Connecticut

The Christmas Tree Mission

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Over the weekend my family and I got our Christmas tree. It’s a beaut. Nice and full, smells fantastic, strung up with lights it illuminates the study. We love this year’s tree. On top of everything, it was exceedingly easy to get. There is a small farm down the street from us that sells trees only one or two weekends a year. This is because the farm is, as I said a second ago, small. Once they sell out, they sell out. So, we got lucky this year as there were plenty left. Last year, we were not so lucky. We waited too long and when we went down to pick out our tree, the cupboard was empty. Woe was us. My wife did what modern millennial wives do. She went on Facebook, searched around her community and mom pages and found a place in the town next to ours that had plenty of trees left. You picked your own, cut it down yourself and tied it to the car yourself. For these reasons, the price was more than reasonable. So, we piled into the car and headed out to get our tree. We were not prepared.

The place was about 25 minutes from our house, way out in the hinterlands of our neck of the woods of Connecticut. When we arrived, we noticed that we were the only car and the farm seemed to be hidden behind a rather enormous hill. It was a cold day, but we were bundled up and the kids were thrilled with the prospect of getting our tree. Nice and sunny, blustery and crisp. We headed up towards the farmhouse and around the back where there was one of those machines that definitely has a name that I just don’t know. Ya know the ones I am talking about; the machine that wraps your tree in plastic twine. Anyway, there was one of those machines, a rack of hand saws and a guy sort of hanging around. He was the owner of the farm and explained the situation to me.

Farmer: “Hey, guys. Listen, there’s not many trees left. In fact, we weren’t sure we were going to be open today and we’ll probably shut down in a couple hours. But whatever you find out there is yours.”
Me: “….Ok…. Is it worth it or is there nothing left?”
Farmer: “No there are trees out there. Just not many and not very full. You are welcome to take a look.”
Me: “So, it’s worth it then? I just don’t want to take the kids up over this big hill in the cold if there’s nothing left, you know?”
Farmer: “Yeah, I get it.”
Me: ……
Farmer: ……
Me: “Alright, dude. Just give me the saw.”

And from there we headed up the hill. It was a substantial little climb for my wife and myself so you can imagine what it was like for a 2- and 3-year-old. They were troopers though. I have to hand it to them. Out of the entire time we were out in the field, which was probably about 40 minutes, they gave us a good 3-3.5 minutes of decent behavior before they lost it. After we crested the hill, we were finally face to face with the fact that this may have been a bad idea. I am guessing there were about 15 acres of rolling, hilly fields in front of us. Trees? In theory, yes. We almost headed back to the car at that point, but we were already there, and we’d be damned if we’d let our better judgement win the day. We pressed forward.

To say that there was a definite shortage of trees would be an understatement. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure these people had even planted any trees by the spotty nature of where they were growing. All of them looked pretty ratty. None of them were full and healthy. They looked like they had rough lives. Divorced, unemployed and fighting addiction. These trees hadn’t spoken to their kids in ages. If you listened closely, you could hear them gently sobbing. I think I heard one of them cough. Anyway, we went on looking for the family Christmas tree. For some reason, it seemed to get colder and then as if like clockwork, the whining started. They were cold. They wanted juice. They were hungry. They were tired. They were bored. I was with them in spirit, but I couldn’t show it. Since my wife had picked the place out, I could see that she was starting to feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault, but she was starting to get annoyed. She also doesn’t do well in the cold. The woman sleeps under a fleece blanket and comforter in the Summertime. I kicked it into high gear and left the family in the dust as they were slowing me down. I needed to find a tree, any tree.

There were now other groups of people out there with us. Each with the same look of bewilderment and frustration on their faces. Had we been duped? Were there ever trees there? Were the farmers essentially “harvesting” us with a false advertisement for cheap fir trees? All possibilities were on the table at this point. I should also mention that the terrain was a real pain in the keister. These were not well-kept fields made for folks to go traipsing through. These were quintessential New England fields in the late Fall, early Winter. Overgrown, dead, brambly and thorny. They were difficult for my wife and I to trudge through as adults so you can imagine what it was like for the kids. That is when we realized that they were falling every four or five feet. You’d hear a yowl and look back and there’d be a man down. I raced up a little hill where I saw a cluster of trees that seemed half-way decent. I raced as I knew it was a matter of time before the other groups of suckers spotted them and then it’d be game on. Game on with a group of angry, cold yankees each armed with a hand saw. I got to the top of the little hill and looked back down into the fields. What I saw was absolutely astounding. Sporadic groups of people slowly making their way through the fields, stumbling, swearing and yelling. That’s when I spotted my family.

Have you ever seen Gettysburg? Or The Patriot? If you haven’t, I suggest you do as they are both highly entertaining flicks. During the battle scenes, scores of uniformed men walk in tight lines determinately towards each other. Here and there, men will scream and drop as they get hit by either musket or cannon fire. Very historically accurate to 18th and 19th century infantry warfare tactics. That is what my little family looked like. There they were. The three of them, close together moving in the same direction. Every once in a while, either my son or my daughter would let out a loud “AHHH!” and they’d go down. My wife, in the middle, would stop and lift them up. Much like a soldier picking up a flag after the standard bearer had been brough down by enemy fire. They would move on together another few feet and then there’d be a scream or an “OHHH!” and another would go down. My wife, the non-com of this squad all the while urging them forward. “C’mon! Let’s go!” “Get up! Keep moving!” This was going on in the middle of a field with other small groups of people doing similar. To this day, it was the most hilarious thing I had ever seen. Horrible, but hilarious.

I cut down the least diseased-looking tree I could find and began to head back down the hill. I went down the opposite side of where I had come up after seeing that my family was making their way to the right around the hill heading back towards the main path that led back to the farmhouse. As soon as they came into view, I saw my daughter walking while crying loudly and my wife hurriedly moving to catch up with her with my son under her right arm like a baby pig. He was crying too. My wife was probably crying on the inside. I noticed that he was only wearing one shoe. I yelled down to her about the shoe situation and she responded with, “I DON’T CARE! WE’LL BUY HIM NEW SHOES ON THE WAY HOME!” Now, this woman scowls at me if I buy a bagel for breakfast during the week. She is not a cheapskate by any means, but she is conscientious of the family finances and doesn’t go in for wasteful spending. So, when she suggested that we buy him new shoes rather than spend another minute on that farm, I knew she had gotten to the end of her rope. I got down the hill quickly and traced their steps back and found his shoe. We reunited and headed back towards the farmhouse together.

