Tobacco Road

Time was, when I heard someone talk about Tobacco Road, I would think of the 1964 song of that name. The song was a hit in 1964, and was performed by a one-hit-wonder band called the Nashville Teens. They were from Great Britain...go figure.

Henceforth, when I hear someone talk about Tobacco Road, I'll have something new to think about. A couple weeks ago, after we returned from the Hilton Head trip, I went back to the south to play golf with a group of a dozen guys. We planned for a lot of golf, beginning with 36 holes on Tobacco Road on Saturday.

I did a little research on the course before we left, and I was surprised to learn that Golf Digest ranks it as the 10th toughest course in the United States. And we were going to play it twice in one day.

The view from the first tee is intimidating, to say the least. There are two large mounds framing the fairway, and as fate would have it, they are right around 200 yards from the tee. That puts them in a perfect place to catch errant drives. Even if you hit the ball 280, the mounds are still in play because of their height. And if you hit one of the mounds, your ball is not going to come out unless you are very lucky. And if you have such luck, you will probably be rewarded by the opportunity to hit a shot out of a bunker from which man is not meant to escape. And that's all on your tee shot from number one.

The course has many blind shots, there are large waste areas, and there are at least three different types of sand in the bunkers. There might be more, but I only saw three types from the 8 bunkers I was in. And hitting out of a deep greenside bunker to a slick green that is running away from you and is probably 50 feet above your head is no picnic.

We played 5 rounds on 4 courses over 3 days in the Pinehurst area. Some of the guys had never been there, so we stopped by the Clubhouse at Pinehurst National so they could buy something to take home. I was there last year, having played 3 of the Pinehurst courses, but I didn't have my camera with me on that trip. So this year, at least I got a shot (with my iPhone) of the Payne Stewart statue near the 18th green of Pinehurst #2, where he won the U.S. Open not long before he died.

The last course we played was The Carolina, designed by Arnold Palmer, and known for the many elephants that are buried under the greens. I'd been struggling with my game over the weekend, which is understandable, given that golf just can't be played in Ohio over the winter. Things started coming together on Monday. On the first par 3, my 7-iron was tracking nicely, and the ball actually hit the stick on the way down. My playing partners thought it went in the hole and popped back out, but my eyes aren't sharp enough to tell. You can see the ball mark and the final position of the ball in the picture below. I made the putt, for the first of 3 birdies I had in that round.

It was a great golf trip, and I'd happily go with this group again. But in the meantime, I'm waiting for spring and some good old Ohio golf.

Vanity

What motivates people to get a vanity license plate?

I've recently taken some pictures of vanity license plates, two of which I'm posting here. It's obvious that the people who own these plates are fans of the Ohio State Buckeyes. The reasons for the next group of pictures that I post might not be so obvious.

Spring

The first day of spring has come and gone, but it was snowing again this morning.

I've always been able to tolerate the cold. As a boy growing up on the farm, one of my favorite things to do was sleep outside. More than once, my mother would not allow me to sleep outside because it was too cold. I thought that was puzzling because I wouldn't even ask if the temperature was going below 40 degrees. Her rule was that it could go no lower than 50, and even after I reminded her that I could freeze water in my bedroom during the winter, she would not relent.

We were miles from the nearest town, and the skies were generally very dark, which was great for stargazing. To this day, I am frustrated by the lights of this city I now live in, because I can't see the stars at night.

I've found that as I grow older, I am becoming less tolerant of the cold. I am fortunate that I have the resources to travel, and I've made 4 trips south during this winter, so at least I've been able to break up the winter doldrums with some brief spells of sunshine and relative warmth.

All of this is just an excuse to post this little video...enjoy the sights and sounds of Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

No words necessary...

Tag, I'm It

Yorkshire Pudding "tagged" me, and being the imbecile I am, I didn't even know what he meant. He has explained that I am simply being asked to answer the questions that appear below, so here we go...

4 movies I'd watch again:
This one is easy. Once Upon a Time In The West, Once Upon A Time In America, Lawrence of Arabia, and Back To The Future. I have watched all of these movies many times, and I never tire of any of them.

4 places I've lived:
Bellevue, Ohio. Bowling Green, Ohio. Bay View, Ohio. Merl, Luxembourg.

