Dimples

  Dimples.

If we let our golf-hero tee up a perfectly spherical golf ball - no dimples - and hit it with a driver, and then magically replaced that same ball with a dimpled ball and replayed exactly the same drive:  the dimpled ball would go approximately 200 yards further than the plain spherical ball!!  Isn’t that amazing??  Those tiny, tiny dimples, which seem just RANDOM - they don’t seem to be worth anything - change the drive from a 100 yard drive to a 300 yard drive!!
 
Or, remember that short story by Ray Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder”?  (first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952, it is the most re-printed sci-fi story of all time).  It was the story about the guy who went back in time recreationally, but accidentally crushed a butterfly while he was in the distant past.  When he returns to the future, it is completely altered on account of the tiny, seemingly insignificant fact that a butterfly’s life was taken.
 
 

You know, it’s easy to become discouraged in our present circumstances.  No one has any money, jobs are scarce.  America, it turns out, isn’t so heroic after all.  We’re destroying the planet, but we’re afraid to think about that because we don’t know how to stop.  And there are so many, many people whose lives are so miserable that it’s easy to think that we could work 24/7 and donate ALL that money to good causes, and it would be less than a drop in the ocean, because the need is so vast.

I think we should change our perspective.  Instead of seeing the vastness of the trouble and being overwhelmed, let’s just see individual, tiny ways we can make a difference.

I was listening to Speaking of Faith on NPR this weekend.  They had Rachel Naomi Remen on.  She’s a physician who’s one of the first physicians to really concentrate on the mind-body connection.  Her grandfather was what she describes as “a flaming mystic”.  This weekend she talked about how, for her fourth birthday, her gift from her grandfather was to be told the story of how the world was created.


He told her that, in the heart of the sacred darkness, suddenly there was a light.  And that light was in a sacred vessel.  But, she said, because it was a Jewish story, there was an accident!!   The vessel was dropped, and the light shattered into a thousand thousand pieces.  And we’re here to gather the light back - it’s lodged deeply inside each of us.

Part of the point of this story is that we are exactly what is needed to heal the world.  Each one of us.  And Rachel Naomi Remen asked herself, “how would I live, if I believe I was exactly what was needed to heal the world?”

Now, THERE’s an interesting perspective!!  Instead of being overwhelmed by how much there is to do, believe that the small thing that you CAN do is EXACTLY what is needed!!

I think those small things are WAY smaller than we realize.   I think we are still caught up in, “oh, but I can’t really donate EVERY Thursday evening to working at the soup kitchen!!  I’m WAY too over-scheduled as it is!”

RIGHT!!!  We ARE way too over-scheduled!!  But, what if we didn’t change anything on our schedules - but we changed the WAY we did everything on our schedules?? 

No, no, no!!!  NOT a big change - only this:  what if we just connected with everyone we encountered.  What if, instead of looking inside our heads at our spinning thoughts, we just made eye-contact with the other humans we encountered, and just smiled. 

What if, just by being pleasant and acknowledging the humanity of the others on this planet, we made everyone else’s day just one iota better - by just sharing a smile?  Nothing larger than that.  Nothing larger than a butterfly.  Or a dimple on a golf ball. 

I think that could make an enormous, profound difference.

Coming next:  River View Miniature Golf, St. Charles, Illinois

Golf Holes

The actual golf hole.

Don’t you wonder how THAT came about??  I mean, there are gazillions of games that hit balls with mallets.  Hockey.  Croquet.  Polo, for Pete’s Sake!  But, I think there’s no other game that hits balls into holes in the ground!!

Most people (or most people who think about this stuff) believe that our modern golf game originated with Scottish shepherds, who were knocking stones into rabbit holes on the site of what is now the Old Course at St. Andrews.
 

 
Man, I hope those guys were mindful of the rabbits - not to bonk them on the head when they were trying to come out of their homes!!   And another thing:   I live in Evanston, where we are OVER-RUN with rabbits.  Why have I never seen a rabbit hole??

 

And what about the term, “rabbit hole”??  (Meaning a difficult situation).  This expression comes to us from Alice in Wonderland, on account of Alice GOT to Wonderland by falling down a rabbit hole.  Man, are the rabbit holes more robust in the United Kingdom, or what??