Farmer: “There they are! Hey, you guys got a good one!”
Me: “Yeah it sure is something else.”
Farmer to my daughter who was sniffling and crying a little: “What’s wrong there?”
My wife: “Her hand is bleeding from falling down so much.”
Farmer: “Oh.”

By this point, we were freezing cold and tired. The kids had stopped crying because I promised them happy meals. Our mission was over. It was accomplished. The tree itself, was nothing to look at. It wasn’t all that full and definitely had some sorry branches there and there. It was lopsided as well. We got it home, strung it with lights and decorated it. It ended up being the healthiest Christmas tree we’d had in years. Lost no needles, stayed nice and green and we ended up loving it. Once I had tied it onto the roof of the car, we began our journey back home. It took a while to warm up enough to get to the point where we could actually speak about the ordeal without our teeth chattering. After a few minutes of commiserating over the conditions and situation. We were relieved to have gotten it out of our systems. Smiles were creeping back. The kids were giggling, and all was right with the world. That is when I took a hard right turn to get back on the main drag that would bring us home, only to have the tree fall off the car.

The Christmas Tree Mission

The Country Club Chronicles Part 7 – Beginning of the End

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I am going to wrap these chronicles up over the next two parts but first, I must apologize. After recently reading back over what I have already written, I realized how much I left out of the story. I experienced how discursive reading these chronicles is first-hand and frankly it left me sort of sour with what I had done. As I alluded to back in one of the previous parts, perhaps one day I will write a book about my time at the club, or at the very least a fuller, more accurate relating of the story. So, accept my humble apology for the slipshod nature of the chronicles thus far and without further ado, let’s get this thing finished.

In order for any of the next two parts of these chronicles, this one included, to make any sense, you are going to need a small breakdown of what was going on in my life at the time. First of all, I worked at the club for way too long. What was maybe a two- or three-year seasonal job custom designed for teenagers became something I worked well into my early 20’s. While all of the friends I had made working there had moved on in their lives, I remained behind. I wallowed in self-pity. I made an art of feeling sorry for myself. I became a master of blaming other people and other variables for my current situation. Which was in a nutshell, an early 20 something who had been thrown out of college for simply not showing up, who lived at home with no prospects and an absolute adoration for booze and generally being a sub-human lout. I surrounded myself with like-minded droogs and soothed my subconscious unhappiness with more and more beer. My good friends were graduating college, getting big-boy jobs, getting decent apartments and some of them were in committed relationships. I secretly envied every one of them. I became more and more convinced that my life was going to end up being something that fell between “punchline” and “tragedy”. I had grown up with actual ambition and goals and for some reason when I hit my late teens, I put them all on the back burner. I did do a couple things that I was and still am very proud of, but that is for a different series of recollections from my younger days. I always had a solid belief that eventually things would work themselves out, but I had no idea when they might. I completely let go of trying to be in control. It was almost as if I had decided that I needed to allow chaos to take over my life nearly completely in order to “get it out of my system”. At the time, I never would have admitted that. Today, it is plainly clear that regardless of how I justify my few-years long lapse in desiring to be a valued member of society, it was both a curse and a blessing. I cannot, for the life of me, explain why I decided to take a break from anything even remotely resembling forward momentum. Especially when I was at a time in my life when forward momentum is what I should have been solely focused on. So, as I am accustomed to do, I have compiled a list of things which aided my nose-dive into dereliction of purpose and spiral of embarrassing self-indulgence.

  1. I lived in a neighborhood with 12-15 bars and restaurants within walking distance. Most of the bars were dives. Even the “nicer” ones were replete with degenerates. Townies who were perpetually on the verge of making “big moves” yet are still working the same barstools in those gin mills today, and suburban ex-pats who wanted to dip their toes into the elusive yet ever-flowing river of dreck which is an essential part of the bar scene. One Halloween, my neighbor and I decided to head out to the bars in order to see what the neighborhood was up to. It was a Tuesday night and therefore we figured it would be busier than normal due to the holiday, but far from Mardi Gras. We ended up at a bar which is arguably the worst on the strip in terms of clientele and ordered some beers. There were two middle-aged people dancing to the juke box just off to our left. The man was dressed as a clown and had running make up from his sweat soaked wig running down his face and leaving streaks on his shiny red and blue shirt. The woman was dressed as a French maid and she wore some of his makeup as well as they were not only dancing, but basically mauling each other at the same time. We noticed that they would stop dancing briefly from time to time in order to tap the shoulder of a young lady sitting at the bar. They were checking on her and periodically buying her drinks. We assumed that she must have been their daughter and then instantly felt nothing for pity for this girl who was being made to endure this horrific embarrassment at the hands of her sweaty, drunk parents. The bar tender kept feeding her shots of Dewars and she was slurping them down hungrily. It made sense. Who would want to be sober for this nightmare unfolding before them? When we decided to leave as we had had enough local culture, we glanced back to look at the girl at the bar in order to get an idea of what was going through her mind. It was then that we saw that the girl had Down Syndrome. Now, I do not know if people with Down Syndrome are allowed to drink that much, or at all. I am simply ignorant when it comes to this stuff. But the idea of getting piss drunk with your slam-pig spouse while you “look after” your special needs daughter by getting her drunk is absolutely disgusting and frankly, sort of evil. That was my neighborhood scene.

    2. Fear. I was basically afraid of growing up and becoming an adult. I was always terrified of the prospect, and I became far too comfortable by always being far too comfortable. I lived at home at this time and my parents were incredibly supportive. They saw what was happening and required that I pay my own way essentially and they pushed me to cut the crap and move forward in my life, but in the end, you can’t move a horse that doesn’t want to move. And so, even with all of their counsel, love and advice, I managed to continue my dip-shittery. I have gone over this part of my lifetime after time and frankly, I think I was no different than any other young man aside from one defect. Namely; egotism. I had always been smart enough in order to get myself out of whatever situation I found myself in. Granted, I was young and hadn’t lived enough life yet to make that claim but that is what youth is. Self-aggrandizing delusion and the belief that things will be fine because bad things only happen to other people. I eventually learned that sometimes, lousy circumstances are inescapable and if you don’t have a support infrastructure in place in order to see you through moments and times of adversity and sadness, then good luck. As I fell deeper and deeper into my own decrepitude, that sense of “things will be fine” grew more and more shadowy until the point where it was nearly invisible. Woe was me.

