“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.
I was playing a round of golf at the Country Club of Pittsfield on a Monday, which was “caddie’s day.” When I arrived at the 13th tee, I met fellow caddie “Shirts,” who was by himself and launching his tee shot to the green on this short downhill par three hole. I noticed there were dozens of golf balls scattered on or near the green.
I let out a big laugh — he was mischievously trying to get a “hole in one” and obtain the attendant bragging rights. Unfortunately, his grandiose attempt to put this “notch on his belt” failed, but he certainly got a lot of practice swinging his trusty nine iron.
I also liked to practice hitting golf balls, but in a more mundane fashion. I would bring my clubs to Osceola Park during its off hours and swing away. To become an accurate player, one had to take into account any wind speed and its direction, and select the proper golf club. Stennis Gilliams, a fellow 14-year-old Osceolian, often joined me in this exercise.
We teed up and smacked golf balls anywhere from a distance of 100–400 feet. We had a “shag“ bag filled with about 50 used golf balls procured from the Country Club. We would jam a stick with a colored flag into the Park ground to use as our target and try to hit the balls as close to it as possible. Despite our best efforts, we sometimes “pulled” the ball off course and thus could not control where it would land.
There were about five houses on Osceola Street adjacent to the Park and they were within our driving range. Some of these wayward golf balls would crash into these properties. One homeowner, Harriet Nerrick, would yell at us in fear that we would damage her property. We didn’t want to be accosted and scolded by her, but to err is human and this expression fit us to a “tee.” Back to this concern later on.
Regardless of where these golf balls landed, we had to walk all around the Park to retrieve them, one by one. This took a while and reduced our time spent on improving our golf swings and accuracy. This was the tedious and unappealing part of our training sessions.
One day, Stennis had an idea. “Let’s have someone stand a distance away from us in the Park and round up these golf balls for us.” Rather than using the flagged stakes, we could just aim the balls at the person “shagging” for us. Pretty pitiless thinking by us.
Our shagger would also be relegated to trek over to the Osceola Street properties, grab those balls and deal with any annoyed neighbors. Good plan for us, not so good for the shagger. It wasn’t really fair for us to ask anyone to do this dangerous job, but we were basically sluggish and immature. These flying golf balls were not unlike a speeding bullet if they hit anyone, and lethal in their potential effect. How could we ever find anyone willing to take on the risks involved?
I asked my 7-year-old sister Tricia to help us. We explained that she could earn a little money, get fresh air and exercise, and learn a little about golf at the same time. Rather roguishly, we never advised her of the bodily risks she would face out in the Park, never mind the likely verbal attacks from the neighbors. There were no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) work rules in effect then.
We thought we could pay her just enough money to enable her to go to the neighborhood store and buy a soda, a bag of chips and maybe a popsicle for the walk home. That was pretty chintzy of us. Despite her young age, Tricia was no dummy and demanded we triple our offer. “Take it or leave it,” the nascent entrepreneur said. We were stumped and finally agreed to her legal robbery.
But, that’s not all.
On her first day on the job, and thereafter, she used binoculars to watch the trajectory of the approaching golf balls and moved safely away. She was calmly positioned and stood tall as the golf balls whizzed by her. She came to work wearing a baseball helmet and catcher’s mask, leg and chest pads, and dungarees; she looked a bit like Yogi Berra in gear. She sometimes caught the balls with a catcher’s mitt. Her gear made her body virtually impenetrable to golf balls.
In acting as our minion, she would bring our dog Lady over to visit Mrs. Nerrick because Mrs. Nerrick loved both Lady and Tricia. She would never castigate Tricia when she arrived to pick up any errant balls; situation under control.
As it turned out, our lazy and loathsome scheme was quite rewarding for Tricia, but expensive for us. Stennis and I were simply outmatched and outmaneuvered.
Remember the song called “What Kind of Fool Am I”? The retort was,“Why, is there more than one kind”? It wasn’t my little sister who was the fool, it was both of us.
