In the Rough

I've been waiting for something of monumental proportions to happen to me so I could justify starting one of these. Yesterday the wait came to a climactic end.

As I often do on Thursdays, I was sitting on the patio of the cafe at the UMFA, eating my customary turkey panini, and otherwise minding my own business (unlike the cold, who was persistently attempting to make his business mine) when my phone began to vibrate. It was an unknown caller, which is always welcome in my book: it could be someone you know and it could be someone you don't. Either way it's something to do.

As it turned out, I did know this caller. I don't see my Uncle Ron often - maybe two or three times on a good year - but it doesn't change the fact that he is one of my favorite relations. One day he was hitting balls at a driving range. The range was such that you stood on one side of a shallow, U-shaped valley and hit balls to the other side. Some guy decided that it was too crowded on the side my uncle was on and that it would be a good idea to go to the other side. My uncle watched this happen with some concern, for the man was now almost directly in front of my uncle, and vice versa. My uncle continued driving. The man began to drive. Sure enough, one of the balls fell dangerously close to my uncle. Uncle Ron decided to return the favor and aimed a shot dangerously close at the other fellow. The other man was visibly upset and proceeded to hit a ball even closer to my uncle. Extremely upset, now, my uncle deliberately took aim and nearly brained the other man with a good shot. The man decided he had had enough, pulled an iron from his bag and began to run down the slope toward my uncle. Uncle Ron, never one to be outdone, hefted his driver and ran down his side of the slope. I never heard what happened after that except that they were both escorted away from each other and the driving range by police.

With this story in mind, imagine yourself in my position when Uncle Ron tells me he needs some "young legs."

"What can I do for you?" I ask.

"Well, I lost a driver the other day and I need a young man to help me look for it."

What would you do? I said yes - in a heartbeat. I didn't even think twice. When I finished my classes I met him at his home and we started the drive up Parley's Canyon to Mountain Dell. After various pleasantries and other polite inquiries as to the health of our respective families, we got down to business: apparently, my uncle had been teeing off and "did something he didn't think [he] did anymore. So, [he] got angry and threw his driver."

"You know," he continued, "usually you give the club a good throw into the fairway and you can just go pick it up and you're OK."

This time, however, as the driver left his hand, he realised he was standing on a bit of a cliff, and that he had just thrown his favorite driver over the edge and into the trees and brush that line the lake the shot is meant to go over. He needed me to come with him because the ravine, if you will, is such that if he died down there no one would ever know where to look.

When we got to the hole in question, we reconnoitered a bit with some binoculars he had brought for the purpose and then began our descent. From the amount of golf balls in the ravine it quickly became obvious that no one had been down there for quite some time. The bushes and fallen leaves were heavy and dense. The twigs stabbed and probed mercilessly. The going was rough. After a while my uncle bravely pronounced that he'd "never been this far" into the mix, prompting the question, how many times had he attempted this? I had been under the impression that he had "lost" the club yesterday or the day before.

"When did this happen?" I asked.

"Last spring."

He said it casually, even happily, as though it didn't immediately label him a nut.

Last spring! Six months ago! We continued the search, pushing through the trees and stepping over badger holes. At the marshy edge of the lake we combed through the tall grass and reeds carefully - but all to no avail. I was bleeding in several spots by this point. We split up, then, and I climbed the gnarled face of the steep slope, breaking my way through the thicker branches. He stayed at the bottom, examining the water's edge. At one point I thought I saw it, but it was merely the skull of a small deer.

Finally we met up and decided to make our way to the top again. When we reached the scene of his rage, we sat down on the grass.

"Well, maybe we can at least see that beaver," he said, pulling out his binoculars again and gazing toward the small beaver lodge in the lake below. We couldn't find the beaver either.

We drove home not a little crest-fallen. We tried to talk about family, but it was half-hearted and sad.

"Maybe now that we've given this a good try I can get some sleep," he said, only half-joking. The driver had been his "obsession" - his word, not mine - and I wondered what he'd do now. I guess it had been a really good driver.

He gave me sixty dollars for helping him. He wouldn't allow me to refuse. "It would have been a hundred if you'd found it." On the rest of the way home he told me how he was going to Texas next week to visit his oldest daughter's family for Thanksgiving. He was going to dress up like a turkey. The costume he'd bought had a small motor that inflated the body to more turkey-like proportions.

"My only worry, now," he said, with all of his sixty-one years of wisdom and experience adding weight to his aside, "is how I'll get that motor through air-port security without getting shot."