fat, merry little undertaker and a tall, mournful stockbroker. Both of them had instruction books in their hip pockets. After long study of the manuals during the week, both hackers confided in Ernie that they were sure today was the day when it would all come together. Why, even the course record might be in danger! So well had they studied their instruction books.
But the merry little undertaker’s swing still had the built-in affinity for creeks and trees. His first few snap hooks made him frown at the puzzle of how a golfer with his knowledge of the game could hit the ball so crookedly. After all, he was carefully following the instructions contained in his book.
But as ball after ball bounced off oak trees and splashed in the water his frown turned into a clown’s mask of tragedy.
Finally, while the stockbroker was off to one side practicing his swing. the undertaker sidled up to his caddie and whined in his ear, "Listen — you caddies know all the secrets about how to stop all those hooks and dumped shots. What am I doing wrong?"
Ernie said, “Sir, If I tell you, you won't believe me."
"Oh, don't worry about that. I'll take it to the grave. I know it's all trickery and delusion, and the pros don't ever tell us the real story because they're afraid we'll turn pro and get some of that easy money ourselves."
Ernie shrugged his muscular shoulders and said, "All right, but you must promise never to tell anyone else."
"Oh, no problem, but I don't want you to make any radical changes in my picture swing. I've spent a lot of money on it."
Ernie said, "All right" and bent down and whispered the Scotsman’s ancient secret into the round little undertaker’s ear.
"You sure?" said the undertaker. "That doesn't sound like much of a tip to me. And where'd you get that Scottish burr all of a sudden?"
"G'wan, give it a try, laddie."
The undertaker took his stance. He lurched his round little body back and smacked a rocket. The ball soared 300 yards, faded slightly and landed in the center of the fairway.
Hysterical with joy, he whooped and hollered, "No hook! Yippee! I'm goin' on the tour!"
Meanwhile the morose stockbroker, after hitting a series of wild slices into oblivion, had sunk into a raging madness of the mind. But seeing his partner bomb one down the middle he figured that if the caddie could straighten out a basket case like the undertaker, maybe, just maybe . . .
He went over to Ernie and said, "Uh, listen, I don't want my natural killer swing tampered with, but maybe you could give me a few minor suggestions on how to lash into the pill."
Ernie took the stockbroker aside and laid the secret on him, including the burr. The stock broker made a face. "I don't believe any of that. It contradicts everything I've spent a lifetime learning about the intricacies of the golf swing." He thought a minute, then said, "But what the hell, nothing else has ever worked. I'll give it a try just for laughs."
The stockbroker looked all around to be sure nobody was watching him. He seemed to be afraid of making a fool of himself with a raw, amateurish swing.
BOMBS AWAY!
He whipped his long frame into the shot. The sharp CRACK! echoed from the distant hills. Flocks of startled blackbirds exploded from the trees. The ball screamed in a low, distance-eating draw, then rose majestically as it zoomed around the dogleg.
Far in the distance they heard an incredulous scream: "Good Lord, someone's driven the 400-yard 10th hole!"
During the next holes, the two reborn golfers outdid each other, slamming prodigious shots that had every golfer within 400 yards running for cover.
CONTEMPT GETS EVOKED!
But on the greens in front of the buzzing crowd drawn by the news, their performance evoked contempt. The rotund undertaker, after reaching the 460 yard 13th with a 4-iron and a sand wedge, yipped a three footer that skittered off the green into a trap. Three more strokes and he was down in six for a double bogey.
And the long, tall stockbroker, after driving over Lake Invincible and getting on the fearsome 580-yard 18th with a sand wedge, four-putted from three feet. In tears, the stockbroker wailed, "Ernie, you gotta do something. What's the good of hitting all these great long shots if we can’t get the ball in the hole? What are we doing wrong?"
"Yeah," said the formerly merry little undertaker. "You gotta teach us how to putt. Before you came along, at least we had the comfort of anonymity. Now we're famous as the two biggest choke artists in town."
Oh, that awful word! Ernie flinched and dropped on a bench. He wrinkled his brow and clenched his big fists. "Sorry, gentlemen, I can't do that."
"It's money, huh?" said the undertaker. "Listen, you think I plant all those stiffs in the ground for nothing? I got money, lots of it. How much ya want? A hundred? Five hundred?"
"No," Ernie replied, grim-faced and trembling. "I do not teach the Mystical Art."
Over the next months, the putt-challenged instructor taught dozens how to hit the long ball. They paid him in coarse Eastern long green.
Now the news hit the sports pages:
CADDIE DISCOVERS SECRET OF LONG BALL — CLUELESS HACKERS MOB WIZARD — SUPER BOMBER REFUSES TO INSTRUCT FLAT STICK.
And of course the tabloids got hold of the story and exaggerated it. They claimed the famous instructor's students had to tee off in Texas to hit Oklahoma.
But what good was the long ball when the longknockers were all shooting back at the greens and could not score?
The Black Oak refugee’s plan was working, He was almost ready finally to begin phase two of his climb from the pit of horror named CHOKER!
The bearded wizard from Auburn stuck around just long enough to create 16 long-ball champions and, incidentally, earn the price of a silver Corvette with a golf bag hood ornament. He had to leave town at midnight to evade hundreds of rich golfers flying in from New York to learn the secret of the long ball.
Meanwhile, the former choke artist’s international acclaim had reached as far as his home golf course at Black Oak.
Shortly after escaping Oklahoma he cruised up to Black Oak and parked his Corvette in front of the huge crowd which had been alerted to his arrival and now awaited him in front of the clubhouse. He waved In ducal disdain.
Lurking in this sea of adulation were Flapjaw Jones and Downtown Brown. Neither was cheering.
Slim was there too. "It's great to see you back, Partner. I heard about what happened in Oklahoma and I want to apologize for thinking you ever took the gas."
Ernie said, "Aw, don't give it a thought, pard. Come on, let's go challenge Flapjaw and Downtown Brown to a grudge match. With everybody watching they won't be able to turn us down."
A shadow passed across Slim's face. "You sure, Ernie? I mean, we all know you can sock the ball, but how about your putting? I wouldn't want to see you go through all that misery again."
"No problem, Slim. I've got a plan."
It took only minutes to shame their foes into accepting the challenge. Surrounded by hundreds intent on witnessing high drama, they teed off. All went according to plan. On the first green Ernie’s ball was ten feet from the hole. So great was his reputation that he simply turned to Flapjaw and shrugged his shoulders. "Do you really want me to putt this gimme?"
"Oh no" replied Flapjaw. "I wouldn't dream of making you putt a gimme like that. It would be impossible for a golfer of your caliber to miss."
Ernie winked at Slim and picked up his ball. Meanwhile, Flapjaw and Downtown Brown were playing at the top of their games, and Ernie needed all those conceded putts because he kept flying the greens and having to shoot back at them. But once on the green He just picked up his ball.
Until the last hole.
Ernie had a 40-foot downhill, side-hill snake. If his opponents conceded the putt as usual, he and Slim would win the grudge match. He waited, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Well," he asked Downtown Brown, "do you give up?"
Downtown Brown said hesitantly, "Sir, since this putt is for the win, I wonder if you wouldn't mind going through the formality of giving it a rap?"