The first reference to a hole - an actual hole that was part of a created golf course - is from the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club.  In 1625 some Aberdeen local talks about some military exercises “betwixt the first hole and the Queen’s (sic) hole.”

The holes were standardized by the St. Andrews course.  And the size (4.25 inches in diameter) was decided on because some people at Musselburgh had just invented, in 1829, the hole-cutter!!!  And that was the size that first hole-cutter made the holes!!   That actual first hole cutter, by the way,  is actually on display in the clubhouse at Royal Musselburgh.  Wow!! 

You know, I was teaching a class last Saturday, and I went to the bathroom there.  On the inside of the stall door, there was a sign that said, “Absolutely NOTHING other than toilet paper in these toilets!”  MAN!!  I thought, so, I CAN’T pee after all??  I mean, seriously!!  If I had had post-it notes in my purse, I would’ve asked that question on the post-it note and stuck it to the sign!!

It really bugs me when people write signs that are unclear or misleading.  Unless it’s amusing.  Like, the bathrooms at the Metra Station in the Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago.  Man, those signs are hilarious!!  On the inside of the stall doors there are signs saying, “Beware of stolen purses!”  WOW!!!  ‘Cause, what do the stolen purses do??  Come and mug us???

But, those are no match for the sign that Aaron saw this week.  He was in Colorado, playing a couple minigolf courses near Rocky Mountain National Park.  They were driving on a mountain road, where there was mountain on the right hand side of the road, and a sheer drop into the abyss on the left side of the road.  And during that scary stretch, there was a sign that said, “no left turn”.  I think he laughed and laughed at that!!

OK, enough about signs.  Back to golf holes.   The only other thing I want to cover today is:  why are there 18 holes??   And once again, the answer is St. Andrews.

From 1872, the British Open golf championship was held annually in rotation at Prestwick, St Andrews and Musselburgh.  The contest was always over 36 holes and it was, therefore, three rounds when it was held at Prestwick (which at that time had 12 holes), two rounds when at St Andrews (18 holes) and four rounds at Musselburgh (9 holes).

Then, in 1882, Prestwick expanded its course to 18 holes.   Then in 1891, when the Honourable Company built Muirfield, they created 18 holes there.  Since they sponsored the Open, the championship moved with them from Musselburgh to Muirfield. With the three foremost clubs in the world using 18 holes, the norm for a golf round was set.

St. Andrews was given control of the Rules of Golf in the UK in 1897.   But the Rules of Golf didn’t stipulate an 18-hole round until 1950.

Coming next:  More Congo River Adventure Golf!!

Felt

 

Felt.

By some time in the 1930s, all the minigolf courses that weren’t part of the Tom Thumb franchise, or the Bob-O-Link franchise were in search of a putting surface.  That’s because those two franchises were the only ones that could afford to use the patented cottonseed-hull surface developed in the late 1920s.  (The royalties were steep.)

People tried all kinds of crazy things, including compressed feathers, ground sponge mixed with cement, and oiled sawdust.  Carpet would’ve worked, but it was way too expensive, and hard to maintain.

In the end, goat-hair felt was the surface that won.  It’s the surface that I putted on for most of my childhood.

Felt is arguably the oldest man-made fabric on this planet.  They’ve found felt remnants in the tombs of Siberian Tlai mountain horsemen dating back to 700 b.c.   Felt is easy to make:  just take fibers - any kind of fibers - get them wet and smoosh them together.

St. Clement, who became the 4th Bishop of Rome, is credited with inventing felt.  (So, he invented it for HIS part of the world, is what I’m thinking.  I mean, if they’ve found felt dating from 700 b.c. there’s no way St. Clement could’ve invented it, actually!!)

Anyway, St. Clement stuffed his shoes with flax fibers to make his shoes more comfortable, walked around with sweaty feet for a couple of weeks, and then realized he had a piece of finely crafted felt in his shoes which he could remove and use for something (if he could stand the smell - ew!!!)  After he became Bishop he set up a bunch of felting operations (hopefully no longer using the SHOE method for the moisture and compression).

It was his relationship with felt that made St. Clement the patron saint of hatmakers, who use felt extensively to this day. 


