“Not Afraid Of Man Nor Beast”-The Continuing Saga Of Sand-Bagger Johnson-Part Five

 

“Just like my people before me I fear neither man nor beast when the deal goes down. Certainly I fear nobody on any of humankind’s golf courses, even that one we played yesterday, Tranquillo, or whatever the damn place was called,” blurred out Sand-Bagger Johnson to the fellow members of his foursome, Earl The Pearl, Roger The Dodger, and Jerry Jeff, as they say around drinking their drinks waiting on a table at La Mesa, one of a never-ending chain of steak houses in the never-ending strip malls that dot the Orlando landscape (some of a more genteel nature say mar the landscape but those fools adhere to some quaint Harvard Square, Rockport notion of the world so should be immediately discounted out of hand).

Sand-Bagger, maybe into his third, no, fourth glass of chardonnay (the wait at these never-ending chain of steak houses is also never-ending) was recapping the previous day’s adventures at the that Tranquillo course when he was challenged by Earl The Pearl to put up or shut up about his manly virtues in light of what he had just told the group about what had happened to him on the way to the seventeenth hole, a hole adjacent to the street and to some swamp refuge land -a hole which they all found out later was called Alligator Run. Needless to say as an early riser, a guy who liked to run early before the sun hit the skyline he had decided that he would take to the streets near and in the golf course they would play later that day.

As he jogged his painful miles (jog, not run, for the “purists” who only call somebody running who is like some Kenyan madman whirling dervish as “running”, you know those guys who sit around bragging about how they are going to beat up the course like a gong when they run a sleek half-marathon), flashing his little light before him to guide the way he finally got in to a pace where he stopped thinking about his knee, shoulder, ankle, hip and assorted other pains and ailments and got lost in the beauty of the run (okay, okay jog). When he ran down the dirt road along the outer edge of the seventeenth hole he noticed a bunch of what looked like logs near the large pond just after the teeing-out areas and decided to get a closer look-Jesus Christ the damn logs started to move in his direction as he suddenly realized that these were the well-known alligators who populate half the golf courses in the state of Florida. That recognition caused Sand-Bagger to pick up his pace a bit-he was able to slice a tenth of a second off Michael Boit’s world record for the 100 meters. And live to tell the tale.

Later in thinking about the matter, before being rudely challenged by the Pearl, he attributed his safe passage to the manly virtues inculcated in him since childhood, maybe some genetic disposition from generations gone by. “Yeah, old Sand-Bagger could say with no smirk on his face that he feared neither man nor beast on or off the links.                     

Oh yeah, summary for Casey-a sparkling 99 on a tough Tranquillo course and a pair of-two-two- and two victories against Jerry Jeff and Roger the Dodger. These guys never heard of five dollar bets like such a sum would only be proposed by some kind of golf hustler. The Pearl proved to be a bit faint-hearted claiming that he did not take to the idea of “paying” for his fellows golf excursions. He was taken for three bucks in the dangerous category of putting. Sand-Bagger did just then wish for the manly company of Lucky Pierre, Casey and Zow who knew how to put their monies where their mouths were. Selah.