As some might say, if you don’t take the plunge, you can’t taste the brine. Others might not say such a thing. I’m taking the plunge, because I want to taste the brine. Here you’ll find the fourth installment of “A Golfing Memoir” as we trace a year in the life of Flip Hedgebow, itinerant teacher of golf. For January, click here. For February, click here. For March, click here.

‘Cause I would walk 500 …

No.

Roam if you …

No.

You’ve got a fast car…

Closer.

The drive from that part of Florida to pretty-rural, upstate New York, crossed a lot of station boundaries. Flip Hedgebow alternated between song lists he’d saved on that app, to the old-school radio embedded in the dashboard of the car, and back once again. Some days, he’d drive and sleep at night. Other times, he’d reverse the play, in order to confuse fate. Life hadn’t been a straight line for him. So, he reasoned, neither should a seminal trip from one end to the other.

cirE “Flip” Hedgebow hadn’t controlled much for a fair portion of life, so when his turn came to take the wheel and guide the nose, he did it for all that he could. Before leaving the sunshone state, the pro searched the in-between for esoteria, places he couldn’t imagine wanting to see, that might equal parts enliven and delay his journey to his summer home. In the clarity of the rear-view mirror where, you know, objects may appear … they were places he could not imagine having missed in his earthly stay.

Every flash of crimson along the route reminded him of her. Of Agnes Porter. Or what her real … hold off a moment. It’ll come. Of Agnes Porter the younger. She had taken a series of lessons with him as the moon of his time in Florida waned. Her motivation for the instruction was unclear, but the money spent well, and the time spent was much more than unpleasurable. It would be Hollywood-romantic to suggest that epiphanies arrived after their meetings, that clarity emanated from their encounters, but this wasn’t Hollywood and, as far as Flip could tell, it wasn’t romantic. Men are always slower and duller to the task.

Her golf swing was athletic from the get-go. Equal parts sport training and anger, the hands, arms, hips and shoulders moved in proper sequence, cadence, and space. It might have been a hockey club or a baseball bat that settled these early lessons for her, or martial arts, or something else. Who knew? He didn’t. And didn’t ask. Time served on the lesson tee had informed him that necessary information was always volunteered; never chased.

They had sat on tee chairs after lessons, discussing the swing and the grandeur of the game. Once, they had moved their conversation to the club patio, but had not advanced beyond dialogue. No dining, no drinks. Agnes the younger had revealed that her grandmother’s name was not Agnes Porter; it was an identifier that she had chosen while emigrating to the shores of the USA. Such a common thing, to leave your nomenclature behind in your original language, to embrace the sounds of the adopted soil. That had been decades before, when the elder was the younger, and the younger, not even.

A thoughtful observer would have identified more than an instructional connection between the two. It was certainly Agnes Porter’s intention to move the interaction farther along. Flip Hedgebow, whose percentages of jaded, obtuse, distracted, and torpid added to full capacity, had an extra percentage point left over, that suggested to him that something more might be present, and that he didn’t wish to risk its departure. He would wait for that information, as he did so often on the lesson tee.

“Perhaps I’ll see you upstate. Grandmother Agnes always finds her way back north during the summer months, and I always find my way to her. I love my mother, but I have this connection with the prior generation. Sometimes that happens.”

Five words, including a contraction. The remainder of the utterance, like mist over the morning river. Was there a difference between maybe and perhaps? From his perspective, there certainly was. And thus did Flip Hedgebow ruminate for hundreds of miles, into the thousands, on what might be. He knew what certainly would be: a new balance sheet, different bosses, a clientele for whom the word posh was more likely a curse or an insult, and less probably a tenet or commandment. He liked the contrast between his two places of employment. It preserved the balance, and allowed him to move through life with equilibrium and harmony.

It had allowed him to move through life thus. As he said good-bye to young Agnes on the eve of his departure from the Swelter (nee Sunshine) state, she leaned in closer and left him with six complicated words, one a contraction: Agnes Porter isn’t my name, either.

May

The omnipresent creek at the base of the foothill had impacted the founder of the small, unique resort in upstate New York. Upstate was the best place to identify where Klifzota sat. It wasn’t truly western, but it wasn’t southern tier, nor central. It was away out there, where the osadnik from Polonia had found his slice of idyllic country living. His family had farmed the land for a few generations, before an enterprising daughter had turned barn and family home into a retreat for the city folk from western New York’s two main cities. Not all city folk, understand?