"Yeah," said Flapjaw. "Make the rascal putt it."
The world-famous instructor of the long ball felt the old familiar pang of fear in his gut. He hadn't stroked a pressure putt for six months. It all flooded back to him now: the little bug on his ball, the horror when he realized that in trying to scare off the bug he'd knocked the ball off the green. And especially he remembered the humiliation when golfers flopped in the dirt and laid on him the curse of the Oklahoma Chokebird.
THE BUG IS BACK!
Knees shaking, forcing himself to concentrate, he surveyed the putt. But just then he noticed a little red and green bug crawling on the ball. It looked like the same damn bug. Intending to scare the bug away, he took a one-handed swing at it. Oh no! He'd done it again! The ball streaked uphill across the green, hopped over a twig, broke right, broke left, moved across the slope and then began a long, slow descent. A miss! By two feet!
BUT NO! Just then Ernie heard a familiar squawk that sounded eerily like one he'd often heard coming from the trees at Burning Hills Golf Course in Oklahoma.
Twittering and singing, the bird that would later be identified as an Oklahoma Chokebird - probably blown off course in a tornado - swooped down and picked the ladybug off the rolling ball! Its center of gravity altered, the ball swerved and rattled in the cup.
Sometime during the three-day party that followed, Ernie took Slim aside and showed him the copy he'd made of the Scotsman's ancient book:
Slim studied the first page on which Scotty Cruikshank had written his list of five commandments:
1. Dinna think! Dinna listen to the divil whispering in thy head.
2. Drrraw back the turrrible hickory stick with fearsome intent.
3. Dinna keep thy head down. Look around and note where the green is located.
4. Dinna move thy left hip smarrrtly at the hole. None ‘a that!
5. Whack the divil out of the ball!
The second page was entitled:
THE FOINE ART OF PUTTING
But under that heading the page was blank—except for the following:
“EDITOR’S NOTE:
“Although Mr. Cruikshank worked on this putting section for years, he finally abandoned the task when he realized ‘twas the work of the divil!”
Below the editor’s note, in silent endorsement over the years, some modern day students of the game had signed their names:
Bobby Jones
Gene Sarazen
Byron Nelson
Sam Snead
Ben Hogan
Arnold Palmer
Lee Trevino
Gary Player
Tom Watson
Jack Nicklaus
Tiger Woods
Vince Johnson
The reader will no doubt be glad to hear that the above story is the end of the final, final word on how to strrrike a golf ball.##
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
HOW TO MAKE A STOCK POT IN THE BRITISH ARMY
AND A FEW UNSAVORY ASIDES
A famous practical joke among chefs is to tell a young cook to make her soup out of "pipe stock." She's heard about stock and knows that no decent culinary artistry can be accomplished without a stock pot. But she’s never heard of pipe stock.
While all the cooks, bakers and even the dishwashers are chuckling behind their hands she runs around the kitchen looking for a can of pipe stock, can't find any and is afraid to ask.
WHAT IS PIPE STOCK?
Well, it is the liquid that comes out when you turn on the faucet. In other words, it is plain water. Pipe stock is used by madmen, assassins and others whose ambition it is to destroy civilization. Don't you fall into that evil cabal!
Let me tell you how I found out about stock pots.
In 1951 as a young army private just out of cook school, I was assigned to work at the Officers Club at the Presidio in San Francisco. Army cooks would kill to get a cushy post like this. I fell into the job by accident. The joke was I didn't know how to cook beans, or anything else.
All I knew was how to keep a mess hall clean, which was the main thing hammered into the minds of young cooks at the 6th Army Cooks & Bakers School. We were taught how to avoid poisoning the troops, that is, how to keep grease and flies out of the food.
To be sure we understood the importance of this subject, we were shown frightening movies about the horrors of disease caused by flies and how the trots had put an entire British Regiment out of action at Waterloo.
How we got a movie on the British Black Watch laid up with the trots I don't know
It was eerie to hear the announcer -- in a cultivated British accent, no less -- tell us in sickening detail how one cook's disregard of flies and grease nearly resulted in a disaster that could have altered the course of history.
Apparently the British troops got horribly, horribly sick at the battle of Waterloo - the Brits, as you probably know always get more horribly sick than the soldiers of other nations - and they nearly got wiped out by Napoleon or somebody. The Frenchies didn't have the trots, you see, so they weren't constantly leaving their guns unattended while they hot-footed it to the latrine.
The point I started to make here, before I went off on a tangent about the British Black Watch, is that the U.S. Army did not teach me how to cook.
The most glaring omission in my training was the subject of STOCK POTS. The Army did not even teach me what a stock pot was, let alone how to make one.
HOW I FOUND MY STOCK POT IN SAN FRANCISCO
My introduction to the stock pot begins in San Francisco at the Presidio army base. How I ended up at in San Francisco is a story in itself. You see, our entire company was about to be shipped off to a post in the middle of the Arizona desert, a terrible outpost manned by doomed devils a hundred miles distant from the nearest town. A fate worse than death for a boulevardier like me.
Then in a terrific stroke of luck just before we were to be shipped out of our highly desired post, the sergeant asked if there was anyone in the company who had prior civilian experience in restaurants.
Well, since I didn't want to be posted out in the wilderness and since I had once worked as a busboy at Wilson's Little Cafeteria in Palo Alto, California, I immediately put up my hand. Oh yes, I was well experienced.
MY NARROW ESCAPE!
"Okay, Johnson," the sarge told me, "you're gonna stay here in San Francisco and go to work at the Officers Club. You'll have private quarters and work a five-day week with weekends off. Besides that, you'll get separate rations and extra money. The rest of you slow-witted sad sacks are going to Fort Wauchuka. That's out in the desert. Nothing but rocks and gila monsters. No weekends off, either. You'll love it."
My first morning on the job at the Officers Club I arrived early and began investigating the stove, trying to figure out how to turn on the fires under the grill. It was a mystery.
The Filipino waiter stood there watching me. He shook his head and said, "Oh, you need training!" How right he was. You get the idea? I knew nothing.
Later that morning chef Jimmy Yolef arrived and went to work. I watched him closely to see if I could learn anything.
The first thing I found out was that he had a big STOCK POT. But that was all he allowed me to learn by watching him work. He stood very close to the stove while he worked, spreading his arms and elbows so that I couldn't see what he was doing.
I was practically hopping up and down trying to see over his shoulders and under his elbows to see if I could learn something. It was hopeless.
"Why should I teach you anything?" he told me. "You'll be gone in a year and I'll still be here." (Which was untrue because it wasn't long until Jimmie got drunk and the warrant officer canned him.)
But while he was cold sober, it was absolutely amazing to me how with a few swift motions while banging pots around Jimmy could suddenly produce gravies and soups and stews. Today I know it was because he took care of his stock pot and knew how to use it.
HERE'S HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN STOCK POT
Take your biggest soup pot and put in a couple soup bones, some coarsely chopped celery, carrots and onions, a bay leaf or two, and a couple garlic cloves.
Next fill the pot with cold water and bring it to a simmer without boiling. Let it simmer for five hours or so - overnight is better - until the savory flavor of the bones is released and the tough connective tissue of the bones becomes very tender, like jelly.
