Tuesday's Caddie



  Tuesday's Caddie

  By

  Jack Waddell

  Copyright 2012-2014 Jack Waddell

  Second Issue

  ISBN: 9781301902033

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Cover by Vila Design www.viladesign.net

  Scripture quotations from The Holy Bible, New International Version NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Forest Lawn

  Part One: 1930

  Chapter 1: Conor

  Chapter 2: Biarritz

  Chapter 3: The Yard

  Chapter 4: Annie

  Chapter 5: First Round

  Chapter 6: Mary

  Chapter 7: Second Round

  Chapter 8: Robert

  Chapter 9: Billy

  Chapter 10: Tryout

  Chapter 11: Gossip

  Chapter 12: Money

  Chapter 13: Third Round

  Chapter 14: Practice

  Chapter 15: Bullock's Wilshire

  Chapter16: Westlake Park

  Chapter 17: Mother's Day

  Chapter 18: Conspiracy

  Chapter 19: Bogey House

  Chapter 20: Agua Caliente

  Chapter 21: Consequences

  Chapter 22: Succor

  Chapter 23: Dancing

  Chapter 24: Billy Redux

  Chapter 25: Auction

  Chapter 26: Saturday

  Chapter 27: Franklin

  Chapter 28: Sunday

  Chapter 29: Winning and Losing

  Chapter 30: Awards

  Chapter 31: Flight

  Part Two: 1964-1969

  Chapter 32: Politics

  Chapter 33: Revelation

  Chapter 34: Tuesday's Caddie

  Chapter 35: Westchester

  Chapter 36: Truth

  Chapter 37: Mitchell

  Chapter 38: Providence

  Chapter 39: Remembrances

  Chapter 40: Reckoning

  Epilogue: Forest Lawn

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Forest Lawn

  Sunday, April 8, 2012

  The man only wanted to pay respects to his father. That it was his visitation day with his daughter made it a little awkward. Who takes his daughter to a cemetery on their visitation day? What would her mother say? But it was Easter Sunday and his father's birthday and he never missed bringing flowers to the grave. His father had been a good man. And besides, the man rationalized, it wasn’t all that different than taking his daughter to a park.

  He had a point. The Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California is as much a tourist attraction as a place of repose and respect. With its chapels, museums, art galleries and sculptures it is an iconic final destination befitting Hollywood glitz and glamour. The setting is beautiful, much like a golf course. With three hundred rolling acres of towering trees and mown grass it is a shaded green oasis in the sprawl that has become greater Los Angeles. Scores of celebrities remembered and long forgotten are interred here. Fans by the busload wander the grounds and gape at the headstones and take pictures and chatter about their memories of their departed idols. If one enjoys theme parks in this life then Forest Lawn is the perfect choice for the next one.

  It was sometimes a chore to crawl through the narrow lanes behind cars lost in the maze of curving drives while their drivers fumbled with tourist maps showing grave locations, especially on a holiday like this. But the man was used to it and patiently wound his way to where his father was buried. They got out of the car and walked to the gravesite. When they reached it, the father said a brief prayer and placed the flowers beneath the stone. He explained to his five-year-old why they were there, who this had been and why they were leaving flowers. Then he saw something that struck him.

  She was obviously an old woman. She wore a long skirt and woolen sweater even though it was a mild April day. She was carrying a spray of greenery and flowers, shuffling her way with a cane across the grass to a rather large granite marker. Maybe it was the marker that got his attention. Who could that be? Somebody famous?

  He watched as the woman took a withered arrangement from the base of the stone and replaced it with the one she had been carrying. With some difficulty she knelt and prayed. She stayed for more than a few moments. She rose and stood back from the stone and looked at it for some time. Then she bent down and picked up the withered arrangement and carried it back to a limousine. She got in and the limousine pulled away.

  The man had to look. Taking his daughter by the hand he walked across the lawn to the headstone. He looked at the flowers she had left. He looked at the headstone. The names meant nothing to him. In fact, they confused him. They didn't match up.

  “Who is it, Daddy?” his daughter asked.

  “I don’t know, honey,” he replied, “but they died a long time ago.”

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  “There’s just their names, who they were and parts of a poem.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think it means they loved each other very, very much.” Then, thinking of the old woman, he added, “And I guess someone still loves them.”

  (back to top)

  Part One – 1930

  “The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.” Ecclesiastes 2:14 NIV

  Chapter 1

  Conor

  Tuesday April 15, 1930

  It was a long walk, maybe four miles, from the boarding house to the golf course. It was still dark and chilly. Southern California nights don’t give up their cold until the sun gets high enough to do its job. Conor O'Reilly pulled the collar up on his tweed jacket and thrust his hands into the waist of his plus fours. His bowler hat pulled low, he watched the ground so as not to trip down the sloping gravel shoulder. He kept a brisk pace.

  He wanted to get to the course early enough that he’d have a chance to carry two loops today. Tuesday was Ladies’ Day, so with any luck he could get a morning round with the men in soon enough that he could pick up another carry when the women came out in the afternoon. It would be a long day, maybe sixteen miles by the time he got home, half of those carrying bags on both shoulders if he was lucky enough to pick up doubles. Not that he minded. It wasn’t just work. It was golf.