    So, there I was. In my early 20’s and working three jobs. I worked at the club, I worked at a liquor store and I worked for a caterer. There were a few days when I would have to be at work by 6 am a the club, 12 pm at the store and 6-7 at a catering gig which would last until 11 or 12. They were long days. They were only made possible by the fact that I was young. If I had to do that now, I don’t think I would keep my sanity for more than a week or two. My first college had kicked me out for having terrible grades. I did not receive these grades because I was stupid or because my work was lackluster, I received these grades because I just stopped showing up. So, in a way, I actually was stupid. I pissed money away on loans and lied to my family about my “progress” and trajectory. Each lie I told or each time I fell flat I turned to the slugs in the bars which had become my good friends and ran deeper into a hole of nauseating self-pity. This hiatus from life and subsequent exile onto the island of misfit drunks was completely self-imposed. No one had done this to me other than me. I adopted the persona of the self-deprecating but otherwise pleasant drone who was just happy to have a warm place to sleep and a couple of drinks to get through the day. It wasn’t me at all. I was not that guy but the more and more I played the part the more and more I realized that no one ever sets out to be that guy. They become that guy by doing exactly what I was doing. Eventually enough time passes and before you know it the facade is the reality. I needed to get out before it was too late. While that may sound overly dramatic, I was friends with plenty of middle-aged folks in that neighborhood who were completely caught up in the web that is the dive-bar scene. Complete with functional alcoholism, occasional hard drug use, perpetual legal problems and estranged family. I needed desperately to get out.

    I was at the club for a few more years after my Winter as the Weasel’s gopher. As my friends moved on in their career paths they no longer returned to the club for seasonal work. They had actual jobs, internships and gigs that had more promise. They, for lack of a better phrasing, grew up. I was made the afternoon starter after our longtime starter decided to retire. He was an ornery old bastard for sure and I to this day can’t say anything bad about him, but I can’t say much nice about him either. He was dealing with serious prostate cancer at the time and looking back it makes sense that he was normally pretty cranky. I had crawled my way up to lower management. I still had something like four or five bosses at any given time and I sure wasn’t making manager or assistant manager money, but I did get a raise in money and in status. Now, members didn’t just throw me their filthy golf clubs expecting me to chisel mud and sand off of their irons. We would interact in a more sophisticated and transactional way. It was in their best interest to be on my good side as since I determined which groups went off when. I could slide someone in between two groups here and there and also, not charge them for playing if I felt really generous. As the afternoon starter, I was tasked with logging in either all of the rounds from the day or at least the rounds that I oversaw when I took over for the morning guy at 11 am. It was nearly $400 dollars a round for a member to play 18 holes with three guests and two electric carts. It was around $100-150 for a member to play with their family with two electric carts. If you decided to walk it was free and pull-carts were available for $15 a round. While I was forming new relationships with the membership, more and more of my friends fell by the wayside. Each year, new faces would show up on the bag staff. New faces would come up to learn to caddy and new faces would attain full-membership and begin to play golf regularly. The old guard was dying off, literally. Some of the members had passed on and a lot of others simply left the club. At the time (pre-2008) an influx of hedge-fund bro’s and their families inundated the club. They wanted a grander clubhouse. The older members didn’t think it was necessary. So, the board did what it needed in order to force a vote in their favor by pushing the old guard out with higher dues that could be easily paid by the younger wave of new members. The clubhouse was then slated to be torn down and a new incredibly ostentatious edifice erected in its place. It was a season of change at the club. The old cart barn, bagroom, pro-shop and lounge were all going to be torn down.

    As the starter, I had a pretty easy gig. I would log in when different groups would make “the turn” (finish the first 9 holes and begin the next) and tell people when to tee off. That was basically it aside from charging the rounds to individual member accounts. Now that these folks needed to be in my good graces, they went out of their way to be a bit more personable towards me. I had been there for years at this point and now they had to know my name. Not because they wanted to, and a hell of a lot of them didn’t know it even after years of cleaning their clubs while at the same time wearing my uniform shirt and name tag. It was because each member that came up to play was required to speak to me in order to check in and therefore, I got a much better feeling for who were the good ones and who were the lousy ones. I got to be friendly with a couple of them and was genuinely pleased to see them when they would come up to play. I started doing favors here and there in terms of charging a little less per round by logging in a guest as a family member and things like that. I did these on my own and eventually the members benefitting from the low-scale fraud would cast me a knowing glance and a smirk from time to time. I knew that nothing would come of these favors, and I wasn’t doing them for networking purposes. I just wanted to be a nice guy. By this time the Weasel was long gone. He had lit out a season or two before my final season at the club and was replaced by one of the nicest guys I had ever worked for. The new Bird was making a case that he should be the permanent Bird and the interns came and went. Days went by and I became more and more convinced that this existence as a low-level peon was to be my lot in life. Until one day, I struck up a conversation with a member who would quite literally go on to change the entire trajectory of my life. Allow me to introduce you to, The Professor.

The Country Club Chronicles Part 7 – Beginning of the End

The Country Club Chronicles pt. 4 – Enter The Weasel

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What can you say about a guy whose nickname pretty much says it all? I had known The Weasel for two years by the time I started to work directly for him in the pro shop after the close of the golf season. He was a decent enough player and people seemed to get along with him well. The bag staff had more interaction with him than with the other pro’s as he was designated to be our direct boss. For that reason, we all had a pretty good idea of who he was. A typical assistant pro. Pray tell, J.M., what is a “typical assistant pro”? You had to ask, didn’t you? I will break them down for you.

1. The Intern – Interns are college students that are majoring in golf sciences. I have no idea if “golf science” is a thing but it sounds cool, and I just made it up so let’s run with it. These guys are either unpaid or get a little stipend so that they can buy soap, toothpaste and club apparel from the pro shop. Normally they are housed at the club and fed by the club. These kids would come to us wide-eyed and full of excitement and by the end of the Summer they’d leave desperate to get back to school. I can understand. College-aged young men (I am sure there are female interns as well, but we only ever had guys) are not hard-wired to kiss as much ass as is required to hold a position of rank at one of these places. They have long days for little to no pay, and at the end of their hitch have only experience as the one by-product of their virtual indentured servitude as a reason for having endured it in the first place. Most of these guys were great and Hayseed was one of them. He would eventually return to the club after his year as an intern as the second assistant pro. A southerner, good golfer, incredible boozer and all-around good guy, he was universally liked at the club by members and staff alike. We had some others as well who were good eggs. We also had some born-again Christian kids who came to us. They were fine but a little tough to read. Once, Hayseed and a couple other guys and myself took two of our holy rollers to a bar. After about a half hour of solid drinking, I noticed that one of them had disappeared. The other, sat at the bar and drank diet coke. He looked like he was carrying three pounds of heroin taped to his leg and had been stopped at the border by Interpol. Nervous doesn’t begin to describe this poor kid as he sat there sweating into his diet coke while the rest of us pounded down Jameson and draught Budweiser. I went looking for our lost little duckling only to find him in the nearly empty restaurant portion of the place on his phone with his mom. I think he was talking to her about temptation. I instantly felt nothing but revulsion towards this little toad. Now, twenty years since, I admire him. Nevertheless, not a great way to get in good with a bunch of guys who call a dude named The Weasel their boss, but we gave him his space and then proceeded to avoid him for the rest of the season. Interns are OK in my book.