Mercury was used for awhile in the making of felt for hats.  But mercury poisoning causes tremors and hallucinations.  The term “mad hatter” really came from the debilitating effects the mercury had on the hatters until mercury was finally removed from the process late in the nineteenth century.

 
So, goat felt.

You know, there’s a restaurant in Door County, Wisconsin that has goats living on the roof.  Al Johnson’s in Sister Bay.  Here’s  a YouTube video of the goats on top of the restaurant: 

One summer while I was working in Door County, a bunch of tourists were having breakfast at Al Johnson’s when one of the goats (who was at the time tethered up on the roof) fell OFF the roof!!  The FURIOUS goat dangled right at the level of the restaurant windows, bouncing off one of the windows and freaking everyone out ‘til someone went out and hauled him back up to the top of the roof.  He was fine.  But he was really MAD!!!!

I think a goat on the roof is a really great, green idea!!!  Wonder if my condo association would go for it??

Anyway, back to the goat hair felt putting surfaces!!

Eventually outdoor carpets were invented and replaced goat-hair felt, and now it seems like all the courses with money are going to astro-turf.   I’m still hoping to find a real grass course someplace!!!

Coming next:  Congo River Adventure (FINALLY - back in Illinois!!)

Mini Golf Literature's Common Ancestor

Yesterday was my day to go to the library.  Most of the web-sites I’ve been consulting on the history of minigolf have one book as their source:  “Miniature Golf” by John Margolies.  As far as I can tell, this is the one and ONLY book ever written on the subject of miniature golf!!

I was amazed to find it in the card catalog at the Evanston Public Library, and even MORE amazed to find it on the shelf!!  So, imagine my surprise when I pulled the book off the shelf, only to realize that its cover was made of ASTRO-TURF!!!  I kid

you not!!!  It’s hilarious!!  Seriously, the library just put their weird plastic wrapper right over the astro-turf, just like any other book.  Only, because it’s covered in turf, and now the turf is kinda smashed, it seems like matted fur, making the book feel a lot like that Book of Monsters that Harry Potter had to buy!!  You remember, the one that came with a belt around it so it wouldn’t bite you!!

This book is great - it talks about what fierce competition there was between minigolf courses in the 30s.  They had jungle-themed courses with live animals:  a bear was tethered on one course, a monkey at another.  They were both trained to snatch balls that people had putted!!  
 
 

The Caliente course in Los Angeles had a pool and sunken gardens.  And it had a castle built on top of a natural geyser that spewed steam 100 feet into the air.    Denver, Colorado, had an indoor course that was the first venue of any kind to use neon light tubes submerged in pools!!  Man, what an amazing effect!!  I would like to see that!!  I would like to SWIM in a pool like that!!!

 

John Margolies theorizes that a lot of “theme courses” allowed people to escape from the grim economic realities of the Depression - and immerse themselves in minigolf reality!!  There was a course in Hewes Park (an L.A. suburb), “that had dragons and Chinese junks floating in the water hazards, and an ‘eight piece orchestra of genuine Chinese musicians playing Chinese classical and jazz’.”  

 
Courses that contained miniatures of famous world architecture allowed people to feel as if they’d traveled, during a time when travel was too costly for the majority of people.    I guess that explains the number of Eiffel Towers on courses around the country.

Courses also appeared in some crazy locales.  There was a course installed in a graveyard in California - using the tombstones as a hazard!!  Which reminds me,

there is a course in the Chicago suburbs that’s in the basement of a funeral home!!  If you’re having your funeral there, you get (well, I guess your relatives get) a free round.  I wonder if you can have your coffin be a hazard??  OK, a little over-the-top??  Sorry.  Aaron and I keep saving that course for a day when it’s raining.  So, hopefully we’ll get there before much longer!!

There were minigolf courses built in prisons (the New Hampshire State Prison was one) and at the Lincoln, Nebraska State Hospital for the Insane.  (What a title!!) 

The Ile de France was the first ship to install a course on board.  I haven’t been on a cruise ship as a passenger - I wonder if minigolf is standard on them now??

In any case,  courses sprung up everywhere, and particularly in vacant lots, where many felt minigolf was saving the neighborhood from Depression-era blight (while others felt the minigolf was dragging the neighborhood further down - on account of people playing all night and swearing over their missed shots all night!!)