Klifzota’s foothill was neither tall nor wide enough to feature downhill skiing, as found farther south and west. Landing on the series of avenues that her ancestors used to move heavy equipment around the property, she established a series of footpaths and walkways for contemplation and less-vertical exercise. In the winter, out came the snowshoes and other devices, fit to traverse what would eventually be groomed trails. Eschewing romance for hard work and the family name, she nonetheless could not step out of its path. It arrived one day in the guise of a forty-something man with two children. His name translated from German as avoid the farmer, which suited her just fine. He was unattached, she was smitten, and the newly-blended family now a momentous decision: what to do with the meadow.

Growing up on a country farm, she understood the worth of all things natural, and the eternal harm that would come from disruption. There were two areas of the farm where things had caused this irreversible harm, and she would permit no others. In the end, the family settled on golf. The game and the course they built preserved the harmony of the corridors. The equipment shed replaced the cattle barn, and a small lodge with some touches grew up adjacent to the country home that they expanded into their operations center. They purchased a few homes along the perimeter of the property, in anticipation of the needs of future generations of family, and guests. It was in one of these that cirE “Flip” Hedgebow took up residence each April. He remained there annually until the course closed, just after harvest season ended and Halloween beckoned. Then, he would don his southern costume and resume the guise of Florida Man. That would be then, though; this was soon to be now. What else would be now, he wondered.

Unlike Florida, Flip’s duties seldom included lessons. Klifzota was a public-access course, where the regulars came to the game after playing some other sport. Many were baseball devotees, and they learned to tilt at the hips and change the plane of their swing. Others were hockey aficionados, with powerful legs and super-charged swings. They alone had compelled the owners to continually assess the proper width of the fairways, given the lateral nature of their shot patterns. When Canadians discovered Klifzota, the hockey influence approached something primordial.

Flip kept a golf cart at his house on the hill. The course sat in a bit of a valley, between the large, eastern hill and the shallower, western one. The house rested on the western hill, adjacent to the other properties owned by the descendants of the original osadnik. It was efficient, and that was all Flip needed. He was rarely there. His shift began at six each morning, when the dewsweepers would arrive for their breakfast nine. Sometimes they played 18; most days, they regretted that decisions, swearing a full round off for a time. Carts were brought from the cattle barn across the road, floors were swept, coffee was brewed, and the till was tended. Flip ate his own first meal in his office, just off the counter. By noon, there was usually enough of a break in the action for him to catch some sleep. If he was super-tired, he would grab a key for one of the unoccupied rooms in the motel and sneak away there, while his assistant tended to affairs. Super-tired was code for hung over, which was at times a necessary result of duty.

Klifzota wasn’t a summer camp, but at times, it felt like one, with Flip cast as the head counselor. After his lunch and nap, he would tend to the local leagues during the weekday afternoons, ensuring that their times were posted, their bets recorded and monies collected, and their results tabulated and posted. This brought him to supper, when the action truly commenced. Each evening, Flip gathered his fill of local news (chatter in the dining room and bar area) and worldwide affairs (the screen in the bar), and ate and drank with the league golfers and overnight groups. The locals had adopted Flip as their own; he was able to approximate their values system and, in truth, it was much closer to his own than the one he feigned in Florida each winter. It was this other, this affected persona, that allowed him to interact seamlessly with the golf groups that arrived throughout the season. No matter their place of origin, their values system, he was able to decode their language, mannerisms, and hierarchies, and insinuate himself in, temporarily. Like all travelers in a strange place, the guests needed an anchor, and Flip was that anchor. If they returned annually, they were no longer travelers, but distant kin.

It was these foothills that brought cirE Hedgebow closer to that other “F” word that he had successfully kept at arm’s length since he struck out on his own: family. Down south, he was hired help and he knew it. Florida could be a transient state, especially for someone in the golf industry. Up north, where life became more traditional americana, it wasn’t quite Rockwell, but only because old Norman never made it over to Wyoming county. That daughter who married the farmer-hater? Their children married and had children of their own, and they all stayed to develop the resort. Little squabbling among them meant a lot of cooperation and much advancement and success for Klifzota. This jaded-in-a-positive-way ambience gave Flip a family to which to belong, to which he owed nothing, but to which he would gladly give everything.

As May crept toward Memorial Day weekend, an email arrived in his inbox, that would set the summer’s events into motion. Try as he might to control things, when Agnes Porter the younger, or whoever she truly was, entered his life, his deft command of the wheel loosened and weakened. Her plans to visit had transitioned from casual toss to anticipate arrival. Sometime in June, she wrote, more early than late. She would be down east for Memorial Day, and would follow the sun in the days that followed. The count of the clock would divulge the impact of her reappearance on his story.

Artwork by JaeB