“Recollections of a Pittsfield Kid” is a series of vignettes exploring the author’s youthful days in the Osceola Park neighborhood of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, during the 1950s and early 1960s. At the time of these adventures, the author was between six and 14 years old.
As I grew up, I was fortunate my back yard was adjacent to the wide expanse of Osceola Park. I played many sandlot sports and games there: baseball, football, horse shoes, volleyball. I even hit golf balls around in the park when it was closed. Unfortunately, when I was about 12 years old I was a participant in a golfing goof that left me and my younger brother Chip feeling “below par.”
Chip and I owned a set of golf clubs as a benefit of being caddies at the Pittsfield Country Club. We got good deals on trade-in golf equipment and learned the game quite well, too.
After a day of caddying, several of us would hitchhike to the nearby miniature golf course, called the Penguin, farther south near the Lenox line. We’d play for hours, imitate the golfers at the Country Club, and play for money or even wager our day’s earnings at this 18-hole “putt-putt” course.
One day Chip and I decided to develop our own version of the Penguin course in our back yard. It was situated in a flat, open space between the fringes of Osceola Park and our chicken coop. We supplied the putters and golf balls, gambling was allowed, and admission was free of charge to Park regulars.
Our tee-off and putting green areas were composed of shredded rubber mats. We gathered old gutters and downspouts, and fashioned a nine-hole channeled-type layout. We also stacked bricks and rocks at varying heights so that the connected metal channels would cause varying ball speeds. Launch the ball too softly and it would cause it to roll back in the gutter; hit it too hard and its velocity might force the ball over the hole or bounce out of it. The different size of the hole “cups” (made from coffee cups and sauce pans) coupled with the ball’s swiftness made settling it in the cup problematic.
We even placed “obstacles,” such as wind-driven pinwheels in key spots to deny easy access to the holes due to their oscillation.
Things were getting busy on this nascent golf course; demand was surging and some duffers had to wait in line to enjoy a round of golf. What if we expanded to an 18-hole course? This would reduce “down” time and please our loyal patrons. Since there wasn’t enough contiguous space in our back yard, we had to find another solution.
One option was to increase our golf course by confiscating some of the Park’s adjacent grassy area by virtue of “eminent domain.” That was too complicated and we might have needed a land-use lawyer to proceed. Were there other choices available?
One Park genius, who shall remain nameless, opined that he could level the chicken coop to the ground and more than double our field of play as a result. Without hesitation, Chip and I voted to explore this intriguing idea. Due diligence led us to query this lad about how he would knock the chicken coop down.
He said, “I’ll borrow your father’s car and use it as a sort of tow truck.” He explained that he would begin by attaching a chain from the car bumper to the chicken coop. Then he would step hard on the gas pedal and drive in such a way that the coop would come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho. We figured this would be wonderful if all went well. We could get more materials for the extra nine holes and expand our operation in no time at all.
However, we were somewhat skeptical of his plan. Did I mention that our creative contractor was about 15 years old? Likewise, this dippy “destructo” had no tools or experience to accomplish his task. Don’t ask me if he had any chains. Nonetheless,“Operation Take Down” was set in motion, to occur on the next Saturday when my father would be at home and the car would be parked in the driveway.
The “coop d’etat” commenced when we gave our freelancer the keys to the car… Later that day, a policeman came to our house and asked to see our father. It seems a certain 15-year old was caught “laying rubber” up and down nearby Essex Street in a “borrowed” car. Should I even mention that the policeman informed us this lad had no driver’s license, and no insurance? He was decidedly duplicitous with us and without remorse for not doing his job that day.
Well, the walls did come tumbling down on us, and I don’t mean the chicken coop walls either. As far as Chip and I were concerned, this fiasco meant the end of our miniature golf course extension and, instead, the start of our father’s “takedown” of us.
