Sometimes, there’s a man…

Very few people are truly memorable. Lots of people try to be memorable these days, but fail miserably. If you dye your hair purple and put the contents of your tackle box into your face and stretch your earlobes and have more scribbles than a men’s room stall on your body, you just sort of blend in at this point. Most times, somewhat nondescript people are much more memorable.

It’s hard to define exactly what makes people truly memorable. For instance, way back when, a fellow student walked up behind me and sucker punched me in the face, because he mistook me for somebody else. Since I had nothing but a bloody nose entered into evidence, your honor, I might be forgiven for mistaking him for someone punching me in the face deliberately, and I decked him. But for the life of me, I can’t remember his name, or even a rough approximation of his face. You’d think a pop in the beezer would make a person memorable, but it didn’t.

But there was this one guy. I can’t remember his name, but that’s understandable. I never knew it. I would have been afraid to ask him what it was, and it was never offered. He was the Golf Nazi.

When in lived in SouthCoast Massachusetts, there was this little golf course a few miles from my house. It started out as nine holes, just a modest rolling pasture with some holes drilled in it with flags stuck in them. It was really well-run. I don’t mean well-run as a golf course, although of course it was certainly that. I mean it was well-run compared to any enterprise, public or private, that I’ve ever encountered. How well? I really think the whole world would be better off if it was run the way this place was run.

Unlike more elaborate golf courses, this place had a modest “clubhouse.” I feel a bit silly even calling it that. It was a small, one-room shack with a shed roof. It was, like everything there, orderly and sensible and neat as a pin. There was a man behind a counter inside. He sold a few items besides handing out Lilliputian pencils and scorecards to fib on. A refrigerator with cold water and soda. Golf balls. Little packages of snacks. The place was set up to do one thing, basically, and not only do it well, but do it relentlessly. You went there to play golf, and they’d get you out on the links doing it (badly) quite efficiently. Unless they didn’t.

You see, there was only one way to go golfing there. You had to present yourself to the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter was memorable, hooboy was he. He wasn’t young then, so I assume he’s dead now. I know his worldview is, because I never encounter it anymore. Even though decades have intervened, and I only saw him a handful of times, I’ll remember him forever. I could pick him out of a lineup. I might be able to mimic his  voice. I think I could paint him in oils.

It wasn’t that he had any distinguishing physical characteristics, or anything like that. No goiters or humps or anything else to hang your hat on. Medium height. Medium build. A senior citizen, but one of those people who just look like a young person who got older, not someone that had gone to seed.

You always had to deal with this guy, because he was the only person who was ever behind the counter. He owned the golf course. Think of that. When was the last time you dealt with a business with the owner standing behind the counter? It used to be almost universal in places like sandwich shops or butchers or dry cleaners or whatever. Now it’s all franchises and moody minimum wage workers behind the formica firewall between you and what you want.

So this guy owned the golf course, and he ran the golf course. Hell, he lived there. He had a nice-looking house at the edge of the property, near the road. It was as immaculately cared for as the golf course. His only help were his children, that I ever saw. His daughter was pretty, and a very talented landscaper. The place started out sort of barren, just lots of grass and a few sand traps. But she worked tirelessly to put little oases of plants and ornamental trees all over the place. The gardens were laid out in a fashion I’m familiar with. There was always something to look at. When one plant finished blooming and went by, another plant would take up the slack, right up until the late fall. The place got really nice after a while. He had a son or son-in-law, I can’t remember which, doing the heavier work, mowing and seeding and mucking out the retention ponds and so forth. The place ran like a Swiss watch.

So you’d go into the (snicker) clubhouse, and present yourself at the counter, and tell the man behind the counter that you wanted to play golf, and that you had moolah enough to do it, which wasn’t much as rounds of golf go. Then that man would look at you, wordlessly, a blank expression on his face, no hint of what he was thinking. And more than occasionally, he’d simply shake his head and say, “No.”

I witnessed it more than a few times, so I know it’s not an urban legend. He would just say, “No,” nothing more, and that was that. He didn’t feel the need to explain himself, or argue, or listen to any argument. He’d just say no, and when they inevitable flummoxed reply came his way, he’d say nothing more than, “Because I said so.”

Few people understood the whole concept of a firm no. They’d try to start arguing or cajoling or threatening the guy. He always looked impassive, but more than once I heard him tell people that they couldn’t play today because he said so, but if they didn’t close their trap and leave, he’d ban them forever. Occasionally he’d explain that he owned the place, so he didn’t need to offer an explanation, which was a kind of snake eating its own tail explanation in and of itself.

It was always obvious to me why he said no to people, although they never seemed to figure it out on their own. If you were a male wearing a shirt with no sleeves, you had no chance. People wearing sneakers tried to sneak past the golfing gorgon, but never made it. If you looked disreputable in any way, or inebriated, acted unruly, or had unsalubrious slogans on your clothing, you had no shot. He told people to leave, and they did. He never had to threaten to call the cops or anything. Somehow or another he projected the inner force he possessed that made him so memorable. You left because he told you to.

What that man was demonstrating was freedom of association, and an iron backbone. The concept of freedom of association is a little fuzzy, at least legally. It’s never explicitly mentioned in America’s founding documents. The First Amendment talks about the right of people “peaceably to assemble.” In a way, that’s a positive concept. Peaceably refusing to assemble is a little further down the line from that. Who you’re not required to hang out with is as important as who you are, I guess. The stern man at the golf club certainly thought so.

As a practical matter, the cranky man behind the counter didn’t relish the downstream effects of being forced to welcome anyone clutching money. He knew by experience, I’m sure, who would replace the divots we all hack out of life’s golf course, to stretch a metaphor. Instead of enforcing the rules of his little empire after the fact, he preferred to avoid problems before they got a chance to be a problem.

We could use more men like the golf nazi. We could use a government that allows you to be a golf nazi. I won’t hold my breath while waiting for it to happen.