During the simmering process:, occasionally skim off the fat and albumen that rise to the surface. When the volume of liquid reduces from evaporation, pour in a little cold water to return the liquid to its original level.
By the way if you have a roast chicken carcass handy, don’t be afraid to toss that in. Super! Yes, I know we're making beef stock, but the addition of the chicken will help the beef flavor and no one will ever know the difference.
Next morning when the stock pot is ready, strain the liquid into another pot and skim off the fat. Throw away the bones and vegetables.
If you have done your job right - never allowing your stock pot to boil hard - the stock should be a semi-clear liquid, a light amber color.
During your workday, leave the stock pot on the stove over a very low fire so that it is available to make tasty stews, gravies and soups.
Also during your workday: be sure to save all your meat scraps and vegetable trimmings and perhaps the drippings from a roast or two. Add those excellent flavorings to the stock pot.
And of course (ha ha) remember to stand close to the stove with your shoulders hunched and your elbows poked out so the troops can't see what you're doing. That’s a joke, son.
Dem bones, dem bones!
By the way, knowledgeable epicures scrape the marrow out of the cooked beef bones and spread that delicacy on toast with a little salt for a delightful snack.
The jellied tendons are tasty too. Just use your fingers. ##
Chef Vince
A famous practical joke among chefs is to tell a young cook to make her soup out of "pipe stock." She's heard about stock and knows that no decent culinary artistry can be accomplished without a stock pot. But she’s never heard of pipe stock.
While all the cooks, bakers and even the dishwashers are chuckling behind their hands she runs around the kitchen looking for a can of pipe stock, can't find any and is afraid to ask.
WHAT IS PIPE STOCK?
Well, it is the liquid that comes out when you turn on the faucet. In other words, it is plain water. Pipe stock is used by madmen, assassins and others whose ambition it is to destroy civilization. Don't you fall into that evil cabal!
Let me tell you how I found out about stock pots.
In 1951 as a young army private just out of cook school, I was assigned to work at the Officers Club at the Presidio in San Francisco. Army cooks would kill to get a cushy post like this. I fell into the job by accident. The joke was I didn't know how to cook beans, or anything else.
All I knew was how to keep a mess hall clean, which was the main thing hammered into the minds of young cooks at the 6th Army Cooks & Bakers School. We were taught how to avoid poisoning the troops, that is, how to keep grease and flies out of the food.
To be sure we understood the importance of this subject, we were shown frightening movies about the horrors of disease caused by flies and how the trots had put an entire British Regiment out of action at Waterloo.
How we got a movie on the British Black Watch laid up with the trots I don't know
It was eerie to hear the announcer -- in a cultivated British accent, no less -- tell us in sickening detail how one cook's disregard of flies and grease nearly resulted in a disaster that could have altered the course of history.
Apparently the British troops got horribly, horribly sick at the battle of Waterloo - the Brits, as you probably know always get more horribly sick than the soldiers of other nations - and they nearly got wiped out by Napoleon or somebody. The Frenchies didn't have the trots, you see, so they weren't constantly leaving their guns unattended while they hot-footed it to the latrine.
The point I started to make here, before I went off on a tangent about the British Black Watch, is that the U.S. Army did not teach me how to cook.
The most glaring omission in my training was the subject of STOCK POTS. The Army did not even teach me what a stock pot was, let alone how to make one.
HOW I FOUND MY STOCK POT IN SAN FRANCISCO
My introduction to the stock pot begins in San Francisco at the Presidio army base. How I ended up at in San Francisco is a story in itself. You see, our entire company was about to be shipped off to a post in the middle of the Arizona desert, a terrible outpost manned by doomed devils a hundred miles distant from the nearest town. A fate worse than death for a boulevardier like me.
Then in a terrific stroke of luck just before we were to be shipped out of our highly desired post, the sergeant asked if there was anyone in the company who had prior civilian experience in restaurants.
Well, since I didn't want to be posted out in the wilderness and since I had once worked as a busboy at Wilson's Little Cafeteria in Palo Alto, California, I immediately put up my hand. Oh yes, I was well experienced.
MY NARROW ESCAPE!
"Okay, Johnson," the sarge told me, "you're gonna stay here in San Francisco and go to work at the Officers Club. You'll have private quarters and work a five-day week with weekends off. Besides that, you'll get separate rations and extra money. The rest of you slow-witted sad sacks are going to Fort Wauchuka. That's out in the desert. Nothing but rocks and gila monsters. No weekends off, either. You'll love it."
My first morning on the job at the Officers Club I arrived early and began investigating the stove, trying to figure out how to turn on the fires under the grill. It was a mystery.
The Filipino waiter stood there watching me. He shook his head and said, "Oh, you need training!" How right he was. You get the idea? I knew nothing.
Later that morning chef Jimmy Yolef arrived and went to work. I watched him closely to see if I could learn anything.
The first thing I found out was that he had a big STOCK POT. But that was all he allowed me to learn by watching him work. He stood very close to the stove while he worked, spreading his arms and elbows so that I couldn't see what he was doing.
I was practically hopping up and down trying to see over his shoulders and under his elbows to see if I could learn something. It was hopeless.
"Why should I teach you anything?" he told me. "You'll be gone in a year and I'll still be here." (Which was untrue because it wasn't long until Jimmie got drunk and the warrant officer canned him.)
But while he was cold sober, it was absolutely amazing to me how with a few swift motions while banging pots around Jimmy could suddenly produce gravies and soups and stews. Today I know it was because he took care of his stock pot and knew how to use it.
HERE'S HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN STOCK POT
Take your biggest soup pot and put in a couple soup bones, some coarsely chopped celery, carrots and onions, a bay leaf or two, and a couple garlic cloves.
Next fill the pot with cold water and bring it to a simmer without boiling. Let it simmer for five hours or so - overnight is better - until the savory flavor of the bones is released and the tough connective tissue of the bones becomes very tender, like jelly.
During the simmering process:, occasionally skim off the fat and albumen that rise to the surface. When the volume of liquid reduces from evaporation, pour in a little cold water to return the liquid to its original level.
By the way if you have a roast chicken carcass handy, don’t be afraid to toss that in. Super! Yes, I know we're making beef stock, but the addition of the chicken will help the beef flavor and no one will ever know the difference.
Next morning when the stock pot is ready, strain the liquid into another pot and skim off the fat. Throw away the bones and vegetables.
If you have done your job right - never allowing your stock pot to boil hard - the stock should be a semi-clear liquid, a light amber color.
During your workday, leave the stock pot on the stove over a very low fire so that it is available to make tasty stews, gravies and soups.
Also during your workday: be sure to save all your meat scraps and vegetable trimmings and perhaps the drippings from a roast or two. Add those excellent flavorings to the stock pot.
And of course (ha ha) remember to stand close to the stove with your shoulders hunched and your elbows poked out so the troops can't see what you're doing. That’s a joke, son.
Dem bones, dem bones!
By the way, knowledgeable epicures scrape the marrow out of the cooked beef bones and spread that delicacy on toast with a little salt for a delightful snack.
The jellied tendons are tasty too. Just use your fingers. ##
Chef Vince
Monday, July 14, 2008
WHAT IS DUMBER THAN AN ELECTRIC STOVE?
When I build my dream home, it will not have one of those blasted electric stoves.