Although most felt that minigolf was the hope of the Depression, and it did provide 100,000 new jobs at a time when the country clearly needed them, one industry was hurt by the minigolf boom:  the movie industry.   The studios actually discouraged their stars from being seen playing minigolf - they were so threatened by it.  Box office receipts plummetted 25% during the heyday of minigolf.  And yet, at the height of that fight, Mary Pickford built her own, surreal, Max Ernst-inspired course.  Jackie Cougan also built his own private course.  And Fred Astaire, as well as many other stars, were photographed playing minigolf.

Eventually, the studios gave in and began converting failing movie theatres into minigolf courses!!
 
You know, I keep thinking that minigolf is on the rise again on account of it’s cheap, and the economy is so awful right now.  I can’t help but think a rise in minigolf is healthy - simply because of the human interaction required to play.  Seriously, it’s cheaper than the movies, and you get vitamin D.  What could be better??

Coming next:  yet MORE Dollywood (how long were they THERE???)

The Evolution of Miniature Golf

In 1938 Joseph and Robert Taylor introduced into minigolf a complex course with obstacles.  Their fantastical course included a castle, a wishing well, and a windmill.  (All the things that I’ve thought of as standards in minigolf!!)   It was so popular that the brothers began to export it, building replicas of their course in towns and cities across the US.  

During the Great Depression, miniature golf was considered "big business" and one of the few businesses that could be successful in that economic climate. Over 25,000 courses were built during this period. It became the most popular entertainment for people of all ages.

There were stories of 12-year-old boys, during the Great Depression, that for an initial investment of 90 cents would set up a miniature golf course in a vacant lot and turn a 1,000% profit over the weekend.  I can’t tell if these stories are true, but I do know that people were making courses out of junk and spare parts: tractor tires, old tin cans and rusted down-spouts were all re-purposed for Depression-era minigolf.   Some of these courses were built underneath billboards, so that the light that illuminated the billboards at night would light the minigolf course for free!!  People played at all hours of the day and night!!

Six thousand Tom Thumb courses were built during the depression. They were the first "brand" of miniature golf.  It was said a Tom Thumb course could be built and open to the public in six days.  (You’ll recall that the Tom Thumb courses were the ones patented by Garnet Carter.  If you don’t, you can go back and read our post from June 28th.)

But, the Taylor brothers were making the Tom Thumb courses a thing of the past.  By the early 1940s, Joe and Bob formed Taylor Brothers, and not only built courses all over the United States, but also supplied obstacles to others who were building courses independently.  During both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, many a G.I. played on a Taylor Brothers prefabricated course that the U.S. Military had contracted to be built and shipped overseas.  (That is just amazing to me!!  Those of us who came of age protesting the war in Vietnam just never dreamed that minigolf was in any way involved in that war.)

You know, I ordered a pizza on-line for the first time yesterday.  I hadn’t ordered ANY food delivery in a number of years, on account of I got out of the habit when I was living in my coach house.  I couldn’t even get mail back there, so how on earth could I have gotten something delivered??

Anyway, when my brother was visiting, he had said, why not order pizza?? Well, I finally got around to it yesterday.   There’s a Pizza Hut just a couple blocks from my house, so I went on-line to see their menu (and to get their phone number) and realized that I could just ORDER the pizza on-line!!  Who knew?!?!?!  It was for me AND my cousin (who eats sausage - ew) and he wanted me to get a half-veggie half-sausage pizza.  When I clicked that selection, I realized that they were ILLUSTRATING our order every step of the way!!  THAT was remarkable!!  Our pizza-picture suddenly was half nasty sausage!!  When we added Pepsi - a bottle of Pepsi appeared in the picture - everything we ordered was in the picture!!  It was amazing!!


Or, was it really sad??  Was it on account of a lot of people can’t read any more??  Which made me think of an article I read a couple of years ago about how the development of a written language fundamentally changed human society forever.  This article talked about how a written language, which was processed primarily in the left-brain, really stimulated left-brain activity in society as a whole.

