everybody to sit. If you didn’t get there early enough, you had to stand. Sometimes for hours. The caddy master, an obese man named Stan with a clean-shaven face who wore collared shirts and mud-hued slacks, sat nearby on a barstool in a small wooden booth like a toll collector. There he answered phones and charted tee-times and sold us Devil Dogs and Fanta Orange Sodas. When a coterie of members was ready to head to the tee, he’d squeeze out from his booth with a ballpoint pen behind his ear and a clipboard in his left hand. “Johnny Jones,” he might say, pointing to one of the veterans who caddied as a career, moving south in the winter to work the clubs in Florida, “you got Stein and Bloom. Beal and Beal too. Two carts.”
Johnny was Stan’s favorite caddy, his drinking buddy who accompanied him to the chariot-racing track each night, and he always got the premium loops. Four bags on two carts was the best anyone could hope for—you just had to carry a quartet of putters and you made sixty bucks plus tips. Kids like me and Lennie never got loops like that, but we didn’t begrudge the grizzled black men like Johnny and Sparks and Lester who did, with their broken knees and hand-me-down golf shoes. Johnny, who did way better than Stan at the track, had a car, an old Ford he kept polished and purring. The rest of the career guys bused it to the club, limping into the caddy tent with racing forms curled beneath one arm, clutching paper bags housing fried-egg-and-butter sandwiches on hard rolls. They talked to us about women, about the track, about how good they were as golfers in their own right. If you got paired up with any of them, they took care of you, telling you where to stand and what to look for on the course. Because they knew I was hapless, they’d even follow the ball into the woods if the person I was caddying for hit one there. They were being helpful and kind, sure, but they also knew if they covered for my fuck-ups, the round would go smoother, everyone would be happier, and they’d make more in tips.
I could have learned a lot from them if I’d been paying attention. I was the worst caddy in the tent. Poor Stan would look in my direction only when everyone else was already on the course. There’d be a reluctant hope in his eyes then, a kind of pleading that either I’d somehow do a better job, or I’d get so discouraged by my own incompetence that I’d stop showing up for work.
Gordon, on the other hand, was terrific. He was as good as the career caddies, better in some ways. He didn’t know every nook of the course like they did, but he was a Jew and they weren’t, so he knew the culture of the members more intimately. He knew how to make them comfortable with off-color jokes and he could talk politics with them. In his own way he was the Flamingo Kid, charming older men and women, making them want to adopt him as a son. They loved him because he personified no societal guilt. He was a bright young herald of the elders’ own tribe and they could share wisdom in order to aid him along his journey—a marked contrast to the beaten-down, sometimes-smelling-like-liquor servants from another social class who wore golf shoes they’d discarded five years ago and literally bore the weight of their leisure on their backs.
Gordon was a fresh breath, standing unbuckled and handsome in the mist and dew of the fairways, and he could caddy for anybody, even Newfeld and Bloch.
We always knew when it was about to happen. Instead of squeezing from his booth and strutting to the front of the tent, belly puffed with his big boss status and the security of knowing he would never have to carry another bag except his own, Stan would shuffle out shamefacedly. He wouldn’t gaze over the congregation searching out which of us to favor with the upcoming loop like a faith-healer choosing whom to grace with a miracle. Rather, he’d stretch his palms upward and say, “Okay who wants ’em? Newfeld and Bloch
Johnny was Stan’s favorite caddy, his drinking buddy who accompanied him to the chariot-racing track each night, and he always got the premium loops. Four bags on two carts was the best anyone could hope for—you just had to carry a quartet of putters and you made sixty bucks plus tips. Kids like me and Lennie never got loops like that, but we didn’t begrudge the grizzled black men like Johnny and Sparks and Lester who did, with their broken knees and hand-me-down golf shoes. Johnny, who did way better than Stan at the track, had a car, an old Ford he kept polished and purring. The rest of the career guys bused it to the club, limping into the caddy tent with racing forms curled beneath one arm, clutching paper bags housing fried-egg-and-butter sandwiches on hard rolls. They talked to us about women, about the track, about how good they were as golfers in their own right. If you got paired up with any of them, they took care of you, telling you where to stand and what to look for on the course. Because they knew I was hapless, they’d even follow the ball into the woods if the person I was caddying for hit one there. They were being helpful and kind, sure, but they also knew if they covered for my fuck-ups, the round would go smoother, everyone would be happier, and they’d make more in tips.
I could have learned a lot from them if I’d been paying attention. I was the worst caddy in the tent. Poor Stan would look in my direction only when everyone else was already on the course. There’d be a reluctant hope in his eyes then, a kind of pleading that either I’d somehow do a better job, or I’d get so discouraged by my own incompetence that I’d stop showing up for work.
Gordon, on the other hand, was terrific. He was as good as the career caddies, better in some ways. He didn’t know every nook of the course like they did, but he was a Jew and they weren’t, so he knew the culture of the members more intimately. He knew how to make them comfortable with off-color jokes and he could talk politics with them. In his own way he was the Flamingo Kid, charming older men and women, making them want to adopt him as a son. They loved him because he personified no societal guilt. He was a bright young herald of the elders’ own tribe and they could share wisdom in order to aid him along his journey—a marked contrast to the beaten-down, sometimes-smelling-like-liquor servants from another social class who wore golf shoes they’d discarded five years ago and literally bore the weight of their leisure on their backs.
Gordon was a fresh breath, standing unbuckled and handsome in the mist and dew of the fairways, and he could caddy for anybody, even Newfeld and Bloch.
We always knew when it was about to happen. Instead of squeezing from his booth and strutting to the front of the tent, belly puffed with his big boss status and the security of knowing he would never have to carry another bag except his own, Stan would shuffle out shamefacedly. He wouldn’t gaze over the congregation searching out which of us to favor with the upcoming loop like a faith-healer choosing whom to grace with a miracle. Rather, he’d stretch his palms upward and say, “Okay who wants ’em? Newfeld and Bloch
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