My dream home may have electric lights - I may relent there - but it will not have that shocking, stubborn, worthless apparatus known as Edison’s revenge, the electric stove.
Hooked up to cables that lead to massive dynamos at Boulder Dam, these electric assassins silently wait to perform their sole mission in life, which is not to assist a sleepy-eyed cook in preparing a sensible breakfast of biscuits and gravy. On no! The electric stove’s sole mission in life is to electrocute the human race. And it wants to make yours truly the first crispy critter on its list.
Let me tell you what is wrong with these unnatural wired contrivances which were developed as an unnecessary improvement on Man's original discovery of fire, which as any cook worth his oregano knows, is certainly enough for sny culinary task.
My sad experience with electric stoves makes a tale designed for weeping.
In 1969 I conned the District Manager of a large food service company into hiring me as chef/manager at NASA’s industrial cafeteria in Mountain View, California. It is quite something to get a cooking job in one of these government installations. I discovered that there are security checks to discover any past record of advocating the violent overthrow of grammar school. You need an ID card with your picture on it, fingerprints, all that stuff. Armed U.S. Marines look you over every time you enter or leave.
And all this for a cooking job, mind you.
Suppose I had claimed to be a rocket scientist. In fact, maybe that’s what I should have hired on as. Then I would never have been forced to work on that black battery of electrical contraptions they called stoves! Hah!
My first morning on the job the district manager introduced me to the crew. He showed me around and proudly pointed out what I assumed must be atomic reactors or, possibly, pottery kilns. They were electric he told me. No more smelly gas.
“Fine,” I said. “But where are the stoves?”
I was younger then and did not know that kitchen designers think everything that doesn’t move must be plugged in to Boulder Dam.
In that cafeteria we had four of those electric abominations. There were no individual burners on top. Each stove just had a big, heavy iron slab with electrical heating elements. And underneath each flattop lurked an electric oven. Every contrivance in that blasted kitchen was electric.
One main trouble with electric stoves is that you can’t walk by one of them and with a cursory glance determine how hot the heating element is under a sauce pan full of spaghetti sauce.
Oh no. Nothing so simple. You have to walk over to the stove, bend over and squint at buttons that are labeled HOT, MED, or LOW. I hate those buttons. I like to see the actual fire, then I know exactly how hot it is. I don't need a button to tell me that.
Worse yet, half of those electric stoves were always out of order - their flow of electricity weakened or stopped entirely by rotten wiring. When I had a pot of water on top of an element whose HOT button was pushed in, that pot of water could not be relied upon to boil until next Tuesday afternoon. Buttons or not.
I was constantly calling repairmen who sauntered in to fix the wiring when they had time. Meanwhile, lunch was to be served at 12 noon. No excuses.
That job was not my only sad experience with electric stoves. Back in 1974 I took a job as camp cook way out in the bush at a remote site in Alaska called Granite Mountain. You’d think that a kitchen so far out in the tundra they would at least have a campfire with real fire. But no. Even that primitive lashup had an electric stove.
The main problem with that confounded electric stove was that it interfered with a new hobby I had taken up - shooting black powder pistols. This shooting hobby required that I melt hunks of lead to cast my own bullets. But surprise, surprise! that cranky electric stove seldom got hot enough to melt lead. It produced only enough heat to fry an egg. Maybe.
Still at other times and in other kitchens the saga of my battle against electric stoves went on.
A couple years after I quit that Granite Mountain dodge, I made the same dumb mistake of taking the chef job at a country club without asking if they believed that in a sensible civilization you needed fire to cook anything.
My first big production was to be a buffet dinner with prime rib and game hens. I was determined to astonish the members at once with a magnificent display and thus make my reputation for all time.
But when I walked into the kitchen early - giving myself plenty of time, you see, to get organized in a strange kitchen - my heart dropped.
Blasted electric stoves!
I fiddled with the buttons and discovered those stoves were running on about two cylinders. I crammed the prime ribs and game hens into the ovens and fought those stoves for hours, trying to coax out enough heat just to take the chill off my big spectacular dinner!
Worse yet, one of the stoves had the peculiar habit of giving me an electric shock when I touched it. Not every time - just once in a while when I wasn’t expecting it. Things like that make a cook jumpy.
Give me a gas stove! You know when they’re on! you know when they’re off! They never fail! They give a cheery light!
But do those fools who design modern kitchens know these things? Do they know that cooks need fire and grease to accomplish anything. No! They just keep building magnificent electric showplaces that are impossible to work in. How happy those devils must be, rubbing their hands in glee, knowing that the great chefs of the USA must live a life full of misery. ##
THE END
Wrote by hand
My dream home may have electric lights - I may relent there - but it will not have that shocking, stubborn, worthless apparatus known as Edison’s revenge, the electric stove.
Hooked up to cables that lead to massive dynamos at Boulder Dam, these electric assassins silently wait to perform their sole mission in life, which is not to assist a sleepy-eyed cook in preparing a sensible breakfast of biscuits and gravy. On no! The electric stove’s sole mission in life is to electrocute the human race. And it wants to make yours truly the first crispy critter on its list.
Let me tell you what is wrong with these unnatural wired contrivances which were developed as an unnecessary improvement on Man's original discovery of fire, which as any cook worth his oregano knows, is certainly enough for sny culinary task.
My sad experience with electric stoves makes a tale designed for weeping.
In 1969 I conned the District Manager of a large food service company into hiring me as chef/manager at NASA’s industrial cafeteria in Mountain View, California. It is quite something to get a cooking job in one of these government installations. I discovered that there are security checks to discover any past record of advocating the violent overthrow of grammar school. You need an ID card with your picture on it, fingerprints, all that stuff. Armed U.S. Marines look you over every time you enter or leave.
And all this for a cooking job, mind you.
Suppose I had claimed to be a rocket scientist. In fact, maybe that’s what I should have hired on as. Then I would never have been forced to work on that black battery of electrical contraptions they called stoves! Hah!
My first morning on the job the district manager introduced me to the crew. He showed me around and proudly pointed out what I assumed must be atomic reactors or, possibly, pottery kilns. They were electric he told me. No more smelly gas.
“Fine,” I said. “But where are the stoves?”
I was younger then and did not know that kitchen designers think everything that doesn’t move must be plugged in to Boulder Dam.
In that cafeteria we had four of those electric abominations. There were no individual burners on top. Each stove just had a big, heavy iron slab with electrical heating elements. And underneath each flattop lurked an electric oven. Every contrivance in that blasted kitchen was electric.
One main trouble with electric stoves is that you can’t walk by one of them and with a cursory glance determine how hot the heating element is under a sauce pan full of spaghetti sauce.
Oh no. Nothing so simple. You have to walk over to the stove, bend over and squint at buttons that are labeled HOT, MED, or LOW. I hate those buttons. I like to see the actual fire, then I know exactly how hot it is. I don't need a button to tell me that.
Worse yet, half of those electric stoves were always out of order - their flow of electricity weakened or stopped entirely by rotten wiring. When I had a pot of water on top of an element whose HOT button was pushed in, that pot of water could not be relied upon to boil until next Tuesday afternoon. Buttons or not.
I was constantly calling repairmen who sauntered in to fix the wiring when they had time. Meanwhile, lunch was to be served at 12 noon. No excuses.