2. The Assistant – These guys are good golfers, there is no doubt about it. There is a ranking system in a club or municipal course of assistants. 1st, 2nd and then the others along with the interns. The head pro sits at the top. The first assistant takes care of the pro-shop, scheduling, the other assistants and sometimes the bag staff. They are the head pro’s second in command. The second assistant is the sergeant of the operation and delegates jobs to the bag staff, other assistants and is usually in charge of the interns. All of them teach golf lessons to the membership. Like in every industry, some of them are good people. Spicoli was a good guy. He was honestly one of the best bosses I have ever had. A couple others were nice guys as well. Irish was a good guy. Red was a good guy. The Rook was a sad sack. A lot of random names from my ever-fading memory. A lot of them, however, weren’t exactly winning any humanitarian awards. A friend of mine from college who ended up working at the club for a season or two told me a story about an assistant who worked at a club that he had worked at in high school. The assistant gave my buddy advice on life in the most assistant pro way possible. He took him aside and said, “kid, you only need the 3B’s in life to be happy. Booze, broads and barbiturates.” He might be right but I sure as hell don’t want to find out. I am married, I like beer, but I haven’t slid into the hole of downer addiction luckily. You have to feel for assistants. It is a transient life. As an assistant who works in the northeast, you will be moving at least once a year. When the weather gets too cold, you will be heading out west or down south. For this reason, a family, solid roots and all of that jazz can be exceedingly difficult for these guys to establish. I noticed a lot of them are gamblers as well. Perhaps the nature of the business lends itself to sports betting as there is always a group on the course at any given time thinking of ways to make each shot, each hole and the entire round “more interesting.” I don’t know. I just know a lot of these guys are heavy betters. Assistants are the backbone of a country club, and they know it. They tend to throw their weight around here and there but that is to be expected. Since they were generally close to us in age, we all got along relatively well.

For the most part, assistants are alright. We usually got lucky with some decent ones, and I was friends with a couple. It’s like anything else; you’ll get some good guys and some bad guys. I am trying to rack my brain to remember if we ever had a female assistant. I swear we did, and I think I sort of remember her. If we did, she was short lived. The golf world is very much a male dominated slice of the cosmos. For that reason, most of our pros and most of the members who came up to play regularly were men.

The Weasel fell into category that was truly unique. He was a decent enough golfer, who treated the staff really well. But he was also a degenerate gambler and a functional alcoholic. So, when he and Hayseed got an apartment together, it was like adding chocolate syrup to milk. Or in this case, grain alcohol to rubbing alcohol. Perfection! Hayseed once drank over 20 beers in a three hour stretch just to win a bet for the rest of a Subway sandwich from his roommate, the assistant superintendent whom I called Hacksaw. I was there. It wasn’t pleasant. By the end of the night when we went to head home, he was unable to speak and just put his hand up to let us know that he had registered that we said we were going to leave. Hayseed drank so much on a nightly basis, that once while we were hanging out at his house, we spotted a gentleman of the street walking by collecting bottles and cans. We asked him if he wanted some extras, and he was more than happy to take them. When Hayseed opened the front door, the stairway that led to the second floor where his apartment was, was quite literally piled with garbage bags full of cans almost all the way up the stairs. The collector’s eyes nearly exploded out of his head. This was the motherlode. It would take him three trips on his Huffy back and forth from Hayseed’s place to wherever he lived in order to collect all the bags. Hayseed is a great guy, and I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but I hope he is well. I also hope he is also on vitamin supplements for liver health. The Weasel and Hayseed lived together for a full season I believe. This was because The Weasel was going through a divorce. I can’t blame his wife. Whenever she would call looking for him, I was instructed to tell her that he was “running errands on the course.” In actuality, he was in a sport’s bar on the other side of town opening up his book and watching multiple televisions to keep an eye on his business. We’ll revisit that again down the line.

While trying to figure out how to cover the Winter where I worked in the pro-shop and the experience of working for The Weasel, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to break this post up into two parts. The first, an intro to the assistants and a little background on The Weasel. The second post will get into the weeds with what went on that off-season. So, I apologize if this post wasn’t as juicy as you thought it would be. It gets better moving forward. No one wants to open a post that takes an eternity to read and for that reason, you are just going to have to wait for the next installment. The Weasel … Part Deux!

The Country Club Chronicles pt. 4 – Enter The Weasel

The Country Club Chronicles – Intro

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When I was a young man, I worked at a country club. I was a “bag boy”. Which meant that my co-workers and I were in charge of the bag room. We would pull golf bags and stage them on golf carts for members when they came up to play. We would also clean their clubs upon completion of their rounds and put them back into the bag room. It was a tipping job, so the Summers were hot, long, labor-intensive but very lucrative. Eventually, I would rise to the illustrious rank of “afternoon starter.” Basically, the person who tells you when to tee off. This was not because of my bag room prowess, but because I was a totally besotted lout with the entirety of my twenties ahead of me to figure things out. That meant, that the heights that I aspired to were what would normally be reserved for bored retirees. Boy, did I waste a lot of time. Anyway, I will not name the club nor any of its members or staff in this or any future installment of my story. Not because I care about the club or want to protect the membership, but because a lot of the members are lawyers and if Better Call Saul has taught me anything; it’s that they’re an ornery bunch. I plan on explaining what the country club life was like for a lowly peon such as myself over the next few posts. We were privy to all sorts of juicy gossip, criminal incidents, scandals etc. In short, it was a wild place to work.

Again, I will not name the club as it still exists. However, it is in Fairfield County CT. Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest places in the country so good luck trying to figure out which club. There are a bunch. You can then imagine the membership was a veritable “who’s who” of local richies. Which is fine. Everyone is entitled to some fun regardless of their bank account. I am not going to dive too deeply into the politics of these places as that is not the purpose of these stories. Honestly, I was just thinking about some of the lunacy I witnessed at my time there and figured it’d be fun to write about. In the interest of full disclosure, I worked there nearly 20 years ago. So, some of the details are getting foggier with the passage of time and ever-increasing number of whiskey and sodas.