  He counted himself fortunate. Any job these days was a good job. But to be able to spend his hours in the open air on a golf course, even if it meant playing the game vicariously, was a bonus. After all, he’d grown up on a golf course in Ireland. His family had a cottage across the road from the famed Lahinch Golf Club and its resort hotel in County Clare, hard by Liscannor Bay on the southwestern shore.

  His career, as it was, had started when he was fifteen. His father, a barber, had died suddenly leaving behind his mother and Conor’s four older sisters. The sisters were already working, three as maids and one as a seamstress. It had been time for him to add his support to the household. He’d had few regrets leaving school. It had been too confining to suit him. His two sisters still living at home made sure though that he kept up with some studies, reading to him and encouraging him to read the books they would “borrow” from the families they worked for. The reading at home, unlike in school, became something he loved and he began reading everything he could.

  When he began he wo
uld caddie by day, work cleaning in the hotel kitchen in the evening, then sneak out onto the course in the dark with a club the caddie master had given him and balls he had shagged from the gorse lining the fairways. Over the next several years he worked himself up both on the course and in the kitchen. He became a very good golfer, several times winning the annual caddie tournament. And he learned to cook; something he came to enjoy once it didn’t involve scrubbing pots and pans.

  He was twenty-one when his mother died. By then all of his sisters had married. Only the youngest was still living in the cottage with her husband. Whether it was the loss of his mother or something of a coming of age, he was at once overcome with wanderlust. He wanted to go to America, to become something more than a caddie and a cook. He’d been too busy to go looking for a wife. Perhaps he could find one across the pond. His sisters had forced him to save his money. Now he was glad they had. He had enough to book passage in steerage and get himself started in the New World.

  It was 1925 when he landed on New York’s Ellis Island. America was booming. He had no trouble finding work in a restaurant in the theater district, just off Broadway. Like many establishments of the time, it was a restaurant in the front and a speakeasy in the back. It made for a spirited crowd. And it was that crowd that fired his imagination. They were, by his standards, rich beyond measure; men in tuxedos, women in glittery gowns, one couple more handsome than the next. He wanted to become one of them. But he recognized that New York was not where he could do that. Not when he was so Irish. Not when this was old money with old connections that were too tightly knit to permit him entry.

  That’s when he began thinking of California. He knew there was opportunity there for someone with ambition; everything was new, everything was growing. He'd written back and forth with his cousin Michael who had already made the pilgrimage. It sounded exactly like the kind of place he could make his fortune. And it was, for a while. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1928 with a bag packed full of dreams. He would open his own restaurant, then another, then another. He would build an empire.

  He started small, renting a tiny café on South San Pedro Avenue near City Hall. He called it “Connie’s,” his mother’s pet name for him. He was chef, maître d’ and cleaning crew. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he worked hard and was starting to make some money. Until it all went away.

  His was one of a million similar stories with the crash of 1929. His bank failed and took with it all his money. He lost customers. He couldn’t pay his suppliers, then his rent. Within two months, in January of 1930, he was out of business.

  He went looking for work. At first he scoured downtown Los Angeles. Nothing. Then he had an idea. He would go where the rich were. He managed to make his way to the Hollywood Hills. Mansion after mansion was tucked behind high hedges and iron gates. But he had a different objective – a country club. It was where the rich gathered. And they certainly had to eat. He would cook for them.

  He struck out at the first two clubs. At the third, Biarritz Country Club, he got lucky. Michael’s wife Mary was working there as a scullery maid. No, there was no work in the kitchen. But maybe he could caddie. He should see the caddie master. He did. Gino was a fearsome character, but Conor managed to persuade him with his tales of golf in Ireland. He started as a “C” caddie only able to carry one bag at a time, but he obviously was good and soon earned “A” status and thus able to carry doubles. He had a job that could sustain him.

  His timing couldn’t have been better. Within a few months of the crash all the clubs in the area were overrun with men looking for work as caddies or grounds crew or work of any kind. Biarritz built a gate and hired a gatekeeper to keep them out.

  Walking the final leg down La Habra Street, Conor approached the gate. The sun was just starting to glimmer over the San Gabriel Mountains to the east. There was Harry O'Berry, the gatekeeper, rising from the stool in his little hut to greet him. Conor had his caddie badge pinned to his lapel, his ticket into the club, but he didn’t need it. Harry knew him well.

  “Hey Mick!” Harry called out. “You’re out here early this morning.”

  Conor cringed, as always, at the nickname. He wasn’t the only Irishman working at the club and so he never understood why he was the one who ended up with the derogatory sobriquet. But he was getting used to it.

  “Aye, Harry, I am to be early this fine day. But it would seem you’ve beaten me to the watch.”

  Harry chuckled. “Well, a man has to get up early to keep the likes of you out.”

  “I shan’t be denied my entry into this hallowed ground,” Conor bellowed in jest. “For I have the coin the of the realm pinned here to my brave chest! I am an “A” caddie and I demand my due respect!”