That job was not my only sad experience with electric stoves. Back in 1974 I took a job as camp cook way out in the bush at a remote site in Alaska called Granite Mountain. You’d think that a kitchen so far out in the tundra they would at least have a campfire with real fire. But no. Even that primitive lashup had an electric stove.
The main problem with that confounded electric stove was that it interfered with a new hobby I had taken up - shooting black powder pistols. This shooting hobby required that I melt hunks of lead to cast my own bullets. But surprise, surprise! that cranky electric stove seldom got hot enough to melt lead. It produced only enough heat to fry an egg. Maybe.
Still at other times and in other kitchens the saga of my battle against electric stoves went on.
A couple years after I quit that Granite Mountain dodge, I made the same dumb mistake of taking the chef job at a country club without asking if they believed that in a sensible civilization you needed fire to cook anything.
My first big production was to be a buffet dinner with prime rib and game hens. I was determined to astonish the members at once with a magnificent display and thus make my reputation for all time.
But when I walked into the kitchen early - giving myself plenty of time, you see, to get organized in a strange kitchen - my heart dropped.
Blasted electric stoves!
I fiddled with the buttons and discovered those stoves were running on about two cylinders. I crammed the prime ribs and game hens into the ovens and fought those stoves for hours, trying to coax out enough heat just to take the chill off my big spectacular dinner!
Worse yet, one of the stoves had the peculiar habit of giving me an electric shock when I touched it. Not every time - just once in a while when I wasn’t expecting it. Things like that make a cook jumpy.
Give me a gas stove! You know when they’re on! you know when they’re off! They never fail! They give a cheery light!
But do those fools who design modern kitchens know these things? Do they know that cooks need fire and grease to accomplish anything. No! They just keep building magnificent electric showplaces that are impossible to work in. How happy those devils must be, rubbing their hands in glee, knowing that the great chefs of the USA must live a life full of misery. ##
THE END
Wrote by hand
Sunday, July 13, 2008
BASEBALL'S SLOWEST PITCHER
A Summer’s Mythic Baseball Happening
Muley Mulholland had two pitches: a fast ball and a change-up. His fast ball was not what sportswriters might describe as a lightning bolt, No, but at least you could be pretty sure it would eventually arrive at the plate. On the other hand his change-up, or what opposing players called his snail ball, took forever to reach the batter. Time stopped when Muley threw that snail ball
Batters got unnerved watching Muley wind up his elongated frame in preparation for the delayed release of one of his tantalizing teasers.
The faultless flinger’s body seemed composed entirely of elbows and knees supporting a tiny head with flyaway ears that sometimes flapped in a high wind, and a beaky schnozz, whose magnificent protuberance he employed as an aiming device as he peered down its sloping grandeur at the batter.
The suspense of waiting for Muley's reluctant horsehide was unbearable. Batters could bend over and tie their shoelaces while awaiting his tardy toss.
How the big fight happened
On the fateful day I am about to show in its full horror, Muley was pitching against the Menlo Park Crusaders, who hadn’t lost a game all summer. The Crusaders were not ballplayers, they were a mob, a gang of street fighters and bad boys with brass knuckles in their pockets.
The Menlo Nine had never seen Muley’s stuff before. On that hot summer day it was astounding the agony those poor batters went through just waiting for one of Muley’s pitches to arrive at the plate.
The big fight started in the top of the ninth with the Menlo Crusaders at bat. We were ahead one to nothing and they had two outs with a runner on second.
Ferdinand Osrowski, Menlo's big cleanup hitter, was their last chance to score. The Menlo Park slugger hadn’t been able to touch Muley all day and I knew trouble was coming when he strode up to the plate with two away and one on. His red eyes flashed under his heavy dark eyebrows. I knew he figured for sure he had Muley’s change-up timed and was ready to jump on it.
But I’d seen what Muley’s leisurely lobs could do to these cocky power hitters. It was the waiting that drove them nuts.
Ferdinand Ostrowski’s teammates hollered insults and taunts from the dugout, razzing Muley, trying to rattle him. “Hey, Snail Nose! Put some mustard on that ball. We ain’t got all night!. Your Mom’s prob’ly still waitin’ for ya to get borned. This ain’t baseball. What’re you throwing out there, marshmallows? This is flat embarrassin’. Ya shoulda throw’d that pitch last Tuesday - maybe it’d be gettin there by now.”
On that dusty afternoon in the glare of the July sun I crouched at shortstop and waited for Ostrowski’s blast, Sweat streamed down and burned my eyes. I edged over to Freddie, a short, round little kid playing third base. I told Freddie, “I’ve seen this guy swing a bat. He can knock it downtown, but if he gets a hernia swinging at Muley’s change-up , there’s gonna be trouble. When the fight starts, I’ll create a diversion. Then you run around and grab all our equipment so it don’t get lost in the fracas. Grab our bat, the bases, everything.”
“Okay,” said Freddie. “I know the routine.”
Hubba, hubba, hubba,” yelled Miles Lang, the tall redheaded kid in center field.
“No batter no batter no batter," yelled Bent Nose Bozzo crouched behind the plate.. It all became a roaring in my ears, made me feel a little dizzy. I shook my head, splashing sweat in the dirt.
Muley wasted a fast ball, high and outside. Ferdinand Ostrowski calmly studied its approach for a long moment, then leaned back on his bat and inspected his nails as it floated toward Bent Nose Bozzo’s mitt.
“Swing, batter, swing,” screamed Bent Nose.
“Ball wuun!” cried the ump.
Ostrowski regarded the angular pitcher with disdain and spat in the dirt. “That the slowest pitch you got, you pin-headed creep? Lemme see that change-up of yours, I’ll show you what a ballplayer can do to it!”
The imperturbable flinger went into his elaborate windup, which took a couple of minutes right there, and delicately released one of his snail balls.
Spellbound under the cessation of time, we waited as the ball drifted like a child’s bubble toward Ostrowski. Red-faced, veins pulsing in his bull neck, the enraged batter pounded on the plate and stamped his size fourteen high-top brogans in the dirt sending up a cloud of dust.
Would Cosmic Forces intervene?
Now I actually feared that the Celestial Keepers of Right and Wrong - ever alert to any violation of the immutable laws of baseball - would move in and take over, perhaps to strike should their intervention be required to balance out the steady progression of Earth's happenings.
In the trees, birds ceased twittering and hopped about frantically, aware that all was not right in their avian universe. Gophers dived down their burrows.
Ferdinand Ostrowski drew back his terrible bludgeon ready to unleash forces unknown to mortal man’s primitive grasp of physics. The very universe seemed to hold its breath.
“Swing, batter, swing!” yelled Bent Nose Bozzo, pounding his fist into his glove.
In great suspense we waited. Out in centerfield, Miles Lang, whose eyesight was not that great anyway, adjusted his bifocals, brushed his red hair from his eyes and drifted back until he bumped his head on the fence and dropped to the grass momentarily stunned.
In the blazing heat of that mid-summer day, Muley Mulholland’s challenge against the eternal laws of space and time drifted toward Bent Nose’s mitt,
In the timeless vacuum, puzzled neighborhood dogs ran in circles, barking and panting in protest against they knew not what. The drone of bees altered to a higher pitch. Out in center, Miles propped himself up on an elbow and held up his glove to shield his eyes from the sun,or perhaps to protect his head against a line drive.
