Golf becomes bad "Land of the Lost" episode

Tom Wolfe was right, "You can't go home again." Here's what happens when you try.

Did you ever watch Sid and Marty Krofft shows on Saturday morning as a kid? The programs they show on "Boomerang" now? Remember "Land of the Lost?" ***cue music and singing Marshall Will and Holly...on a routine expedition...met the greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeatest earthquake ever knoooooooooooown...***

It's a live action show where the dad and son and daughter end up in a prehistoric world where they live in a cave, get chased around by Grumpy the Dinosaur, Alice the Allosaur and the "Sleestaks" - those primitive lizard-man troglodytes: see picture above - and the whole story is how will they get back home.

Anyway, that's what it was like going to the hinterlands of upstate New York. Time travel...to the golf age of dinosaurs - loud, primitive, and full of wild animals and longing for home. The name of the COURSE is withheld to protect the innocent.

First, meet Alice the angry allosaur. She's the woman behind the snack bar counter. It's 8AM and she's frying a pan of meatballs. The line behind me is three or four people long and she's just watching the sizzle like an aged version or Jay and Silent Bob...or is that Beavis and Butthead. After several "ahems" and "hi theres," - a good five minutes - she turns around and says...

...AND I QUOTE...

"You'll just have to wait a sec...nobody interrupts me for my balls!"

...and we were expecting this woman to serve us food.

Anyway, then she finally takes my order for toast, juice, pepsi and a side order of bacon. Then the slow dance begins...go in the back, get the bacon. Open the package, get the plate, get a utensil, turn on the grill, find another pan, "your taking me away from my balls you know," slide the bacon in the pan.....one.....slice.....at.....a.....time....., cook bacon.

"Say, while the bacon's cooking can I please get that soda? Or the juice which ever's easier."

"And burn your bacon?! I'd never hear the end of it!"

After the bacon cooked, thats when she went to work on the toast...open the bread, get out one.....two.....slices...put in the toaster. Then a new dance started - while my bacon was getting cold - she's poking and prodding the toaster as if its not working. Well six or seven minutes MORE go by and we're no closer to toast or bacon or my drinks, let alone the three people behind me who didn't even place their orders yet. I saw her pull out two uncooked slices of bread...finally when she turned up the dial, they began to cook.

As she hands me my soda I asked for a lid (behind the counter, unreachable to patrons). "Boy you just want everything today!" I took perverse delight in pointing out that I also needed a straw now that my drink was to go...fast...AS IN TO THE TEE BOX NOW! She roared like a wounded Allosaur.

Then there was Grumpy the Tyrannasaur, a foul, uncouth, ill-mannered, ill-bred little cave troll who bellowed loudly in the restaurant the following pearls of wisdom:

BOBBY JONES IS A BIG PHONY! HE SUCKED! I MEAN WALTER HAGEN BEAT HIM 10 AND 8 IN SOME EXHIBITION. 10 AND 8. TIGER WOODS WOULD NEVER LOSE LIKE THAT. WHERE THEY GOING MAKING US WORSHIP BOBBY JONES.

I couldn't keep my mouth shut and just said. "He did give us Augusta National, you know..." He replied:

JONES DIDN'T BUILD AUGUSTA, MONEY BUILT AUGUSTA.

By now, I'm furious and horrified by this guy, which brings me to his henchmen, cronies, whatevers, the Sleestaks. Sniveling, fawning, barely human, these sub-chumps (or is that uber-chumps?) are eating this up with a mix of guffaws, snorts, sniggers and adoration.

Then I get stuck behind a FIVESOME of these Sleestaks, including Grumpy for 13 holes. THey yelled, they took five years to putt out every two footer for fourteen cents, they railed against whatever and they scurried like rodents when I hit into them...oops...on thirteen, damn those blind approaches. Oh well. Yes the wrath of the Golf Gods is terrible to behold, but those of us mortals can stand up for the game's integrity too.

Calgon, take me away!