Sometimes you just need to get together with people from your past to gauge how far you’ve come in this crazy world.
For the third straight year, I joined a dozen or so guys for three days of golf and silliness. Previous trips were to Louisville and the Noblesville area, and this year our base camp was in South Haven, Michigan, and that provided a chance to play terrific public courses—Lake Michigan Hills, HawksHead and The Ravines.
The house we rented was comfortable and within walking distance of downtown South Haven. Lake Michigan once again nailed its impersonation of the sea, sans salt. The weather was perfect, highs in the upper 70s and without rain. The golf was challenging and fun, and the organizers did a great job of creating “games within the game” that gave everyone (even lousy golfers like me) a chance to win a few dollars.
The camaraderie, however, was the main draw and didn’t disappoint. Most of us met 45-plus years ago while playing baseball at Valparaiso University. I only played three years at VU before real life came calling. I was lucky enough to land a paid internship at The Vidette-Messenger in Valpo during my senior year, with the understanding that I’d be a full-timer upon graduation, so I needed to give up baseball.
We spent most of the three days laughing and reminiscing, and there was no shortage of trash talk to go around. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly we revert to—degenerate into?–our 19-year-old ways even though everyone in attendance was 65 and above.
I enjoy catching up with old friends. We’ve all had our shares of successes and bumps in the road, and we’ve lived to talk about both. Of course, some guys did better financially than others and I’m sure there are certain ways of thinking with which I disagree. But none of that stuff mattered when we were in school, and certainly didn’t matter during our trip to South Haven.
Petty things that bothered me in the ‘70s (a perceived slight by someone, an argument that didn’t go my way, a raised eyebrow at just the wrong time) don’t seem to gnaw at me as much anymore. I am a lucky man, for sure. I have a beautiful wife and family (two wonderful sons, their lovely mates and amazing grandchildren), my health, a great home and a career I look back on with pride. I didn’t foresee many of the twists my road to retirement took over the years, but I wouldn’t alter the journey one bit.
I might never recover from seeing one of the guys parading around in his boxers one morning in the kitchen, but that awful memory dissipated that evening when another guy said he packed baseball gloves and a ball in case anyone wanted to play catch. I jumped at the opportunity, and for 20 minutes or so it was like we were warming up for a Saturday doubleheader again. I was a middling infielder who struggled at the plate, but some of my fondest memories of playing baseball center on playing catch, pepper or “situations,” or taking infield before a game.
It takes me back to when my Dad and I would traipse the block and a half to Muessel Park where he hit groundballs to his fledgling ballplayer for hours. I miss those days – and him – so it was nice for a bit to recall the magic sounds of baseball. The crack of a wooden bat, the slap of leather when a ball hits a glove, the whoosh of a well-thrown pitch, the shrieks from parents or girlfriends. We couldn’t recreate the smell of the infield dirt or the scent of popcorn from the concession stand last week, but I walked away from our 20-minute session of pitch-and-catch feeling about eight feet tall.
If you have a chance to get away from life for a few days with friends, old or new, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It allows you to step back into a time when life wasn’t so complicated, when our worries were limited. Golf did its best to bring me back to reality as it always does, but I cherish these moments with guys I’ve known for a big chunk of my life.
We drifted apart for decades, following any number of divergent paths. But it’s so comforting to know that conversations started in the 1970s can be resumed without a hiccup some 45 years later. And the subsequent lies (I call them upgrades or embellishments) get only bigger and better with time.