In the hot corner at third, unable to stand the suspense, Freddie’s nerve broke. He deserted his base and hopped over the foul line out of the line of fire.
Now Ferdinand Ostrowski’s nerve broke too. Dead set on crushing the ball into eternity. and unable to wait any longer, he hopped and scuttled toward the mound to meet Muley‘s tardy offering, Still he couldn’t reach it. Cursing and waving his bat, the muscular Crusader continued hopping his clodhoppers closer to the mound until, at last, the change-up crawled within reach.
“Swing, batter, swing!” screamed Bent Nose Bozzo.
“Now I got it,” roared Ferdinand. He drew his bat back, back, back until his bones popped, then cut loose at the ball in what I feared would be the game-winning wallop.
But no! His timing off, he was a little out in front of the ball. The friction of his swing set the air on fire. Smoke curled over the field and darkened the sky. Terrible forces of nature cried out in protest against the vacuum created by the passage of his weapon. Masses of displaced sir slammed back together to fill the void, producing a sonic BOOM!
The force of the swing tore the blackened and smoking Louisville Slugger from his grasp. What was left of the bat hummed through the air like a child’s toy and crashed through the left field fence into Mr. Smither’s backyard. I saw old man Smithers waving the smoking remnant over the top of the fence.
“You booyys,” I heard him faintly screaming. “Balls you hit over here break my windows. Then you trample my flower beds. Now you throw baaats and try to set fire to my fenncce!”
“Steerike wunn,” cried the ump.
Ostrowski grabbed another bat and pounded it on the plate, preparing for what I feared would be a cataclysmic blast.
But Muley’s next offering fooled the Menlo bomber too. Instead of the expected change-up, it was Muley’s fast ball that now rushed toward the plate at a few feet per hour faster than his slow pitch. And Ostrowski, not recognizing the rapidity of the pill’s flight, glared his contempt at the pitch and spat in the dust. He turned away and strolled over to the water fountain for a drink.
To his teammates hunkered down in the dugout sharpening their spikes, he growled, “When that poor ball gets here I’m gonna knock it clean into the next county!”
But the Menlo bomber had badly misjudged the velocity of the ball. Just as he stepped back into the batter’s box there was the soft plop of the ball nestling into Bent Nose Bozzo’s glove.
“Hey,” he said, scratching his head. “How’d that ball get here so quick? I was only gone about a hour.”
“Steeriike two,” hollered the ump.
Ostrowski buried his head in his broad shoulders. Smoke poured from his ears. He dug his spikes in deep. He seemed to grow from the earth like some massive stone flung there from outer space. His howling mouth was larger than his face. He pounded his bat on the plate in a frenzy of anticipation. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Actual tears of rage splashed on home plate.
“Throw me that creepy pitch of yours again,” he howled. “I dare ya. And I ain’t leaving till it gets here neither!”
I waved everybody back until nobody was left in the infield but me and Muley and Bent Nose Bozzo. The rest of the guys were lined up against the fence. With a look of scorn, Muley went into his windup and released the slowest pitch of his career.
Inch by inch the ball crept toward home plate, gently shoving aside stubborn molecules of air. From the field, our guys hollered "hubba hubba" and "hum-baby" and "no batter, no batter, no batter!"
Neighborhood dogs, baffled by this warpage of time in their finely structured world of "Come and go, sit and beg, fetch and return," ceased barking and began howling at this new mystery in dogdom.
Meanwhile in rage and frustration, the veins popping on his neck, Ferdinand Ostrowski crouched lower at the plate, pounding his bat, hitching up his pants, jamming his cap down over his ears, readjusting his jock.
Blackness descends on the field!
Dizzy, my head spinning in a world gone black, I pounded my mitt and backed up another couple of inches. I couldn’t understand why the infield was so dark until I realized I was holding my breath and my brain had simply shut down from lack of oxygen.
Meanwhile, the umpire, his knees wobbling from the prolonged period of stooped attention behind the plate while peering through his sweat-blurred eyes at the ball’s leisurely approach, suddenly rolled up his eyes and tumbled forward over Bent Nose Bozzo and sprawled across the plate, out cold from heat stroke.
Ferdinand reached down with one hand and dragged the unconscious arbiter off to the side and dropped him in the dirt like a pile of dirty laundry. He jumped back in the box and banged his Louisville Slugger on the plate.
“We don’t need no ump,” he bawled. “I don’t care where this next pitch is, it’s gonna get outta here!” His barrel chest heaved with the effort required to suck in enough oxygen to support his prolonged preparation for the historic swat. His voice screeched like a rusty door. “Oh, when that ball gets here I’m gonna do somethin’ awful. Oh, just wait!”.
The built up pressure of the delayed rip became so great he could no longer delay the assault. His back, already twisted so far around that the barrel of the bat was pointing at Muley, now got torqued around one more notch. At that impossible angle it looked to me like his back was sure to break.
Now once more Ostrowski began his grim sideway hop, eager to meet the approaching horsehide. Teeth clenched, spitting saliva, panting with desire, his size sixteen spikes stomping in the dust, he howled his evil intention. “I got it! I got it now! Look out, World!"
I knew what was happening: a voice in his head was telling him "NOW! NOW! NOW IS THE MOMENT!"
Our youthful diamond drama was almost played out!
The mighty Menlo bomber swung. The earth moved. Trees bent to the ground. Neighborhood dogs ceased howling and crawled under their houses to shiver there in the dark. Housewives slammed their kitchen windows. Far north in Canada a moose - its jaws full of dripping lily pads - lifted an inquiring head. What new disturbance was this?
Something had to give, and what gave was Ferdinand’s back. I heard a loud pop! and the Menlo slugger dropped to the ground. “My back! Oh,my back,” he cried out. “Did I nail it, guys? Did I get a piece of it?”
Now’s when the fight started
Ferdinand’s teammates poured out of the dugout and charged Muley, which stone-faced stalwart calmly removed his glove and put up his dukes to defend himself against the approaching mob of bat waving assassins from Menlo Park.
As it turned out the big slugger had indeed gotten a piece of the ball. I had watched the object of his hate shoot straight up until it was a mere dot in the blue; it continued to rise until it vanished. On that summer afternoon, although it is unrecorded in the books, the Menlo bomber had hit the highest popup in history.
As the melee swirled in the dust around the stiff-punching figure of our master of the delayed delivery. I suddenly shouted a command: “Stop! According to the rule book, the play is still in continuance!”
This formal-sounding quotation stopped the fight. The Menlo hoods whirled around to me. “Huh? Whaddaya mean? You can’t stop no fight with some dumb rule. Ain’t you got no historical perspective?”
I pointed skyward and calmly stated: “The ball is still in play. Rule X-19, (revised 1902) clearly states that ‘Play shall continue until the flight of the ball is arrested by a celestial object or until it returns from outer space.’”
Dumbfounded by this official-sounding interruption of their historic right to strike back at the forces of evil, the Menlo Park mob smacked their brass knuckled fists in their hands and waved their bats. They gathered on the mound and squinted upward, shading their eyes while searching the blue vault of heaven for their teammate’s historic clout.
