Requiem for a Country Club

Guys named Izzy are never young. In fact, for the 20-odd years I knew Izzy he was always about 80. He sold tobacco products at the local farmer’s market. Every day, and I mean every day, Izzy could be found in the same chair at the same table in the men’s grill; our own lovable George Burns, ordering a bagel with cream cheese and marmalade, and coffee. He’d then play nine holes, minimum, enough over his lifetime, he used to tell us, to have gone to the moon and back.
 
Even when his body finally refused to let him play, Izzy would be at his table or at his locker holding court, wearing a smile, droopy boxers with knee high socks, forever in a state of dress or undress, we never really knew. But always he greeted me like family in that unmistakable voice, high pitched and a little wobbly, “Hey Ricker how are ya’?” It never took long for the conversation to land on one of his favorite subjects, 1947, a very good year for Izzy. “Ricker, back in ’47 I won the club championship when it was only nine holes.”
 
At the auction, my lifelong friend, Tank, paid $1,200 for the club championship board with Izzy’s name on it. Tank’s real name is Adam Leifer, and his name is on the board eight times, six more than mine.
 
Too often, 'Country Club' suggests a level of snobbery, but it wasn’t like that at all at The Berkleigh. Sure there were a few self important types but mostly hard working, decent people who sold uniforms and wallpaper and carpeting and drapery and women’s clothing and stocks.
 
In addition to Izzy we had Stanley and Marvin, Henry and Harvey, Lou and Lenny and Lester, Marty and Mickey, Jack and George and Judy, Annette and Elaine, Roz and Jean and Zena, and Ellie and Myrtle. There were no Jareds or Taylors or Seths or Brittanys or Ashleighs. They came later, grandchildren splashing in the kiddy pool.
 
My mentors were guys with tempers, guys who plumb bobbed from 240 yards, guys who dared to wear checks mixed with stripes, guys who cursed and smoked and gambled and laughed and hit grounders and pop ups and shanks and snaps. But when it was goin’ right, with their handicaps of 8 and 11 and 15 and 22, they could slip your wallet out from your back pocket without you knowin’ exactly how it all happened.
 
I laugh at the picture of my pop peeking from behind so many trees as I squandered talent and club championship leads until finally winning a couple. Mostly there were losses to respectable men with respectable games--Howard and Elliot and Scotty and Herman and myriad Jewish attorneys.
 
I loved the Calcutta, all that action, and the best partner I’ve ever had, Gary Jack Freedson, once fierce but now a victim of father time.
 
There was a spring and fall ABCD. My pop used to joke that he was the R player and the R stood for rotten. I once won the better ball of partners with Elmer Hertzmark. I was 16 and he was close to 50.
 
Naturally, there were lots of card games, gin for a penny a point with men as serious as senators, bifocals down on the bridge of their noses and mostly silent staring at their hands through the wafting smoke of a cigar or cigarette, occasionally muttering, “should’ve ‘trown the #%&*in’ king.”
 
Into my early 30s (I’m almost 47 now), until my career pulled me westward and then south to GOLF CHANNEL, I made the drive to the club through Maxatawny and Topton and Kutztown and Virginville, rows of corn taller than Yao Ming and a patchwork quilt of tan and green squares filling up the distant, beautiful farmland. The ride was long enough--22 minutes--for the anticipation to build -- breakfast first with my pals and then a match for some small change.
 
I couldn’t be at the auction. I’m not sure I could’ve picked at the remains. Forty-six years on this planet and I finally believe that old adage that change is inevitable. Hess’s Department Stores, my dad’s driving range/mini-golf/par-3, Bethlehem Steel and The Berkleigh were the ironclad institutions of my youth, places you just knew would be around forever because you can’t possibly kill something that’s six blocks of concrete, or six miles of molten steel, or rolling fairways 80 years in the making. All are now gone.
 
Time, another adage says, heals. Time, I’m old enough to know now, also hurts.
 
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