Family/Friend Friday --- The Young Man and the Sea

This past week was the birthday of one of my good friends growing up...Jim. We went to elementary school together, played on the same baseball and basketball teams, and every summer for only $75 we would get a student membership at a local golf course and be able to golf together on weekdays for free (and we went pretty much everyday!). Since we were both teachers after college in the Pittsburgh area, we continued to golf several times a week during the summer and still keep in contact today.

It was our senior year of high school and the day of the prom. Our prom in DuBois was always on a Friday evening. The school told students that if we were going to the prom, and if we needed time to get ready, we could leave school that day at 1:00. Well, obviously we didn't need 5 hours to get ready, but we definitely weren't going to sit in school either! So, we took off and headed for the golf course.

This particular year Jim had his "lucky ball"...one he had been golfing with for several weeks and hadn't lost and was playing really well with. On the second hole, Jim hit his drive (and his lucky ball) directly into the center of a large pond. However, water levels were down that day and a small island was exposed in the center of the pond and when we arrived, we could see Jim's "lucky ball" sitting on the little island.

Me and Chad (another friend who was golfing with us that day) began trying to persuade Jim to go after this ball. It was probably about 40 feet to this little island. The water was so dirty that there was no way to tell how deep it was, but we convinced him since you could see land in the middle, it couldn't be more than a foot or two deep. So he reached out and measured the depth from the edge with a golf club, and sure enough it was only about a foot.

So Jim takes off his socks and shoes and starts walking through the muddy pond. As he walked, the water level went from his ankles, to his knees, to his thighs, to his waist, and by the half way point it was near his chest...but he was determined to get that ball! When he retrieved it and came back, he was completely covered in mud. He thought about heading home, but with the wet mud he didn't want to get in his car (which had been washed and cleaned for prom).

We finished our round and Jim is now covered in dry mud. He used the clubhouse hose to try and clean some off, but it wasn't coming off! By now we only had about an hour to get ready for prom, so he jumped in his car and "peeled out" to get home as fast as he could. He made it to prom that night and somehow got all the mud off.

Oh, and Jim's "lucky ball" --- he lost it on the very next hole.