Having distracted their attention, I reached into the mob and yanked Muley out to safety.
Meanwhile, Freddie and Bent Nose raced around grabbing our equipment. “What about my ball,” Freddie complained. “It didn’t come down yet!”
“Never mind that,” I said. “We’ll get it later. Trust me.”
Carrying our equipment, all four of us raced to centerfield, alerted our teammates to the happening and leaped over the fence.
Recorded for all time!
Today, two brass plaques immortalize that incident of our youth. Chiseled in the first plaque embedded behind the pitcher’s mound are the words:
From this spot Muley Muholland delivered the slowest pitch in history. It never arrived at the plate.
The second plaque, sunk in the ground at the spot where Ferdinand Ostrowski took his final rip, states:
From this hallowed spot, Ferdinand Ostrowski hit the world’s highest popup. It never came down.
Actually, that second plaque is not quite accurate. The ice-coated baseball came down next morning and I was there to catch it for the third out. Besides, we needed Freddie’s ball for the rest of the season. ##
Muley Mulholland had two pitches: a fast ball and a change-up. His fast ball was not what sportswriters might describe as a lightning bolt, No, but at least you could be pretty sure it would eventually arrive at the plate. On the other hand his change-up, or what opposing players called his snail ball, took forever to reach the batter. Time stopped when Muley threw that snail ball
Batters got unnerved watching Muley wind up his elongated frame in preparation for the delayed release of one of his tantalizing teasers.
The faultless flinger’s body seemed composed entirely of elbows and knees supporting a tiny head with flyaway ears that sometimes flapped in a high wind, and a beaky schnozz, whose magnificent protuberance he employed as an aiming device as he peered down its sloping grandeur at the batter.
The suspense of waiting for Muley's reluctant horsehide was unbearable. Batters could bend over and tie their shoelaces while awaiting his tardy toss.
How the big fight happened
On the fateful day I am about to show in its full horror, Muley was pitching against the Menlo Park Crusaders, who hadn’t lost a game all summer. The Crusaders were not ballplayers, they were a mob, a gang of street fighters and bad boys with brass knuckles in their pockets.
The Menlo Nine had never seen Muley’s stuff before. On that hot summer day it was astounding the agony those poor batters went through just waiting for one of Muley’s pitches to arrive at the plate.
The big fight started in the top of the ninth with the Menlo Crusaders at bat. We were ahead one to nothing and they had two outs with a runner on second.
Ferdinand Osrowski, Menlo's big cleanup hitter, was their last chance to score. The Menlo Park slugger hadn’t been able to touch Muley all day and I knew trouble was coming when he strode up to the plate with two away and one on. His red eyes flashed under his heavy dark eyebrows. I knew he figured for sure he had Muley’s change-up timed and was ready to jump on it.
But I’d seen what Muley’s leisurely lobs could do to these cocky power hitters. It was the waiting that drove them nuts.
Ferdinand Ostrowski’s teammates hollered insults and taunts from the dugout, razzing Muley, trying to rattle him. “Hey, Snail Nose! Put some mustard on that ball. We ain’t got all night!. Your Mom’s prob’ly still waitin’ for ya to get borned. This ain’t baseball. What’re you throwing out there, marshmallows? This is flat embarrassin’. Ya shoulda throw’d that pitch last Tuesday - maybe it’d be gettin there by now.”
On that dusty afternoon in the glare of the July sun I crouched at shortstop and waited for Ostrowski’s blast, Sweat streamed down and burned my eyes. I edged over to Freddie, a short, round little kid playing third base. I told Freddie, “I’ve seen this guy swing a bat. He can knock it downtown, but if he gets a hernia swinging at Muley’s change-up , there’s gonna be trouble. When the fight starts, I’ll create a diversion. Then you run around and grab all our equipment so it don’t get lost in the fracas. Grab our bat, the bases, everything.”
“Okay,” said Freddie. “I know the routine.”
Hubba, hubba, hubba,” yelled Miles Lang, the tall redheaded kid in center field.
“No batter no batter no batter," yelled Bent Nose Bozzo crouched behind the plate.. It all became a roaring in my ears, made me feel a little dizzy. I shook my head, splashing sweat in the dirt.
Muley wasted a fast ball, high and outside. Ferdinand Ostrowski calmly studied its approach for a long moment, then leaned back on his bat and inspected his nails as it floated toward Bent Nose Bozzo’s mitt.
“Swing, batter, swing,” screamed Bent Nose.
“Ball wuun!” cried the ump.
Ostrowski regarded the angular pitcher with disdain and spat in the dirt. “That the slowest pitch you got, you pin-headed creep? Lemme see that change-up of yours, I’ll show you what a ballplayer can do to it!”
The imperturbable flinger went into his elaborate windup, which took a couple of minutes right there, and delicately released one of his snail balls.
Spellbound under the cessation of time, we waited as the ball drifted like a child’s bubble toward Ostrowski. Red-faced, veins pulsing in his bull neck, the enraged batter pounded on the plate and stamped his size fourteen high-top brogans in the dirt sending up a cloud of dust.
Would Cosmic Forces intervene?
Now I actually feared that the Celestial Keepers of Right and Wrong - ever alert to any violation of the immutable laws of baseball - would move in and take over, perhaps to strike should their intervention be required to balance out the steady progression of Earth's happenings.
In the trees, birds ceased twittering and hopped about frantically, aware that all was not right in their avian universe. Gophers dived down their burrows.
Ferdinand Ostrowski drew back his terrible bludgeon ready to unleash forces unknown to mortal man’s primitive grasp of physics. The very universe seemed to hold its breath.
“Swing, batter, swing!” yelled Bent Nose Bozzo, pounding his fist into his glove.
In great suspense we waited. Out in centerfield, Miles Lang, whose eyesight was not that great anyway, adjusted his bifocals, brushed his red hair from his eyes and drifted back until he bumped his head on the fence and dropped to the grass momentarily stunned.
In the blazing heat of that mid-summer day, Muley Mulholland’s challenge against the eternal laws of space and time drifted toward Bent Nose’s mitt,
In the timeless vacuum, puzzled neighborhood dogs ran in circles, barking and panting in protest against they knew not what. The drone of bees altered to a higher pitch. Out in center, Miles propped himself up on an elbow and held up his glove to shield his eyes from the sun,or perhaps to protect his head against a line drive.
In the hot corner at third, unable to stand the suspense, Freddie’s nerve broke. He deserted his base and hopped over the foul line out of the line of fire.
Now Ferdinand Ostrowski’s nerve broke too. Dead set on crushing the ball into eternity. and unable to wait any longer, he hopped and scuttled toward the mound to meet Muley‘s tardy offering, Still he couldn’t reach it. Cursing and waving his bat, the muscular Crusader continued hopping his clodhoppers closer to the mound until, at last, the change-up crawled within reach.
“Swing, batter, swing!” screamed Bent Nose Bozzo.
“Now I got it,” roared Ferdinand. He drew his bat back, back, back until his bones popped, then cut loose at the ball in what I feared would be the game-winning wallop.
But no! His timing off, he was a little out in front of the ball. The friction of his swing set the air on fire. Smoke curled over the field and darkened the sky. Terrible forces of nature cried out in protest against the vacuum created by the passage of his weapon. Masses of displaced sir slammed back together to fill the void, producing a sonic BOOM!
