I’m going to take something away from this relationship
My dad was a seriously insecure human who has as many secrets in his past. One in particular was where he went to college. He used to wear Southern Illinois stuff because he went there, he said, but he used to couple that with, I did get in to Harvard but we were too poor so I couldn’t go.”
He did this. Lie like this. He posted bolder lies on his social media, claims like he attended Northwestern Business School, another lie, but he posted them because, you know, who’s going to call him out?
Am I going to call the Harvard registrar’s office and speak to admissions from 1964? “Uh, yes, good day, Miss. Is there any evidence of a Russ Ehler acceptance?” Good luck. Dust for prints, pal.
As a kid, he ignored us, sitting together on the couch, telling us to stop talking while watching a sporting event or reading national geographic. When he lived with us, he rarely ever played sports with us. I don’t recall owning a baseball glove or ‘throwing a ball around in the yard’.
I do recall him going golfing with my late cousin Johnny. Johnny, who was scrawny and sincere, was insecure as well, seemingly due to a much more charming, athletic, handsome, and dickish younger brother, my other cousin Jimmy.
Johnny, who my dad called ‘Bones’, would come over some weekends and go golfing with my dad. Probably the close cheap courses, like the Forest Preserve clubs that have wide fairways and limited water and sand hazards, no real out-of-bounds.
When I turned 13 or so, my dad decided I was old enough to golf with and he took me out to get my first set of clubs. He had already divorced my mom and was on his third marriage when he took me to a golf pro store where they lived in Orland Park, the self-titled World’s Golf Center.
There, he directed me to the discount clubs; these were the mis-matched clubs that were placed together in the same plastic trash container. A Titelist 3 iron, an off-brand putter, three light blue ladies’ woods (Driver, 3, and 5).
My dad grabbed a 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 iron, a pitching wedge, a sand wedge, a putter, and the aforementioned light blue ladies’ woods. He grabbed a golf bag to hold the clubs and with a bag of tees and ball mark repairs, and a glove, we got out of there for under 100$.
The golfing was a much different story.
Clearly I had no idea what I was doing, but because he was bigger and played, what I thought was quite a bit, I thought my dad did know what he was doing. But he didn’t.
Some things he did right, like he would hold his grip correctly, have a straight lead arm, keep his head down and the lot of it, but he was just not very accurate.
He’d be at the tee box smoking a Winston and lay it down off the white markers. He’d make some off-remark about where he was about to hit it, but you could tell he was making it up as he went.
“Pin’s up. It’s red, which means in front, and the wind’s not a factor. Let’s tee it high and let it fly!”
Then he’d hit some really crappy shot. We’d watch it hook so hard one direction, you’d thought it was intentional, careening into the wood or the water.
He’d pull both lips into his mouth and in between his teeth, and look around with near fever in his eyes. “Mother fucker!” he’d say. His eyes would turn and I’d be there behind him, plenty of ways behind him, and he’d dig up some reason for what happened.
“Thanks for standing in my line, polack,” he’d say. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was in the golf cart. He was already blaming the sun and the heat, while setting up another ball.
The second one would typically be struck better, and sometimes struck well. He would wind up playing the new ball, and then later, he’d somehow dig up his initial ball, or some other fools’ ball, and then he’d give out a little ‘Woo-hoo!’
When you take as many free shots as you want on a hole, called “mulligans”, and then you take the score associated with this practice, of course you will have a strong score, it just won’t be real. But my dad thought, Hey, I hit the shot, I’m taking it. Whichever ones I want.
I suppose this is why he thought he was a great golfer. And why he thought he should share with me his tricks. And he had some tricks. He had a trick for lining up a shot (the trees beyond the flag) or one for lining up a putt (turn your inside foot in).
One trick in particular is a soft pitching wedge he hits from around the longer stuff right off the green. You take your wedge and you lay it down on the flat side of its back. Tighten up your hold a little closely to the end of the rubber grip, so you're almost at the metal of the club shaft.
Then, when you swing the club, bring the heel through and strike the ball with the flat edge. The ball will jump up a little, land, and keep most of its pace, following the swing path, and typically landing with some precision.
