The First Miniature Golf Courses and Thoughts on Prosocial Behavior

In 1926 John Ledbetter and Drake Delanoy built a miniature golf course on the roof of a skyscraper in New York City’s financial district.  This led to an era of evening-gowned golfers playing at 3 a.m. - with champagne and glamour in between putts.  Soon, many hotels boasted roof-top courses.  Fred Astaire was one among many of their enthusiastic celebrity patrons.

By 1930 there were over 150 roof-top miniature golf courses in NYC. 

As far as I can tell, those courses are long gone, although there are scads of them in New Jersey.   (Although seemingly new).  Atlantic City seems to be the current place for roof-top golf.

I was hoping to be able to find roof-top minigolf here in Chicago and be able to review it for this blog, but no luck.  There may be some private holes, but nothing public that I can find.

You know,  if we went back to making miniature golf courses with real grass there’d be incentive to build more - as part of the green roof-tops movement.

That was one of the things that happened in 1926 when Ledbetter and Delanoy starting building rooftop mini-golf courses:  they stopped using real grass.  Instead they made putting surfaces using crushed cottonseed hulls and oil, dyed green with a product called “Grassit”!!   HA!!  “Grassit” - that makes me laugh!! 
 
These roof-top courses weren’t like the crazy, fantasy-oriented courses that came next.  They were simple putting greens with simple obstacles.  But they still created the element of festive interaction that I love so much about miniature golf.

You know, I was reading an article on-line the other day about what makes a successful marriage (having had bunches of unsuccessful ones myself).  Actually, I was reading a review of the book, "For Better: the Science of a Good Marriage," by author and health journalist Tara Parker-Pope. 


What struck me about this book was how important she thought really little things were in a marriage.  She said that the pat on the back, the “thank you”, the smile in the morning, were some of the things that mattered most to a marriage’s survival. 

I think she had scientific data to prove it!!

I’ve recently been thinking about how important those things are in everyday life.  Our planet is so over-crowded, everyone is so stressed.  It’s so important, when we’ve just slammed into someone hastily reaching for the same box of cereal in the grocery aisle, to look them in the eye and smile and maybe let them have the box we were reaching for and take the box right behind theirs.  

I was thinking that making an effort to do little thoughtful things everyday - and, really, just eye-contact and smiling is a GREAT beginning - might be the social lubrication we need to keep this old rusty world spinning a couple more years.




 

 

And I think miniature golf is really a great setting to practice.  From the simple thoughtfulness of letting a faster party “play through” to the generosity of complementing your team-mate’s brilliant putt - it’s all a great opportunity to contribute positive energy into the world.

And it’s a great place to get to practice the skill of acknowledging others’ humanity.  For instance, “WOW!!  Did you see THAT!?!?”  shared with a stranger over an amazing sight.   That moment of sharing humanity with another is the human magic that we often discount as unimportant.  But it’s the wonderful human magic that we truly need to take a moment to honor.



Trix cereal and the Trix Rabbit © General Mills and Nestlé.
All illustrations ©2010 Michael James

In our next episode: Par-King!