The force of the swing tore the blackened and smoking Louisville Slugger from his grasp. What was left of the bat hummed through the air like a child’s toy and crashed through the left field fence into Mr. Smither’s backyard. I saw old man Smithers waving the smoking remnant over the top of the fence.
“You booyys,” I heard him faintly screaming. “Balls you hit over here break my windows. Then you trample my flower beds. Now you throw baaats and try to set fire to my fenncce!”
“Steerike wunn,” cried the ump.
Ostrowski grabbed another bat and pounded it on the plate, preparing for what I feared would be a cataclysmic blast.
But Muley’s next offering fooled the Menlo bomber too. Instead of the expected change-up, it was Muley’s fast ball that now rushed toward the plate at a few feet per hour faster than his slow pitch. And Ostrowski, not recognizing the rapidity of the pill’s flight, glared his contempt at the pitch and spat in the dust. He turned away and strolled over to the water fountain for a drink.
To his teammates hunkered down in the dugout sharpening their spikes, he growled, “When that poor ball gets here I’m gonna knock it clean into the next county!”
But the Menlo bomber had badly misjudged the velocity of the ball. Just as he stepped back into the batter’s box there was the soft plop of the ball nestling into Bent Nose Bozzo’s glove.
“Hey,” he said, scratching his head. “How’d that ball get here so quick? I was only gone about a hour.”
“Steeriike two,” hollered the ump.
Ostrowski buried his head in his broad shoulders. Smoke poured from his ears. He dug his spikes in deep. He seemed to grow from the earth like some massive stone flung there from outer space. His howling mouth was larger than his face. He pounded his bat on the plate in a frenzy of anticipation. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Actual tears of rage splashed on home plate.
“Throw me that creepy pitch of yours again,” he howled. “I dare ya. And I ain’t leaving till it gets here neither!”
I waved everybody back until nobody was left in the infield but me and Muley and Bent Nose Bozzo. The rest of the guys were lined up against the fence. With a look of scorn, Muley went into his windup and released the slowest pitch of his career.
Inch by inch the ball crept toward home plate, gently shoving aside stubborn molecules of air. From the field, our guys hollered "hubba hubba" and "hum-baby" and "no batter, no batter, no batter!"
Neighborhood dogs, baffled by this warpage of time in their finely structured world of "Come and go, sit and beg, fetch and return," ceased barking and began howling at this new mystery in dogdom.
Meanwhile in rage and frustration, the veins popping on his neck, Ferdinand Ostrowski crouched lower at the plate, pounding his bat, hitching up his pants, jamming his cap down over his ears, readjusting his jock.
Blackness descends on the field!
Dizzy, my head spinning in a world gone black, I pounded my mitt and backed up another couple of inches. I couldn’t understand why the infield was so dark until I realized I was holding my breath and my brain had simply shut down from lack of oxygen.
Meanwhile, the umpire, his knees wobbling from the prolonged period of stooped attention behind the plate while peering through his sweat-blurred eyes at the ball’s leisurely approach, suddenly rolled up his eyes and tumbled forward over Bent Nose Bozzo and sprawled across the plate, out cold from heat stroke.
Ferdinand reached down with one hand and dragged the unconscious arbiter off to the side and dropped him in the dirt like a pile of dirty laundry. He jumped back in the box and banged his Louisville Slugger on the plate.
“We don’t need no ump,” he bawled. “I don’t care where this next pitch is, it’s gonna get outta here!” His barrel chest heaved with the effort required to suck in enough oxygen to support his prolonged preparation for the historic swat. His voice screeched like a rusty door. “Oh, when that ball gets here I’m gonna do somethin’ awful. Oh, just wait!”.
The built up pressure of the delayed rip became so great he could no longer delay the assault. His back, already twisted so far around that the barrel of the bat was pointing at Muley, now got torqued around one more notch. At that impossible angle it looked to me like his back was sure to break.
Now once more Ostrowski began his grim sideway hop, eager to meet the approaching horsehide. Teeth clenched, spitting saliva, panting with desire, his size sixteen spikes stomping in the dust, he howled his evil intention. “I got it! I got it now! Look out, World!"
I knew what was happening: a voice in his head was telling him "NOW! NOW! NOW IS THE MOMENT!"
Our youthful diamond drama was almost played out!
The mighty Menlo bomber swung. The earth moved. Trees bent to the ground. Neighborhood dogs ceased howling and crawled under their houses to shiver there in the dark. Housewives slammed their kitchen windows. Far north in Canada a moose - its jaws full of dripping lily pads - lifted an inquiring head. What new disturbance was this?
Something had to give, and what gave was Ferdinand’s back. I heard a loud pop! and the Menlo slugger dropped to the ground. “My back! Oh,my back,” he cried out. “Did I nail it, guys? Did I get a piece of it?”
Now’s when the fight started
Ferdinand’s teammates poured out of the dugout and charged Muley, which stone-faced stalwart calmly removed his glove and put up his dukes to defend himself against the approaching mob of bat waving assassins from Menlo Park.
As it turned out the big slugger had indeed gotten a piece of the ball. I had watched the object of his hate shoot straight up until it was a mere dot in the blue; it continued to rise until it vanished. On that summer afternoon, although it is unrecorded in the books, the Menlo bomber had hit the highest popup in history.
As the melee swirled in the dust around the stiff-punching figure of our master of the delayed delivery. I suddenly shouted a command: “Stop! According to the rule book, the play is still in continuance!”
This formal-sounding quotation stopped the fight. The Menlo hoods whirled around to me. “Huh? Whaddaya mean? You can’t stop no fight with some dumb rule. Ain’t you got no historical perspective?”
I pointed skyward and calmly stated: “The ball is still in play. Rule X-19, (revised 1902) clearly states that ‘Play shall continue until the flight of the ball is arrested by a celestial object or until it returns from outer space.’”
Dumbfounded by this official-sounding interruption of their historic right to strike back at the forces of evil, the Menlo Park mob smacked their brass knuckled fists in their hands and waved their bats. They gathered on the mound and squinted upward, shading their eyes while searching the blue vault of heaven for their teammate’s historic clout.
Having distracted their attention, I reached into the mob and yanked Muley out to safety.
Meanwhile, Freddie and Bent Nose raced around grabbing our equipment. “What about my ball,” Freddie complained. “It didn’t come down yet!”
“Never mind that,” I said. “We’ll get it later. Trust me.”
Carrying our equipment, all four of us raced to centerfield, alerted our teammates to the happening and leaped over the fence.
Recorded for all time!
Today, two brass plaques immortalize that incident of our youth. Chiseled in the first plaque embedded behind the pitcher’s mound are the words:
From this spot Muley Muholland delivered the slowest pitch in history. It never arrived at the plate.
The second plaque, sunk in the ground at the spot where Ferdinand Ostrowski took his final rip, states:
From this hallowed spot, Ferdinand Ostrowski hit the world’s highest popup. It never came down.
Actually, that second plaque is not quite accurate. The ice-coated baseball came down next morning and I was there to catch it for the third out. Besides, we needed Freddie’s ball for the rest of the season. ##
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