Now that I’m talking about it, it seems as if this may have been really STRETCHING to reach its conclusions.  It went on to say that the demise of matriarchal societies had something to do with the rise of written language.  And further, that the computer mouse was the hope of the future, because using a mouse requires using both hemispheres of your brain - because you’re doing spatial tasks as well as written language tasks.

Well, even if it WAS a slightly exaggerated article, it’s interesting to think about right-left hemisphere issues.  And also, think about this:  the Tibetan written language was developed specifically in order to write down the teachings of the Buddha!!  Kinda makes you want to run out and learn Tibetan, doesn’t it???

But, back to the step forward in minigolf which brought us out of the literal miniature golf with decorations, and into the era of decorations as obstacles.  We’ve recently played a number of courses that were really throw-backs to the 1920s.  In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the trend in newer minigolf courses isn’t to be more like those courses. 

I have to say, I am still a fan of the unique and the goofy.  Give me Darth Vader with Anime eyes and a bar-be-que skewer any day over a franchise with identical windmills!!

Coming soon:  more Dollywood Adventures!!!

All illustrations ©2010 Michael James.

Astro Turf

 
NOTE: You can click on the embedded photos to make them larger.

Astro Turf.
 

I don’t think I’d ever played a minigolf course with Astro Turf before this summer.  It takes some getting used to.  The courses with Astro Turf seem to be in better shape than the other courses, though.  And the balls roll truer on Astro Turf.
 

You’d think Astro Turf was invented for the Houston Astros - for the Astro Dome, right??  In fact, during the 50s and 60s there was a lot of interest in improving the physical fitness of young people.  Remember those awful President’s Physical Fitness tests we had to do during the Kennedy Administration??

 
 
In any case, the Ford Foundation was sponsoring studies to find the perfect urban sports surface for schools.  Chemstrand worked from 1962 to 1966 on this project.  The criteria for these surfaces were foot traction, cushioning, wear resistance, weather drainage, and flammability,  among others.


 

In 1964, they installed a synthetic turf called Chemgrass at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island.  This was the first really major installation of synthetic turf.  In 1965, when the Astro Dome was built, they renamed the turf Astro Turf.  Now we use Astro Turf as a general word meaning any kind of artificial turf, even though there are gazillions of other patented turfs.  Kinda like we use the word Kleenex.  Or Xerox.  Or, possibly only old people use those words generically.  I notice my students don’t talk about Xeroxing stuff any more.

(I can’t help mentioning this:  “Astroturfing” is a new political term!!  I just learned this in researching this blog entry!!  It means to use professional political machinery to make something appear to be a grass roots politcal movement!!  Who knew???)

Chemgrass, the developer of Astro Turf, was a subsidiary of Monsanto.  MAN, what a strange company THAT is!!  On the one hand, Monsanto is responsible for:  DDT, Agent Orange (I know, Dow Chemical made it, too), Bovine Growth Hormone, Saccharin, Round-Up, and Round-Up ready soybeans.  AND they’re working on patenting pigs!!!  (OK, ok, it’s complicated to explain, but they’re using a breeding technique on pigs that they hope will allow them to claim a patent on the resulting pigs).

 
On the other hand, they’ve been the corporate sponsor of a huge number of attractions at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.  Including:  the Magic Eye Theatre at Epcot, the Hall of Chemistry, and Fashions and Fabrics through the Years at Disneyland.  Most hilariously, they were the sponsors of the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland.

The House of the Future opened in 1957.  It had a 10 year run, during which time it had more than 20 million visitors.  It was a mostly plastic house, and featured insulated glass walls, picture telephones, microwave ovens (come on, in 1957!!), electric toothbrushes, plastic chairs, ULTRASONIC DISHWASHERS, atomic food preservation, and plastic sinks with adjustable heights!!  When they finally decided to demolish it in 1957, the wrecking ball just bounced off it, and they ended up having to get a crew to demolish it by hand.  It was nearly indestructible!!

 Remember the phrase “Better Living Through Chemistry”??  I guess mostly Hippies used that phrase.  Well, it wasn’t Monsanto’s phrase - although, I think it should’ve been.  It was DuPont’s.  The original slogan was, “Better Things for Better Living . . . Through Chemistry”.  That was DuPont’s slogan from 1935 through 1982.  In 1982 they dropped the “Through Chemistry” portion.  Perhaps because Hippies had co-opted it!!!

