I haven't been writing about riding and walking in the park lately. That's not because I haven't been doing it; I have nearly every day. But, I have been repeating the same paths and routes, so I had little new to say. Today I took some different routes and it even spurred lots of old "Dogtown memories" so I thought I'd share a bit with you of today's walking and thinking and remembering.
I woke in the night hearing rain on my roof and got excited about walking in the rain today. When I woke it was dark and cloudy, but wasn't raining. It was, however, quite windy so I decided to walk rather than ride.
I drove over to Skinker. About 100 yards down from Hi-Pointe there is a little used bike trail which cuts into the Kennedy Forest. I decided to walk that and check out some areas where I haven't been in quite a while.
After I had walked just a couple of hundred yards along that little used trail there was a new billboard. I went over to read it and it identified this area as the "Savannah" project. It turns out that a savannah is understood as land that is transitional between a prairie and a woods. The sign says it is believed that this area was indeed a savannah in the past but was changed in nature with the importation of non-native grasses and clover and such. So, they have a 10 acre plot, running along the edge of the Kennedy Forest, between it and the golf course, and running along the back side of the Art Museum to the zoo entrance, that they are returning to savannah.
This will take many years as they must very slowly remove the non-native grasses, clover and the like. At the same time they are making seed banks of the native savannah plants that are there, and replacing the foreign plants with those native ones.
There were even photos of some of the native wild flowers which do still grow there now. I did walk the area along the trail, past that spot of the old street we used to call Lover's Lane (ran behind the Art Museum) and has been taken up now so there is no road and the area can return to its natural state. I walked all the way to the far side (east side) of the museum.
The bike trail is black asphalt with a white stripe down the middle, only about 4 ft. wide, but it was absolutely beautiful this morning since the trail was covered with leaves of many bright colors and autumn colors, and they were wet and gleaming even on the cloudy morning. They were in such contrast with the bright green (foreign) grasses in along the trail that the leaves just sparkled. It was so quiet and lovely. Not another person came along the trail in my 10 - 15 minutes walking it.
I then walked out in front of the Art Museum. That area is really a mess at the moment since all sorts of work is being done, but since I was on foot and not my bike I could get to more places and get a much better look at what's going on. Oh me oh my, the sidewalk and street IN FRONT of the museum, overlooking art hill and the grand basin are going to be simply marvelous. It is likely to be at least spring before that area is finished, but it is simply marvelous what they are doing.
I then walked down to east side of the hill (through the woods that are between art hill and the zoo), to the grand basin area, circled that and went over to Museum Drive (the street that would come down from the museum on the west side of the museum). It is closed now for repairs.
I crossed over to the golf course, and since it was a cold wet threatening morning there were no golfers, so I could walk the course along the cart paths.
That brought back great memories. I was walking along the hole that used to be # 5 of the 18 hole course. That old course started up by the Jefferson Memorial. The first hole was a par 4. Then two short par 3 holes which took one to the east side of Art Hill. Hole # 4 was the long hole across all of art hill and up and over the hill. Then one crossed the street to where I was, and the tee of then next hole, # 5 was there. It is now # 1 of the Hawthorne 9 hole course.
The hole is a very long dog leg to the right, and the green is way up at the top, where the old Lover's Lane road went. I have a vivid memory of that tee. I was playing with my mother in the mid-1950s. We played almost every day. I had an awesome start, having par on all of the first four holes. I had visions of par and sub-par dancing in my head. On the first and fourth holes, long holes, I had had lovely long and straight drives, so that morning I decided to really let go and blast a drive that would both impress my mother and start me on the way to a sub-par round.
I blasted the tee-shot and it was MISERABLE. High up, like a nine iron shot and hooking horribly to the left. Mom and I were simply astonished and watched the ball shoot straight up in the sky like I was trying to chip over the top of the arch. Just then our hearts sunk, around the bend down the hill from the art museum, came a car. The ball had now peaked and was plummeting back to earth, far off the course over the road. It look like it would come down right on the car's windshield like the coke bottle in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. Mom and I stopped breathing, and the ball bounced about 5 ft. in front of the car and went straight back up in the sky. I doubt the driver ever saw the ball. He went on not knowing how close he'd come to a terrible accident. The ball bounced twice more in the street, then hopped the curb back onto the golf course. The side of the course along the street there is still now a very steep hill toward the west (center of the fairway), so the ball rolled and rolled to the valley and turned out to be an awesome drive.
I did wonder a bit about fairness. The ball had bounced 3-4 times in the street (clearly out of bounds), but it did bounce back in and was now right in the middle of the fairway, a relatively short chip to the green and with luck, even a putt for my first birdie. I did figure that no rule says you are out of bounds just because you BOUNCE there. It's where the ball lands. So, my dreams of this great round continued. I missed the birdie, but did get my fifth straight par. I was on my way.
It tuned out my best day was not to be that one. I held par for the whole of ten holes. Then, for those who remember that great course, the 11th hole was another sharp dogleg to the right. The green is on a hill overlooking Skinker. I had a natural slice, so I decided this time I would just KILL the ball and nearly drive the green with my lovely slice.
I blasted that ball on the 12th, but rather than a slice I think that shot should property be called boomerang! It seemed like it would come full circle and hit Mom and me standing on the tee and it might well have, if hadn't started clicking around in the trees like half dozen squirrels chasing each other in the tree tops. I never found that ball and there went that game, and I even added to the misery on the 16th with a tee shot into the water on the right hand side of the fairway!!!!
