The Boy and the Town Grow Up Together
It is mid-summer of 1961 and standing outside the Fort Mill Golf Course Clubhouse, I have lots to think about. In August I will start high school across the street and will have to get my act together? I have never been a fan of studying. “Don’t you ever have any homework?” was the most common question at Hill House. Of course I did. I always completed the written work in the fastest, albeit sloppiest way possible and relied on listening in class to muddle through tests. It would be a lie to say I never cracked a book since I was a constant reader. With the exception of English class, I rarely read anything that was actually assigned.
On this day I am pretty sure I will have to change my immature ways if I plan on going to college in four years. I know that Dad wants me to take over his business one day. For now, I don’t know what I want. (That’s not completely true. I know I want a girlfriend.)
The Fort Mill Golf Course clubhouse at the end of Academy Street is a wooden building with a rustic log cabin sort of look. There is a porch wrapped around the side and inside along with the pro shop and locker areas for the golfers, there is social area where dances and meetings are held. The Lady Golfers have their annual dance there complete with a small band. As teenagers we have to be content with record players.
My thirteen-year-old self knows the interior of the clubhouse well. It is decorated in what can only be called “Dashing Elliott Springs” fashion. The walls are knotty pine, whose sap permeates the social area and gives it a woodsy smell.* Curtains are the tan Springs Mills “Persian Print” with leggy Springmaid girls dotted among the elaborate paisley designs. Above the curtains are poster-sized cartoons of golfers, some by Montgomery Flagg, the creator of the famous, “I Want You!” image of Uncle Sam.
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Beginning in the seventh grade, I had spent many Saturday nights at Teen Canteen in the big room of the clubhouse. Teen Canteen should have been called “Beginner Socializing” with the boys on one side of the room and the girls on the other. In search of my own “Dream Lover” and braving the horizontal headshake of refusal, I would sojourn across the vast dance floor and hold out my hand. The crossing was terrifying and returning rejected was devastating…but the reward…oh the reward of actually touching one of those anatomically wondrous beings was worth the risk. Slow dances were the stuff of dreams…arms around each other and the heady scents of English Leather and Shalimar mingling in an intoxicating haze.
Sorry. I got a little lost there. During the days of that pre-high school summer, I could still be a boy. The clubhouse was the center of my summer world. Not for the golf…what kind of thirteen-year-old is ready for that old man’s game?
Outside the clubhouse, was a small play area with a sliding board, swing set and horseshoe pits. The sliding board stood between eight and ten feet tall and the slide was a single sheet of steel buffed to a brilliant shine by a thousand backsides. As if the stainless-steel surface were not fast enough, resourceful mothers would bring along wax paper to double the thrill. It was no slide for the timid. The slope was steep enough to launch a slider a yard or so past the landing area and set him or her down with an undainty thump. When the sun burnished the steel, the ride was bottom-blistering.
Beside it was the tall swing set with four swings. Good heavy chains assured the swing would not break loose and a good pusher could propel a brave rider to swing to a height of seven or eight feet, almost level with the top bar of the frame. We were there for the horseshoe pits but would occasionally take a swing ride back into our all too recent childhood.
We had to go into the pro shop to check out the horseshoes. Besides serving as a bragging area for local golfers waiting to play the newly enlarged eighteen-hole course, the Pro Shop housed a freezer loaded with Snickers, Zeros and Reece Cups. The Zeros were tooth-breakers but my love of the frozen Reece Cup has never faded.
Down the hill past the clubhouse and before the swimming pool, was the bowling alley. I have tried time and again to count the lanes in my head. There were, I believe, five or six.* The adults had leagues, but that was at night. During the day the bowling alley was alive with youngsters.
On summer mornings the bowling alley served as a day camp for eight or nine year-olds and I had spent many mornings bowling and doing all sorts of little kid stuff. We would gather as a group while the counselors, Susan and Poogie, as I remember, would lead us in singing “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” (Yum, Yum, Hack, Hack, Hi Babe! Whoa Back! Toot, Toot) or the “Titanic” song (It was sad when that great ship went down, hit the bottom of the sea). That was all fine for little kids. Now we were waaay cooler. We played ping pong or bumper pool while listening to somebody’s transistor radio when the DJ played “Runaway” or Ernie K Doe’s “Mother-in-Law”. We didn’t have Mothers-in-Law but we sure knew we didn’t want one.
Did I mention swimming? Maybe not but that’s a story in itself.*
Across the street was the high school stadium but we didn’t play ball there. That was for the high school and American Legion baseball players. While we would sometimes watch from the bleachers, none of us would dare face a wayward fastball from one of those wannabe big leaguers.
We played our baseball on the back playground of Central School, later named A. O. Jones School. It stood where the Fort Mill Post Office now stands. With a chicken-wire backstop, the ball field covered the area between the school auditorium and Elliott Street and there was usually a Saturday afternoon pick-up game during the summer. Baseball was a hot topic. Mickey Mantle was regularly knocking them out of the park and this guy, Maris, who was traded from the Athletics, was doing OK too. He looked pretty good, but he was not the “Mick”. Non-Yankee fans touted the skills of “Stan the Man” Musial or the “Say Hey Kid” Willie Mayes. It was a righteous time for baseball.
I was a tall lefty so I was usually put on first base. I developed a quick tag because I did not relish being run over. This was the year my athletic career would peak. I could hit the long ball and once in a while could roll one all the way across Elliott Street to the National Guard armory parking lot.
It was also when I got gun-shy at the plate. Occasionally a high school player, Jimmy, would show up to play. He hit me with enough hard pitches that I became less aggressive and more defensive. I am not saying he put an end to a promising career but who knows? Wait, who am I kidding? When it came to athletics, I was born to be an “also ran”.
Our games went on until the summer sun dipped low enough to illuminate the red dust kicked up by our Converse All-Stars. When the time came, in an unspoken mutual agreement, we shouldered our bats with our gloves hanging from them and started for home, some on bikes and some on foot. We were not yet into the fully rebellious time when parents were “stupid” and siblings were a bother.
Home was still the place for family meals and evenings around the television. Our house on Gregg Street, like most houses of the time, was not air conditioned. The best nights were when Dad suggested a “cooley-out”. On a breezeless humid South Carolina evening, we would cool off by riding in the car with all the windows rolled down. My sister, Connie and I would ride in the windblown back seat and hope our destination was the Crown Creamery in Rock Hill. Dad liked to keep us in suspense but we knew all about his passion for butter pecan ice cream.
We were still boys playing in dusty fields on the edge of what J. D. Salinger called that “crazy cliff” of growing up. We left the worries of the world for tomorrow and didn’t know our childhood would slip away so fast. Had we known all the paths our lives would take, all the good and bad days we would see and all the responsibilities that came with growing up, we might have lingered on the field a moment longer and walked home a bit slower.
I picture myself in the orange light of late afternoon, walking home on Unity Street, my mind rich with boyhood dreams and future hopes. I want to put my arm on that boy’s shoulder and tell him to cherish life while he lives it and to savor every day. I know, however, what he does not know and should not know. I know, that in moments, he will be me.
*Unfortunately that sap-rich pine certainly contributed to the flames when the clubhouse was later destroyed by fire.
*I have since been told that they were only four lanes at the bowling alley.
*See my story, “On Summer and Swimming and Boyhood”