 
Anyway, Astro Turf.  You know, putting surfaces are a huge part of the history of minigolf.  The reason courses could be built so cheaply, and consequently be affordable to play, was artificial putting surfaces.  Still, I’ve got to say, I’m beginning to long for a real grass minigolf course.  I wonder if there is one??

Coming soon:  More adventures in Dollywood!!

All illustrations ©2010 Michael James

Miniature Golf's Beginnings

Although the first miniature golf course in the United States was built in 1916 (by James Barber of Pinehurst, North Carolina)  I think most people agree that Garnet Carter was truly the Father of Modern Minigolf.

Garnet Carter was the first person to patent a game of miniature golf.  He patented it under the name “Tom Thumb Golf” in 1927.   And it really was kind of an accident. 

He owned a hotel at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, and he built a regulation golf course to draw customers to his business.  (HA!!  I originally typed costumers!!  Let’s imagine if he wanted hundreds of costumers playing golf at his course!!   That would be festive!!)

Anyway, near the clubhouse he built a putting green.  You could putt while waiting for your tee time, or to warm up, or whatever.  Carter noticed that people were spending WAY more time than he had anticipated on the putting green before finally teeing off.   He jokingly referred to this little putting green as his “Tom Thumb course”.

It was so popular that he decided to charge a fee for playing the little “Tom Thumb course” and even the fee didn’t keep its popularity from increasing.
Eventually he created a whole 18 hole course in miniature, and got his wife, Frieda Carter, to decorate it with fairies and gnomes (ah - the fabulous garden gnomes!!  What AREN’T they good for?!)

His first course, at Lookout Mountain, and the other Tom Thumb courses that were built subsequently to be like it, were all actually MINIATURE golf courses.  You know, they had miniature dog-legs, and miniature roughs, and miniature sand traps - just like regulation golf. 

Man, I was driving out to DeKalb to visit my dad yesterday.  I was driving on I-88.    And, on the side of the road, there was a line of geese - walking on the shoulder!!  Seriously, there must’ve been 200 of them.  Adults, teenagers - all single-file.  Kind of trudging along.  Some of them were awfully close to getting in the far right lane- I was worried about them.  The cars were whipping by at 85 mph (what can I say - Chicago drivers).  But, what was going on there??  Has anyone ever heard of such a thing??  If they were travelling in a group, why weren’t they flying??  It seemed somehow so sad - I felt as if they ought to be carrying sad little goose luggage to their new homes or something.

I couldn’t stand not knowing, so I just did some on-line research.  This is amazing!!  It turns out, geese can't fly while they’re molting, which usually takes place in mid June to mid July!!  Which is right now!!!   So, the goosey parade was on account of it was molting season!!!  Who knew??

The web-sites I visited said that geese are grazing animals, so they often like to walk in order to graze, but I don’t think that’s what was going on - I don’t think there’s much good grazing on the shoulder of the express-way!!

So, back to the minigolf history.  

So, Garnet Carter THOUGHT he was building a golf course for children, but, to his surprise the course was taken over by adults, who enjoyed the fairy-land setting and enjoyed the challenge and hilarity of putting a ball through the miniaturized fairways.

Carter began manufacturing courses for national distribution under the patented name Tom Thumb Golf.  By 1930 there were over 25,000 miniature golf courses in the U.S.  In 1932, he sold the rights, and used the profits to open Frieda's Rock City Gardens. 

But just think about it:  in 1927 Garnet Carter invented minigolf, and just 3 years later there were 25,000 courses in the U.S.  That’s really amazing.  Especially considering the Stock Market Crash happened in October of 1929.  You know, that means there were on average 25 courses built every day during that three year period!!  Whoa!!!

Coming next:  guest golfing in DOLLYWOOD!!!!!

All illustrations ©2010 Michael James.

The Evolution of Golf Balls

 
 
It’s about the balls.