In thinking about how to start this series of posts, I had a difficult time figuring out in which order I should present the material. As a teacher, it is natural to me to want to set some background information before I get into the proverbial meat and potatoes of the subject. So that is what I will do. Let’s meet the cast of characters.

  1. Me. I come first because it’s my blog. Bag boy
  2. The Cardinal. One of my best friends to this day. Bag boy
  3. Mincent J. Narco. Friend. Bag boy.
  4. C $. Friend. Bag boy.
  5. Skinny. Friend, drug addict, brilliant. Bag boy.
  6. The Quiet Man. Friend, drug addict. Bag boy.
  7. The Bird. The head pro.
  8. The Second Bird. The guy who replaced the first bird.
  9. The Weasel. Assistant pro, bookie. His nickname at the time was literally “the weasel.”
  10. Spicoli. Assistant pro, California guy, one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. Universally loved.
  11. Hayseed. Assistant pro, southerner, good friend. I have never seen anyone drink as much as this guy and not need to go to the hospital.

First off you have to know a few things right off the bat. Any job that is a tipping gig is going to attract some absolute degenerates. Our men’s locker room attendant, most of the cooks in the kitchen, some of the servers and a couple of the bag room guys were all completely whacked out on Oxy. Once the tips dried up it became heroin. There was a guy who’d come to the club, park in the employee lot and sell Oxy and H out of his car to the assorted cadre of junkies. There would be a steady stream of kitchen guys and other employees that would head down to the lot and sit in his car for five or ten minutes and then hop out in much better moods than when they had hopped in. Nice, huh? We ourselves were not angels. We used to have a game where we would take a staff baseball cap, and everyone would write the name of whatever drug or booze they had on themselves or in their cars from the night before on a piece of scrap paper. We would then reach our hands in and whatever you pulled out was what you had to do. I think there was a “?” slip that meant you had to do a little of everything but thank God no one pulled it. The Quiet Man used to smoke crack in the staff bathroom in our cart barn (place where the golf carts are kept.) I remember watching Skinny nod off in the range-picking cart after snorting a little wax baggy of heroin. A lot of other substances and their abuses took place on that property day in and day out. Some by the members. I’ll get to that later.

If you have never been a member of a country club or even been to a country club as a guest, let me say that Caddy Shack isn’t too far off. Everyone that works at these places is a kiss-ass. They have to be. Were there members that we legitimately liked? Of course. Generally, that wasn’t the prevailing feeling. So, some of the times we were pleasant because we genuinely wanted to be. Most of the time we were just going through the motions of being a droog at a place that we legally wouldn’t have been allowed to be at without our uniform shirts and employee numbers.

The Members
Membership at these places all have one thing in common. Money. You have to be wealthy to afford the initiation fee and the mandatory fees each year which include dining and using the club’s facilities a certain number of times. I’ll never forget when I became the starter and had to log in rounds for the day. I was in charge of billing and a round of 18 with two carts for a member and three guests ran about $350. I was floored. These people were already spending bookoo bucks on just being members in the first place. It was at that moment that I realized how low on the socio-economic food chain I actually was. I sort of started hating these folks at that point. Pure jealousy. Along with a boatload of cash, you also need one of two things:


1. The necessity for a nice course / tennis facility. This is usually always for business purposes. It makes sense.
2. A complete lack of a personality. The members who were actually personable and funny were few and far between. Most of them were basically buying friends and a place to hang because left to their own devices, they probably wouldn’t make it work elsewhere. Also, there were a good number of folks who were members because their friends were. Let’s face it, joining a country club is like voluntarily heading back to high school. Not because you will learn anything or build a potential for a better future for yourself, but because you like the idea of an insular little hole that you can crawl into and be surrounded by moles of the same tax bracket.

As always, there are exceptions to every rule. Some of the members were genuinely fun, interesting and warm-hearted people. So, let’s catalog these folks now.

1. The Hedge Fund Guy – Usually young, either ex-frat guy OR science fair type with a young wife and either a baby on the way or a couple already crawling around. These guys usually can’t play golf or tennis all that well, but they really don’t have to. These are the guys who go out of their way to let the bag staff and basically anyone else under 40 that will listen know how “fucked up” they got last night. I never understood this. We were in our late teen’s early twenties and half of the staff had started their days or finished their nights doing Schedule 1 narcotics before these guys had even had their coffee. However, we had to pretend that they were totally badass because ya know, tips. I remember running into one of these guys at a bar once and we had a drink together. He then asked if I wanted to smoke weed. At the time, I didn’t smoke since I never really liked it. That being said, I thought it would be a cool story, so I said sure. We went to his Lexus, and he clumsily rolled a joint and we proceeded to smoke it. At that point, he went on to tell me that he was worth 7 million dollars. Good for you? I got out of there tout suite and headed back to my friends who proceeded to ask which one of us had been giving or receiving the oral sex. I guess they picked up that he was coming on to me. I certainly didn’t. I do recall him staying away from the club for a little while after that and going out of his way not to make eye contact with me when he returned. Maybe he did want some hanky panky but unfortunately for him I wasn’t giving off any “have at it, big fella” vibes to him that night. Anyway, these hedgies are wealthy, young and some of them are perpetually high or drunk. Kind of dangerous in a nerdy way. Would they tip? Yes. Sometimes big.

2. The Middle-Aged Family (with teenage kids) – One would have to assume that this was the natural progression from hedge fund youngin’ to middle aged golf enthusiast. However, I noticed that most of these folks were lawyers, doctors, business owners and CEO’s. These people were probably the most innocuous of the bunch and I understand why now. As a middle-aged man with a family myself, I simply don’t have the energy to be a jerk anymore. They would come up, play, be relatively pleasant to us and then head back to their enormous McMansions and drink bottles of wine that you can only get at auction. The issue with these folks was their kids. Some of the staff knew and went to school / hung out with their kids. This actually ended up working to my advantage. If I found out through the grapevine that their kids were nightmares, I would be the clean-cut, All-American boy scout they had always wanted. If their kids were little rockstars, then there wasn’t much I could do aside from simply existing. I, at 19, was a great contrast for them. So, when little Madison or Colton had fucked up royally at school or at home, they could look at them and then look at me and say, “well, Colton may have sodomized that muskrat to death after eating mushrooms he found on the bus, but at least he’s not this loser.” I learned how to be whatever the customer, in this case the membership, wanted at any given moment. I learned to how to work people. It was an invaluable education. Did they tip? Yes. Normally $2-5.