  Harry laughed, as he always did at their morning jokes. “All right then you nefarious blackguard, you Irish scamp, come in, come in. But be warned. I got a look at Gino this morning and I think he had a bit too much of the grape last night, if you know what I mean. It’s a black mood he’s sure to be in.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t scare me! I am an “A” caddie, the best there is, an experienced professional quite capable of dealing with the unwashed heathens that make up our little world. Let me in and I’ll slay the Gino dragon one way or another.”

  “Well, good luck to you, Mick. You’ll need it.”

  With that Harry opened the gate and with a bow and a wave ushered Conor in. “Mick” walked through, ready for the day. He would deal with Gino as he always did.

  (back to top)

  Chapter 2

  Biarritz

  Tuesday, April 15, 1930

  Biarritz Country Club was the creation of George Hamilton Burnside, a fabulously wealthy financier and real estate mogul who, at the turn of the century, had the foresight to buy up some of the most scenic property in the Hollywood Hills. Most of it he sold off in estate-sized chunks to similarly wealthy individuals. Yet he kept the most beautiful tract for himself; one hundred sixty acres atop a plateau dotted with pear and pepper trees. The site ran more or less level east and west with the southern side sloping down to an arroyo lined with a grove of eucalyptus trees. Until it was developed, the tract was jokingly referred to locally as “George’s Gorge.”

  He commissioned Herbert Campbell, a renowned architect who had designed several famous courses on Long Island and in suburbs of Chicago and Detroit, and paid him the princely sum of twenty-five hundred dollars to layout the eighteen-hole course. Ground was broken in 1923 and in the spring of 1925 it opened for play. The front nine wound through trees like a parkland course until it reached the far western end of the property. Then, like The Old Course at St. Andrews, the back nine played through almost links-like terrain along the dunes that lined the arroyo coming back to the clubhouse.

  The clubhouse was a huge Spanish-style affair with an expansive red tiled roof and pink stucco walls popular at the time. It sat at the east end perched atop the highest point on the property. Its sweeping veranda offered a commanding view of the course and especially the closing hole. Burnside had specified that he didn’t want the last hole to play into the setting sun and it didn’t. The eighteenth began low just beyond the dunes then rose up the hill, turning right and east around a copse of trees, up to an elevated green lying beneath the veranda. Whether taken in looking up from the fairway or looking down from the clubhouse, the view was majestic.

  There were other amenities and structures: four tennis courts lay just to the north of the clubhouse flanked by a pool to the east and a pro shop just to the west. A practice putting green sat in front of the pro shop. At the far west end of the course near the fourteenth green was the greenkeeper’s barn reached by its own service road. Along that dirt lane was a small bungalow that pre-dated the course. Originally intended as the greenkeeper’s residence, it instead acquired another purpose along with the moniker “Bogey House” after proving to be a discreet and convenient place for some of the members to sleep off a night of too vigorous revelry or, on occasion
, play host to inappropriate bedmates. There even developed a code for its use. One candle in the window meant its occupants were indisposed to company. Two candles meant another guest was welcome to share the accommodations.

  Of course the clubhouse, tennis courts and pool were not part of Conor O'Reilly’s world. His world was the caddie yard; a twenty-five- by twenty-five-foot district of hard packed earth surrounded on three sides by a six-foot high weathered grape stake fence and gate. The inner perimeter was lined with wooden benches, a couple of spittoons, a pail full of sand for an ashtray and, in the corner, a rusting steel drum for discarded newspapers, bottles and other trash. A faded and tattered market umbrella stood furled in another corner. It and an overhanging pepper tree were the only shelter from rain. A tea table with three good legs and a broomstick for a fourth served for checkers, cribbage, solitaire and poker. The fourth side of the yard was the back wall of the pro shop. There were two doors. One led to a small perpetually filthy bathroom for the caddies, the other was a large Dutch door that led past a small desk and into the bag room.

  The yard’s denizens had supplied most of the furnishings and décor over time, including the intricately carved initials and blasphemies that graced the benches and fence posts. A lot of time had been killed in this place. Two things the inhabitants had not furnished were the signs. One was nailed to the inside of the gate and admonished “Keep Closed! This Means You!” This was meant to prevent any of the genteel members’ sensibilities from becoming offended by inadvertently peering into such a den of depravity. The other sign was posted next to the Dutch door and set forth the rules of deportment:

  ON THE COURSE:

  NO Smoking, NO Drinking, NO Chewing, NO Spitting, NO Pissing.

  IN THE YARD:

  NO Gambling, NO Drinking, NO Fighting, NO Loud Talk.

  KEEP THIS PLACE CLEAN!

  Rare was the day when all these rules were followed, but only because Gino, the caddie master, wielded his authority well. He was a reasonable man with an unreasonable demeanor. He cast a frightening visage. His head was bald and as big as a pumpkin. It seemed to grow from his massive shoulders and chest with no neck for a stem. His left ear was cauliflowered. His nose was squished against his face, the tip pointing impossibly right like some crooked parsnip. His forearms were too big to fit most shirts so he would slit open the sleeves and keep them rolled up to his elbows. He looked like what he was, an ex prize fighter.