I decided to take the Summer off in terms of writing these Chronicles. I was not unaware of them or their need for a conclusion, however. So, I did some thinking. I am going to wrap these up in the next three parts including this one. This post is going to be a few incidents of ridiculousness that I recall followed by two more which explain how working at the club literally changed the entire trajectory of my life in a positive way. We will be straying off the course for now. I apologize for the discursive nature of this post ahead of time. Without further ado; Part 6, a couple instances of rampant criminality.

The Caddie Story
Caddies at country clubs range from 13-year-old neighborhood kids and the children of members to adults who have caddied for years and can make some nice coin on weekend mornings during the season. The kids are highly unreliable and mostly clueless. The younger caddies would forecaddie. What is a forecaddie you ask? A forecaddie heads out ahead of a group of golfers or a single golfer and stands on the side of a fairway. Their entire function is to track and locate each golfer or their particular golfer’s shots. The theory is, that if you have a good forecaddie, you won’t need to spend valuable time looking for your ball. This, in theory, speeds up the pace of play as on a busy weekend morning, a round which should take 3-3.5 hours can sometimes end up going over 4. As a starter, one of my jobs was to assign caddies to golfers for the first few tee times. If you came up to play early on a Saturday or Sunday, caddies were essentially required. A regular caddie has a much more detailed and important job than a forecaddie. Caddies carry either one or two (two makes them more money) golfer’s bags during a round. They will offer advice on shots, have distances for each hole either listed or memorized, know the speed of the greens from day to day, be able to read a putt, clean used clubs between shots, hand clubs to their golfer and keep score. If you are good, you are sought after, and you can make very good money for very little work. We had a couple caddies who were requested by name each time they were available and a slew of others that the members would begrudgingly hand their bags to. I remember seeing forecaddies and younger caddies coming off the course in actual tears because their golfer’s had been total jerks to them for the egregious sins of losing a golf ball or suggesting the wrong iron on a tricky hole. Caddie or no caddie, the golfer is either going to be shit or the shit based on their own play.

We had one caddie, let’s call him Shiny, who was there nearly every weekend. He was in his late 20’s, had a pretty cool, laid-back vibe to him and he was always friendly towards the bag staff. We liked him. When I became the morning starter after the Weasel plead my case to the new bird, I ended up talking to Shiny a lot more than I had previously. He was funny, self-deprecating and a total drug addict. Starting to see a pattern at this place yet? One Saturday he waxed on about how he planned on heading home, heading to the store, buying the ingredients needed for a good tomato sauce and just cooking and chilling all day. Sounded pretty nice! However, he left out the part where he mentioned that after doing literally none of that he planned on coming back to the club after dark to break into it and steal our tip jar. Which he did, the little scamp. He also tried to break into the register, and now that I look back on it, I believe he was successful, but because the overwhelming majority of members paid for things by having them charged to their club accounts, the plunder was paltry. He initially broke into the pro shop by breaking a window and crawling in. From there, he broke into the bag room and stole the tip jar which was full as it hadn’t been chopped up yet amongst the morning and afternoon shifts. This was a real kick in the stones to two crews who had worked their keisters off and now had absolutely nothing but their hourly pay, which was meager, and the nearly inedible staff lunch served by the kitchen to all employees rolling around in their guts to show for it. We used to call staff lunch “slop” and it wasn’t far off, but I digress. What made this particular burglary extra scandalous was that Shiny was the nephew of a member. A member who was well-liked by the golf staff and who played three times a week. He was humiliated by his nephew’s actions and didn’t come up as often for the rest of that season. I don’t know why. It wasn’t his fault. Unless he had initially prescribed the Oxy that Shiny was addicted to, he had no part in the burglary whatsoever. The club didn’t press charges against Shiny and we never got our tip money back. It pays to be the family member of a country club hot shot even if you are an absolute degenerate. Good to know!

The Lounge Burglary
Lot of burglaries, huh? This one is just ridiculous. Shiny’s burglary was sad as it was the desperate act of a drug addict trying to score. The lounge break-in, however, is just an example of fuckery and stupidity on a nearly astronomical level. The lounge where my friends and I had gorged ourselves on chocolate and Becks all Winter had a cigarette machine in the back. It also had a full bar in the Summer. Members could smoke, eat their sandwiches and drink their booze in air conditioned, classically decorated comfort all season. It wasn’t a particularly inviting room, but it wasn’t a dump either. It just sort of existed as a “boys club” lorded over by the old guard area in a club already dominated by exclusivity and controlled substance intake.
One night, a few of the neighborhood kids decided they wanted to take a closer look at it I suppose. So, they did, by breaking in and ransacking the bar. They also smashed open the cigarette machine and took out all the smokes they could carry. I have no idea why the alarm didn’t go off and now that I think back, I am not sure the lounge was alarmed. It probably was but the uber-doofus who ran the lounge probably didn’t set it before he left for the night to go home and recharge himself in his doofus chamber complete with doofus IV station and Friends box set. It was easy for the police to catch these little creeps. They made it incredibly easy. Did they leave something behind like a wallet? Did they drop a cell phone or like me, a bank statement? Nope. They proceeded to head up the 9th green, which was, and I am not exaggerating, 20 yards from the lounge and drink all the booze. This caused them to become ill and pass out. So, the police headed up to the green, found all of culprits snoozing away surrounded by open bottles and cigarette butts and proceeded to arrest them. I recall one of the members thumbing the whole thing off a few days later by saying, “it was just a case of kids being kids.” At that point, The Quiet Man turned to me and said, “one of ’em must’ve been his kid.” Probably.

These are only two instances of criminal crap that happened at my time at the club. As I have previously mentioned, every single day drug deals went down, drugs were taken, people were robbing each other, and a very small minority were just trying to make an honest buck. It is not an easy thing to do when everyone around you is basically a pirate. We would clock each other out regularly. Need to leave early? Go ahead and ask someone you work with to clock you out when they leave at the end of the night. Theft of time? Why not. People would take demo clubs that hadn’t been used in a while and sell them on Ebay. Booze was constantly going missing as were little trinkets here and there. I remember once Skinny and I were walking into the main clubhouse to clock out after a shift and he spotted a wallet on the walkway leading up to the entrance. He picked it up, took the cash out of it and threw it back onto the ground. We walked away like nothing had happened. I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it in to the front desk as since it was now light, there would have been too many questions to deal with. Most of the time, when two people are involved in a caper like that, the main villain will grease the palm of the guy who just happened to be there in order to ensure that all remain quiet. That didn’t happen because Skinny was a heroin addict. Again, see a pattern? A ton of other things happened at the club, but I don’t want this to take years and years to complete, so let’s move on. Next, I will return us to the timeline of my tenure at the club. We will pick up where I left off in Part 5, with me becoming the starter and the friendship that would change my life forever. Thanks for hanging in there with me to this point and I apologize for the hiatus. Stay tuned.