3. The Old Guard – Antique gentlemen and their antique wives with their antique ideas about how to treat the help. We were very much, “the help” to them. These folks had been members since the Star Spangle Banner was written and they made sure to let all of us know that. These members ranged from incredibly kind, to absolute dipshits from the farthest reaches of the dipshit jungle. I got along with these folks just fine. Again, they helped teach me how to work people. I was the grandson that didn’t call as much as they wanted. I was the guy who reminded them of themselves back when they were my age. I was also the guy who went out of his way to call every woman over 75 “Miss” on purpose. I was the darling of the geriatric set. However, I did see them treat a lot of staff members atrociously. So, I knew that I was essentially swimming with sharks every time I waded in the AARP waters. In the end, I never got bit. One old gentleman used go out of his way slip me a few hand-rolled cigars he’d buy on Arthur Ave. in the Bronx once a week. Here’s the thing; I didn’t smoke cigars. Again, I was whatever the member in front of me wanted. Did they tip? Rarely. Cigars and life-advice that was obsolete years before any of us we were born.

I could go on and on about the membership and their sub-groups. I could give a description of the facilities and grounds. I could tell you what the food was like. None of that would enhance the reading of these posts though. Maybe one day if I write a book about this time in my life, I will do a better job with the color commentary. Now, who’s ready for a series of tales of ruined lives, larceny, vandalism / destruction of property and other hilarities?! Next installment: Criminality. So, settle down, relax, get comfy and let’s cut deep into country club life. Also, if you are a member of a country club in Fairfield County CT, see if any of this rings a bell and if it does, maybe, just maybe I am talking about your club or dare I even say, you. Stay tuned.

The Country Club Chronicles – Intro

Taking a Close Look at My Town

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I have neglected this blog for far too long. In fact, almost an entire calendar year. I had a lot on my mind. I was busy and I simply didn’t have time. So what has been taking up all my time you may be asking? Infectious disease. And let me tell you it is not pleasant. It is basically everything you think it is when you hear the words, “infectious disease.” I can’t even tell you how difficult it is to hang out with old friends when all they want to do is talk about their careers and their kids and all you want to talk about is infectious disease factoids and assorted infectious disease anecdotes. A living hell? You bet and quite frankly I’ve been having a rough time of it. When I decided to become an infectious disease buff I knew I would be trodding a dark path, however I thought it important to spread the word far and wide about “I.D.” as we infectious disease buffs call it. It is a labor of love so I am not throwing in the towel yet but in all honesty I am not sure how “in it” my heart is any longer. And call me lazy or self-conscious but I don’t know how many more times I can explain the same thing to the FBI without sounding kinda silly at this point.

Anywho; my wife and I were out driving around the other day. We decided to really examine the town we had moved to about a year and a half ago. Not going to tell you which town but think New England, bucolic, quaint, historic, sterile, puritanical, and stately. It is rather pretty in the Autumn and when it snows the Christmas lights on the ancient town green are truly something to behold. The Springs are mild. A little too mild, really and the Summers will melt your underwear to your thighs if you are exposed to the outdoors for more than a minute and a half. There are cute little festivals and fairs throughout the year. There are white Churches dating from the early 18th century. There are local stories about George Washington visiting an inn which is now a residence and encampments of soldiers on their way to fight the British Regulars. There are antique houses and antique shops and antique cars and antique people.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Verdict: Sorta cool. it has its moments and overall it is tolerable.

You see, I grew up in a city. Albeit a relatively small city but a city nonetheless. In fact, I believe it is the fifth largest city in New England and the biggest city in Connecticut. So as you can imagine, it has been a bit of a culture shock and there has been a truly discernable adjustment period. Now some of you may read Yankee Magazine. Or have a serious interest in New England. Or saw Baby Boom once and thought to yourselves, “that looks so quaint.” Whatever it may be, let me peel back some of the pretty layers and give you some of the truth when it comes to what it is like to live in one of these towns. I do not hate my town in the least. These are just honest observations and I am sure I find some of them as bracing as I do because I am only just getting used to them.