I remember spending long summer days trying to figure out what was inside a golf ball.   We’d find old ones in a big vacant lot every now and then.   We’d get one that

had a cut in it, peel off the white outer layer and then start unwrapping the rubber bands.  This part went on FOREVER!!!  I only remember getting to that liquid-filled center ball ONCE in my entire childhood.  Usually we’d get bored before then!!!  Also, the rubber bands that wrap the core are thinner and more fragile than the rubber bands you put at the end of your pigtails.  So, there was a lot of breakage and a lot of searching for the next loose end!

As far as I can tell, golf began in the 1400s.  In Scotland.  At that time, golfers used wooden balls and wooden clubs.  But in 1618 the “featherie” was introduced. MAN!!  This was a ball with a leather exterior, filled with - I kid you not - exactly one top-hat full of feathers.

Sheesh, doesn’t it seem somehow like a magic trick gone awry???  OOops, a rabbit was supposed to appear inside the top-hat, but all I got was a hat full of feathers!!   Wrong magic word??   Sigh.  Guess we could use them to stuff a golf ball!!!

Anyway, they’d boil down the feathers and cram them all into the leather, and stitch it up.  As the whole mess cooled and dried, the feathers would expand, and the leather would shrink, causing the ball to be compact and hard.  The outside was

then painted, and - wahoo!!!  It was a golf ball!!!

These balls were expensive.  An experienced ball maker could only make 2 or 3 in a day, so they cost the equivalent of $20 each.  Man, it made people motivated to find their balls on those long slices!!!

In wet weather, the stitches would rot, and the ball would often split open after hitting a hard surface.  Even so, the “featherie” ball was the standard golf ball for about 230 years!!

Oh, man, today on the way to my sing-along (I run a sing-along for the elderly on Saturdays) the illuminated light on the corner of Sheridan and Bryn Mawr had a bunch of burnt out bulbs (or whatever it has - LEDs?).  So, instead of saying, “Turn Left on Green Arrow Only” it said, “Turn Left on Gr . . . Arr . . . Only”.  HA!!! 

That totally reminded me of the Mutant Enemy credit - you know, the card at the end of Firefly??  The Joss Whedon card with the mummy walking across the screen saying, “Gr . . . Arr!”

OR, remember Bobby Henderson??  He was the scientist who wrote to the Kansas State Board of Education saying that he believed that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, and they should include THAT in the curriculum of Intelligent Design. 

He wanted to make the point that correlation does not imply causation.  So he said that global warming was caused by the lack of pirates in the world.  When there used to be a lot of pirates, there wasn’t global warming.  So, perhaps if we all talked like pirates, the temperature would go down.  He created world “talk like a pirate” day (September 19th) and claimed that the world temperature dropped on that day.

Of course, he came up with Pastafarianism (right - that’s what you are practicing if you worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster) before there was such growing

awareness of modern-day pirates.  I’m not sure he would’ve chosen the pirate theme if he’d written his letter in 2010!!

ANYWAY, I kind of expected we were not supposed to turn left except when pirates  came along and directed us!!!

Right, it’s about the balls.

In 1848 the gutta-percha ball was invented.  It was most often called “the guttie”.    The guttie was cheaper than the featherie, plus, golfers could repair their balls by rolling it on a “smoothing board” after each round.

But, of course, there were slackers.  There are always slackers.  The slackers neglected to smooth their balls after each round, and soon their balls were completely covered with dents from the play of the game.  And it turned out the dented slacker balls flew WAY better than their more compulsive friends’ smooth balls.  This is how they figured out that all those dimples made the balls fly more true.  (Doesn’t it seem as if there ought to be a moral here - about slackers being good??  I wish I could think of it!!)

It was in the 20th century that multi-layered balls were developed - the kind that we disected as kids - with the white layer, the rubber band layer, and then the rubber ball filled with liquid.

On January 1, 1932, the golf ball was standardized in the United States at a maximum of 1.620 oz., wih a diameter not to be less than 1.680 inches.

And now, featheries and gutties are sold at auction for ridiculous prices.  Go figure.  There’s an on-line golf-ball museum, if you’re interested.  They have photos of the various types of historical balls.  Check it out:
http://www.golfballmuseum.co.uk/ishop/818/shopscr55.html.

Coming next:  Sugar Grove miniature golf!


Firefly, the Mutant Enemy logo, and Mr. Owl © of their respective owners.
All illustrations ©2010 Michael James.

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!