4 TV shows I watch:
I had to put some thought into this, because the only show that I regularly watch is Good Morning America as I'm getting dressed for work. As for another three shows, I'll watch South Park and Seinfeld any time I run across them as I'm flipping through the channels. I tend to gravitate toward The History Channel, but I do not regularly watch any particular shows there, so for my fourth show, I'd have to say The Simpsons.

4 people I email:
Hmm...pick any four of my siblings.

4 things I eat:
Now we're talking...how about bacon, cheese, yellow perch and musk melons. But not all at once.

4 places I'd rather be:
On a sunny seashore, on a golf course, on a boat with a line in the water, or sitting on my brother's back porch drinking beers on a warm summer night. Especially on one of those clear, quiet nights when the stars are out and you can hear the corn grow. (And yes, you can hear corn grow at night under certain conditions.) Those evenings usually result in deep discussion about the size of the universe, and our small place within it.

Either that or we tell ghost stories to the kids, who become too scared to go to their bedrooms. Especially after you approach them with a very concerned look and say, "Whatever you do, do NOT look under your bed tonight."

The Blizzard of 2008

Last weekend, Columbus got more than 20 inches of snow.

The last major blizzard around here occurred in January of 1978. I was living in Luxembourg at the time, so I missed the whole thing. But my brother sent pictures, and I was duly impressed with the amount of snow. The barometric pressure reached an all-time low of something like 28.7 inches, and I heard stories of people waking up in the middle of the night because something didn't feel right. The temperature dropped from the mid-50's to well below zero, and it stayed very cold for several days. The huge amounts of snow were accompanied by 40 mile per hour winds, with gusts to 70. That was quite a storm.

Fast forward 30 years. Here is a day-by-day description of the Blizzard of 2008:

Friday, March 7

It started snowing in the afternoon. I was checking out the Harbor Town Lighthouse in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Saturday, March 8
It snowed a whole lot in Columbus. This is a view of the beach from our hotel room in Hilton Head. It was not very warm that day, and it was windy, but that did not deter us from going to Savannah, Georgia to visit my niece and her fiance. The historical area is very interesting, but what amazed me was the line of people outside "Lady and Sons" restaurant, operated by Paula Dean and her sons. For the uninitiated (as I was before this trip), Paula Dean has a show on the Food Channel, and she has parlayed that exposure into a food empire. We got there at 11 o'clock in the morning, and we had to stand in line to make lunch reservations, and the earliest we could get was 2:15. All of that waiting just to eat fried chicken from the buffet.

Sunday, March 9
I guess people started digging out from the snow, but I played golf at the Arthur Hills course at Palmetto Dunes.

So, once again I missed the blizzard of the century.

The British Invasion

I'm the seventh of nine children, and there were distinct benefits to having a lot of older siblings. One of them was that they had a record player and some records.

In early 1964, my sister Mary K. went bananas over a band called the Beatles. She seemed to know everything about them, and it was easy to share her excitement when the announcement was made that the Beatles would appear on the Ed Sullivan show. This would be the first American look at this new band, with their long hair and Liverpool accents. Their long hair was a problem for many parents, including mine, but that didn't prevent them from sitting down in front of the TV on February 9, 1964, to watch the Beatles perform.

It's hard to describe the Beatles and the mania to someone who did not live through it. As we watched the hysteria on the TV that night, even Dad had to smile and know that something big was happening.

The next thing you knew, there were Beatles trading cards, Beatles toys, Beatles lunch boxes, Beatles everything. The Beatles had so many songs out that an entire "Beatles Countdown" was dedicated to them on one of the Cleveland radio stations every Sunday night.

In music, as in life, success breeds imitation. And thus began the British Invasion.

One after another came bands from England: The Dave Clark Five, Herman and the Hermits, the Kinks, Gerry and Pacemakers, the Rolling Stones, and on and on. The music producers in England knew a good thing when they saw it, and the air waves became saturated with the British sound. The radio station that created the Beatles Countdown expanded it to the British Countdown to make room for all of the new music.

The news clip is from today's Columbus Dispatch. I remember watching the Dave Clark Five the first time they appeared on Ed Sullivan, and several times after, and I've always thought that they were one of the better bands of the era. When I read that Mike Smith died at the age of 64, I was shocked. Not that he had died, but that he was 64.