  1. Peace and Quiet. I mean, yes and no. When you live in a neighborhood where everyone has a decent sized lawn, you can be assured of one thing; the sound of lawn equipment from sun up to sun down from late April to mid October. And these folks live in these towns because they have some cash but are not flush enough to move down closer to the coast and spend big bucks on house prices and property taxes. Which are pretty damn high in our town. But that is another story. So because they have some money, they tend to spend it on things like; industrial tractors and lawn-equipment only really utilized on golf courses and cemeteries. So there is no such thing as the innocuous sound of a distant riding mower. Instead, you get the sound and decibel levels of a C-130 revving its turbo-props at full tilt. On a number of occasions we have had to cut our discussions on “I.D.” painfully short and retreat into the house. So those are days during the pleasant weather months. Night time is different as it really is sort of creepily quiet. While unnerving it offers excellent opportunities for restful, sound sleep and long, intricate discussions on I.D.
  2. Friendliness. Well… us Yankees (and even though the rebs down south refer to anyone living above Maryland as a Yankee, a Yankee is a native of CT) aren’t exactly the nicest group. We just don’t really like anyone. That being said, the majority of us fall into two camps of extreme opposites. There are the, “I won’t thank you for holding the door open for me for all of the money in the world” jerks and then there are the, “thank you so much for holding the door open for me! Would you like a kidney? Or an even better idea, you look stressed so call me an ugly parasite and punch my jaw loose. Seriously, I don’t mind! Anything for you, big boy” crowd. There’s really no middle ground, “thank you” people. Which is fine. Our neighbors are super-friendly and as much as I am a total curmudgeon I can’t make fun of that. It was bracing at first however because I am not used to that and I really don’t know how to act around friendly strangers other than by smiling politely while frantically searching for an escape route. Still, this one is hard to explain to someone who is not from here because this issue is not native to my town. It is an issue that is sort of an epidemic which stretches from New Jersey to Maine. Much like an I.D.!
  3. Hicks. I have no problem with the fine men and women who utilize their back muscles and hands and get an honest day’s work done by the time I am having my lunch. If you are a farmer, tree-cutter, landscaper, etc. I salute you for doing a job that I would never do unless I was forced at gunpoint to do it. Not because I am incapable, but because I am a down-state, NYC Metropolitan area city boy who is rather dainty. I will never poop on the work that these people do. However, I will poop on the aesthetic that a lot of these folks, especially the men adopt. Your country-boy, Jeff Foxworthy worshipping, bearded, pickup truck driving, Travis Tritt listening, Confederate flag waving asses aren’t fooling anyone. You’re from CT, not NC. You know the type. The type of guys who still wear their cellphones in outside-the-belt cases and think that being a volunteer fireman is akin to being a Syrian White Helmet. The kinda guys who share memes that say things like, “you must be a special kind of stupid”. The majestic, North Eastern Hick. Their habitat is wide and varied but you can usually see them congregating around places that sell cheap hamburgers and Home Depot. They always smell like a wood fire and the married ones have those stupid black titanium wedding bands. Because nothing tells the world that you love your wife and your marriage like wearing a ring that looks as though it was made in someone’s spare time at the bottom of a coal mine. In the end, these dudes are harmless. Unless you consider spitting chaw into an empty Sprite bottle harmful. Which, it sorta is. Much like I.D.
  4. Culture. Yeah, if you want culture, as in arts and music, you are going to have to head afield. We have a library. So that’s something. I think some of the restaurant bars have karaoke once a week. There is a Summer concert series on the town green but let’s face it; unless it’s either a Tony Bennett impersonator or a Foghat cover band, no one in this town is flocking to the green. Here is the thing; the town also has its fair share of yuppies. You would think that youth and money would denote an underlying current of artistic and creative curiosity. This just ain’t so where I live. In fact, it seems to be a magnet for that one segment of yuppies who aren’t interested in those sorts of things. Which is disheartening but in the end it isn’t that big a deal. It would just be nice for someone like me, (a pretentious, pompous blow-hard) to be able to talk about things going on in town with no real intention of ever even bothering to check them out on my own. Much like I.D.
  5. Flora and Fauna. I don’t like the woods. They are creepy and that is why creepy animals live there. Things that will eat you or chase you or chase you and then eat you. We have bears, coyotes, bobcats, fisher cats, possums, raccoons, foxes and according to the police we also have mountain lions but I think that might be BS. Either way, I don’t want to find out. Our first week here we received a packet from the police department outlining all the creatures we may encounter. This is not optimal for a guy like me who is cool with cats, tolerates dogs and looks at people with pet birds and snakes like the absolute freaks that they are. So I keep a high powered rifle near the sliding doors that lead out to my back deck. I think it is illegal to discharge a weapon within the town but if it comes down to it I do not mind paying the fine if it means that I won’t be torn asunder by a rabid bear. Do bears get rabies? Another I.D. discussion to be had, methinks.

So that’s that. The town has great schools and is relatively safe so it is serving its purpose I suppose. The wife and I have already decided that once the kids are grown and out on their own we are putting the house on the market and high-tailing it back to the water where I grew up and she feels the most at home. It works for now. If you want to come check it out, don’t. We don’t want no outsiders coming around and making trouble. But if you would like to meet up and check out my newsletter on I.D. I think we can make that work.

Taking a Close Look at My Town

It’s Getting Harder to Care

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As per usual, I read a story this morning that made me lose a bit of faith in humanity. It should come as no surprise that a PAC would stoop to a level only reserved for the most base and unwholesome. However, this takes the proverbial cake. To summarize; a liberal PAC here in CT took out an ad (which has been removed) on William Petit and other CT Republicans for the misgivings of Donald Trump. Namely; Trump’s derogotory comments about women. What the PAC failed to foresee as an issue with this ad, was the fact that Petit’s wife and two daughters were brutally murdered in a home invasion in 2007.

To suggest that someone doesn’t respect women simply because they are part of the same political party as someone else, would be tantamount to calling all Germans antisemitic. The idea that a man, whose wife and daughters were murdered, doesn’t respect women because of his political allegiance is beyond the pale. This is why I am finding it harder and harder to care. The level to which human beings are willing to degrade themselves in order to press their ideologies is downright depressing. The PAC pulled the ad after heavy pressure from both CT Republicans and Democrats. Regardless of pulling the ad, It doesn’t change the fact that it was created in the first place.

Politics are important for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most important reason being that it reminds us of who we are. Or more to the point, what we can become when reason and integrity take a back seat to ambition and sensationalism. The human spirit is an odd thing. It is the driving force behind every single instance of individual and collective good throughout human history, yet it is so malleable and easy to manipulate. Once a person or group has decided that their politics or worldview is superior to others, any number of indignities are given the chance to crop up. This is not to say that competing ideologies or philosophies are all the same or worth the same. What ideology does brilliantly however, is engage a human being to the point where the individual follower is caught up in a world where cause is greater than self and the two are no longer seperately recognizable. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeing a cause or purpose as more important than oneself. It only becomes a problem when the cause destroys any semblance of the individual’s principles which fueled their zeal at the start. It is not uncommon to meet people who describe their politics before they mention the true pillars of their character; religion, family, charitable work, hobbies etc. We don’t want others to understand us as much as we want them to understand our place in group-think. Human beings have no better outlet to display their natural tribalism than the realm of politics.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. It is easy to insist that the current election season is the worst in American history. Every generation likes to puff itself up. However, the current election and the mudslinging from both sides is a fraction of the horrors found in previous elections. Politics fueling divisive hatred is nothing new and it is certainly not native to the United States. When we feel the creeping sense of disgust rising up in ourselves after learning of attack ads like the one William Petit is attempting to put behind him; what should we do? The obvious answer would be to turn our backs on the more sensationalist pundits and talking heads. But we don’t. As much as we groan about this election and the candidates, anyone who is even remotely political or interested in politics would have to admit that this season has at least been interesting. If not even fun at certain times. So we carefully form our opinions and hone our rage only after we read what our favorite jounralists have to say about it. It seems to me, that when we beat our chests in our own  righteous indignation we ought to hit a little harder. We should punish ourselves for the atrocity of out of control political ideology in this country and the narratives and vitriol it creates. It is our fault.

The next time you read or see something you find abhorrent remember this; They wouldn’t create or publish it, if people didn’t want to see it. Whether or not you personally do, is immaterial to the larger machinery. To clarify;  I didn’t mean to suggest with the title of this post that it is getting harder to care about politics. It is getting harder to care about people. We are always looking for reasons to put our voices out there. Politics are simply the means by which we advance our social philosophies and our voices. Even if they are adopted. Therefore, it is not politics that is to blame for the complete breakdown of anything even remotely akin to propriety or honesty. It is us. So while it is ghoulish to see attack ads claiming that a man who lost his family composed of women is ‘anti-woman’ let’s not pretend that it didn’t give us something to talk or write about.