I still use this shot today. It works most times, too. I’ll address the ball on the lip of the green, pull two clubs, my wedge and my putter, leave my clubs by the next hole turnaround, and walk to the ball position.
I’ll walk my line up through where the ball is in position with the flag of the pin, and the position of the hole in reference to where my ball is.
I’ll swing the wedge just the way I described, but right before I do, I say the words, “I’m gonna take something away from this relationship.” Typically, the shot goes well and it gets close enough, and I think, This is one thing.
–
My dad and I don’t hang out anymore because outside of being really unkind to me, he’s also unpleasant to be around.
I believe he always knew, because of my mom and our close relationship, that I’d probably be like her, left-leaning and happy-go-lucky, two things typical conservatives really dislike.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t try to connect. He was just lousy at it.
We typically golfed by him near Orland Park. He lived near dozens of golf courses and even got remarried at Palos Hills Country Club, when some will remember, it was still 18 holes.
We’d go to Silver Lake or Oak Hills or Gleneagles. These semi-challenging courses that are perfect for mediocre, cheating players like us.
Once, on a particularly difficult par-3 that had an uphill trajectory where you had to hit it up and over water on to a landing, it also happened that it was too-warm day as well.
My dad, who sweats like he’s always defusing a bomb, couldn’t seem to keep a hold on his club. Two shots in and already, he’s blamed his sweat. To be fair to him, this dog sweats.
On this hole, though, he’s had too much. After three shots into the water, he two-hand baseball grips his club, and swings like DiMaggio, throwing the mother fucker into the water. He then picks up his bag, and, well, its heavy, so he throws it to the ground, and kicks it. Then, he just starts walking away.
So, you know, I’m a high school kid, and here I am, walking up to his clubs, picking up his club, checking out the water to see where his wedge is. He’s walking away, looking back every now and again to yell something mean at me.
“Leave it! Russell? I said leave it.”
I have no idea what to do. I’m now just going to wait for him to walk away far enough and get cool enough to regroup. Meanwhile, I have his bag, and I’m hoping to fish his club out of the gulch, and maybe he’ll think of me as a good boy.
Fast forward to him sitting on a bench under a canopy by the next tee box. I have his clubs and he has taken his glove off. Sure, it is soaked through. And he is still so angry, smoking, his thick fingers shaking.
I sit and, you know, bullshit the time by taking stuff out of my bag and, I guess, putting it back in. He sees that I have two golf gloves. For a note, you typically only wear the glove on one hand: the lead hand. The driving hand, the back hand, you don’t.
However, when he sees that I just happen to have a right glove, on accident, because I don’t wear it and, to be truthful, I must have picked it up some hole before because I don’t even know how I got it, he starts in.
“Why did you tell me you had a right-hand glove? Jesus Christ!”
He begins into this whole story about how if I had just done something differently, if I had informed him, almost insinuating I had purposefully withheld this glove from him, and you would have just watched how different things would have been.
On the next hole, he hits a towering wedge, leaves his hands and club in the air to watch it soar, and then he gleefully tosses his club to the side and says, “See? That’s how you do it!”
–
I don’t think we have played golf together since the 2010s. We played golf at my bachelor’s party in 2005, but I didn’t put him on my team, instead having him play with Johnny and Jimmy. I don’t think he plays much anymore, now that he is almost 80.
I think somewhere out there, there is a story about the two of us on a golf course, he hits a poor shot, looks at me, says something like, “Well, you can’t win ‘em all,” and I learn patience and the true meaning of life: some days, it's your day; some days, it’s not.
There is a bigger meaning here, though, and that’s you don’t get to choose your parents or your kids. As much as I would have loved to have a pops that would give patient wisdom, he wishes he had a kid who was cool with his insulting and childish behavior, or, I suppose, being cool with all of his behaviors, regardless of what they are.
And I guess further, that if you find that your relationship doesn’t make it the length of your lives, you should always know that even if you don’t have that relationship with that person any longer, you should be able to take some things away from it.
