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.