It’s Getting Harder to Care

In Defense of Gentrification

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Recently, I have been seeing a lot of different posts on Facebook linking to sites containing pictures of New York City in the 1970’s and 1980’s. They are usually black and white photographs showing mountains of rubble, garbage, dilapidated buildings, subway trains covered in graffiti and locals in various poses of derisive ambivalence. What I find instantly telling about these photos, is that they are in black and white. Meaning, that the starkness of that particular brand of photography lends a more esoteric and ultimately ominous level to the photographs. It also tells us that the photographer was a self-important bore.

Have you seen recent photos from Aleppo? Could you imagine if they were in black and white? Immediately, we would all do a collective eye-roll as a nation which would be so exaggerated that all together we would create the first audible eye-roll. The stark realities of life happen in color. Attempting to lend gravitas to situations where human lives are either irrevocably changed or even lost is the height of artistic hubris. It is painfully transparent and incredibly dull. Much like the people back in the 70’s who decided to take black and white photographs of a spilled dumpster in Brooklyn in order to let all the lame suburbanites know that the struggle was real.

The only people with legitimate beefs against the gentrification of certain urban neighborhoods are the people who are forced out by corrupt municipalities. On the opposite end of that spectrum are the people who indirectly benefit from gentrification and then rail against the horrors of it simply to seem modern and trendy. Much like gentrification itself.

No one is going to pat you on the back for spending a lot of money to live in a shitty neighborhood. ‘Ah, so I see your rent has gone up and your only dining option is Subway and that you don’t have a bank or grocery store within a five-mile radius of your home. Well done!’ I am sorry that some people seem to gauge their neighborhood’s worth by the number of violent crimes per-capita, per-year. I just don’t think there is a point to be made when the entire argument itself champions poverty and villainizes social progress. Is it a good thing when the local mom and pop store closes because people are going to Walgreen’s instead of their shop? No. But answer these; is it a good thing when people with disposable income move into a neighborhood thus boosting property values? Is it a good thing that an influx of cash into a neighborhood spurns on the opening of new businesses? Is it a good thing that crime rates tend to drop like a stone once an area becomes gentrified?

I’ll give up an authentic pierogi or bowl of gumbo for a cleaner place to live and less chance of being knifed for my wallet any day. Gentrification is good. Get over it.

Liberals, many of whom are young, white self-labeled liberals, want to allow scads of new immigrants into the country. I agree that this country is a better place with metered, monitored, sensible legal immigration. But I have to ask; where are the immigrants supposed to work? If we’re not supposed to be alright with the cultural makeup of neighborhoods changing from generation to generation, what is the response when the old pizza place is turned into a gyro shop?

Gentrification is a natural progression of human society. It is healthy and important for urban areas to revamp themselves and it is equally important for self-righteous, whiny, white hipsters to shut up about it.

In Defense of Gentrification

Legacy over Growth in CT

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This is a longer version of an op-ed I submitted to the CT Post. Will the Post publish it? Doubtful.

If this is to make any sense, read this first: CT Post editorial on the prospect of more casinos in the state.

Ok, now lets get to it. The prospect of more casinos in this state can only bother three different sets of people.

  1. Pure, 100% Connecticut Yankees who are desperately hanging on to some semblance of neo-Puritanism in an attempt to maintain a facade which seems to only to appeal to blue-bloods that are already living in the state. (The author of the editorial linked above, I’m guessing.)
  2. People who are worried about the influx of gamblers and their monetarily motivated, vice-enabling support staffs. Basically, traffic.
  3. CT residents who are more concerned about how the state appears nationally, rather than how it’s economy can benefit people locally. (Malloy)

The editorial linked above is a perfectly benign opinion given a whitewash of sentiment covering the governor’s keister. What is the most alarming sentence in the entire article? You probably picked it out already but in case you were dozing off during your reading of it, here it is; “But Malloy has not guided public rhetoric on casinos as he seeks to put his stamp on the state’s character for decades to come.” I even underlined it for you. I am not going to pretend that elected officials aren’t at least partly motivated by their own over inflated egos but to observe Malloy in the context of the casino issue, we can only draw one conclusion: he’s already moved on to damage control.

Malloy has repeatedly contradicted himself and if nothing else has at the very least shown the rest of the country what not to do with taxes. So he’s got that going for him. In a way, he and the state should be used in every anti-socialist attack ad that Hillary runs against the rapidly fading Sanders. We’ve got it all! Crony capitalism operating under the guise of, “we’re all in this together!” type rhetoric and exorbitant taxes all facilitating a mass corporate and private exodus. It floors me that anyone living in this state can support Sanders after they’ve seen what a far-left governor surrounded by lefty leaning legislators and their tax proposals can do to a relatively small economy.

It is no secret that private companies are leaving CT at an alarming rate. The most recent blow to the state was the announcement that GE would be picking up shop and moving to Massachusetts by 2018. GE began rattling that particular saber last June and made the announcement 6 months later that they were going bye bye. The reason behind the move was simple; taxes in CT are unfriendly to business. I suspect that is only part of the reason to move. I’m sure proximity to Harvard / MIT didn’t hinder their decision as Massachusetts looks very much like Connecticut in terms of taxation.

So people and businesses are leaving. The state infrastructure is crumbling, or if it is being fixed it’s work rate rivals continental drift. (See; I-95 corridor through New Haven) Our taxes are being raised regularly to offset the financial crisis we find ourselves in. Everything is peachy. Who can blame anyone for supporting the building of a casino which, if it is anything like Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, will employ 10,000 people? Apparently our governor can. We know that a casino won’t solve the state’s economic downturn but when faced with the prospect of more jobs and more money coming into the state from surrounding states, no one can be blamed for their enthusiasm.

So, whats his problem? Mainly this; the character stamp he is attempting to put on the state, eluded to earlier by the author of the CT Post editorial, has already been sealed in wax. And it’s not good. The damage control portion of Malloy’s tenure exists now to alleviate the pressure put on him by CT residents who are trying to avoid the image of, “Las Vegas East” or even more horrifying, “Atlantic City North.” If he can’t figure out the state’s fiscal woes, which he obviously cant, then the least he can do is attempt to salvage the perceived character of the state, which by the way, hasn’t existed outside of the gold coast in years.

Don’t worry though, he’ll figure it out. And he’ll get reelected.

Legacy over Growth in CT