That 18 hole course was really a difficult course. I played a great deal of golf as a young man and actually was quite a decent golfer, but I couldn't score on that course. I had had a low score of only 78. One weekend, playing with my Dad, Pat Palumbo and my Mom, I was in the fairway of the 18th hole in 75 and the three older folks were really cheering me on. I hit an 8 iron when I should have hit a 7 and ended up on the front fringe of the green, and the pin was on the very back edge, up on the hill top of the green. I needed to two-putt to tie my lowest score of 78, but my Dad was always the optimist and a fierce competitor and he was encouraging me on. I had been putting well that day and he encouraged me to go for that long putt. I did, blasting a putt as though it were a driver and it soared across that green and up that hill like it has eyes of its own and clunk into the hole for my lowest ever score there: a 77. I had as low as 75 other times on other courses, but Forest Park 18 was just a bear of a course and I could never score less there.
I had really thought of taking golf seriously. As a 11-12 year old I caddied at Triple A and Bob Green was the pro there. He saw me playing on caddies' day (Tuesday mornings) and thought I might come along, so he helped me out a lot. He really liked me. Fred the caddie master didn't like ANYBODY (especially not himself), but Green pressed Fred to bend the rules and let me play later afternoons if the course was empty, which it often was. So, by the time I reached high school I was shooting a good game. There was a Missouri State Junior's tournament and Bob Green always entered me as the Triple A representative. There was only one age group: 19 and under. But, it wasn't the really older kids who were the toughest opponents I faced, it was a pair of brothers, Charlie and Larry Ziegler. Many of you will probably remember Larry who went on to become a well-know pro on the circuit and won many championships. Larry and I are the same age. But it was his brother, Charlie, who was the better golfer in the early and mid-50s, and he was a year younger than Larry and I.
In those days golf tournaments were match play (you played just one other player, and the loser was eliminated -- like tennis is today), and each year I would lose to one of the Ziegler brothers. They were brutal and would try to needle the opponent into making mistakes. Charlie was better at that than Larry and I remember one year he really decided to ruin my game with nerves. We were on about the 4th hole at Greenbriar Country Club when he asked me on the tee if I ever got the "shanks" when playing in a tournament like that. He was picking on the wrong guy. I had spent all my youth watching every tough back in soccer try everything to needle my dad on the soccer field and he was like ice. I had learned that. Charlie was so completely upset with me since I was totally unflappable and his needling didn't hurt me at all. I think it hurt his game.
In the end it didn't matter. Upset or not, he was just a better golfer than I and every blasted year for 4-5 years I lost to one of the Ziegler brothers.
Oh, the memories walking that course this morning.
While walking around the grand basin yet other thoughts came to me connected with golf, but more about today and the history of our neighborhood. As I mentioned I caddied at Triple A. So did many other Dogtown boys. In the very early 1950s Triple A got a few pull carts, the little two-wheel carts with the long handles. They are still around though most carts today seem to be electric. We caddies were very upset with those carts, they were cutting into our jobs. Triple A had about two dozen of them sitting in front of the golf house and whereas in the past nearly EVERYONE took a caddie, all of a sudden they were taking carts.
We fought back. We would go over there in the night, take off the wheels and throw them in the Bowl Lake just down the street. That didn't last long, they started putting the carts INSIDE the club house at night, and none of us had the nerve to break into the club house, so we lost the battle to the carts. I never really found that behavior to be reprehensible. We were, on my view then and now, living in the real tradition of our working-class neighborhood and fighting for our rights as workers. Not that we were doing it wisely, but fighting nonetheless.
That brought me back in memory to today and what my dad and so many men of his generation would have felt about today's strike up the street at the Schnuck's store on Clayton and all the others. I know I couldn't cross one of those picket lines unless I was totally starving. Not that I want to. I think from my growing up in Dogtown more than any of the zillion books I later read, or my intimate knowledge of Marxism and such which I picked up in my work in philosophy, it was my Dogtown youth which made me a friend and supporter of the working person, and I remain that today.
It was in Dogtown, not in books, that I learned and saw how the working people struggle against the moneyed interests to better their lives, and the workers are always in the disadvantaged position. Same with government employees. So when I see the strikers, my position is first and foremost I'll support the strikers, unless OVERWHELMING evidence were to come to me to support the employers’ side. It seldom does. And if that experience weren't enough there is the image of my dad. Were I to cross a picket line, there in my mind's eye would be my dad, looking at me aghast, and asking: Son, where in the world are your roots? Where did you grow up? Did you learn nothing in the struggles you saw in the working people of Dogtown trying so hard to get social justice in the work place when they were powerless and weak as individuals, but growing in power and bargaining position in union. Yep, my intellect and knowledge of history and philosophy speak to me, but more powerful is the history of growing up in Dogtown and seeing first hand the life and place of working people in our society.
And thus my morning walks and rides. I simply love the time to be alone with nature, the trails, the trees, the leaves, birds, squirrels, ducks and geese. I love the breezes brushing my face and the familiarity of all these places I've been some many hundreds of times in the past 64 years. I love the time to think and remember, to ponder and to give thanks. I am thankful for the marvelous memories of growing up in such a wonderful place with such wonderful people, and then, too, I think of the marvels of our simple working class neighborhood being on the edge of such a magnificent park where we all benefited from the space and richness of that environment of our "backyard" and we matured and could just take such benefits for granted.
I can never wait for tomorrow's ride or walk, in which different memories and new experiences will await me.
What a privileged life. I can never get over it.
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