Golf is rich in history and a challenge to play. Dad loved golfing at Valparaiso Country Club. It wasn't so much the game, but rather admittance into the regional royalty that it provided. Dad was competitive, for sure, but it was the fraternity of captains of industry that would congregate at the club that led dad to golf. CEOs, bank presidents, steel company plant managers, and all the rest of the court jesters were at the Club. For dad, it meant arrival. The first kid to get a college degree in the family. His brother was the war hero, dad was the American dream.
My brother Johnny loves to play golf, no matter where, and is also very competitive. As a financial CEO, golf is part of his job. Golf provides Johnny with business access and new friends. He works hard at a single digit handicap and being a great father, husband and brother. His dream was to graduate college, get in a good training program, work his way up the food chain and become a CEO. Mission accomplished! He's as competitive at work as he is at golf.
Doc Nick was my Father-In-Law. He loved to play golf, to get some testosterone balance in his life. He liked golf just to be with 'the guys'. Doc also liked to stir the pot and have a cigarette or 6 in peace. Golf provided Doc that outlet. It's not that he didn't love his wife, but socially, things revolved around her. He gladly enjoyed supporting "Georgia". Even though she forbade his smoking, he loved her and enjoyed relaxing in the sun with her. It's just that he needed the adrenaline and nicotine rush of the fairway, rough or lost ball search.
Me, I love playing golf. I want to be better but, given a choice, I'd rather be on an urban adventure. Work travel dictates certain decisions, play a round of golf or do something with my bride, the Love Goddess. I, unapologetically, choose the Love Goddess. Call me a pussy, if you will, but that's me. I do love the fraternity that is golf. I love the game, the challenges and those moments when I have a good game. I've realized that the only time that I really enjoy golf is when I'm with good friends. I can't golf with strangers. I just want to hang, enjoy the moment and have fun. I want to not suck, too.
Dad, Johnny and Doc represent the most important men to me. I love them all and just want to have fun. In what almost was a tradition, the four of us would play golf on Father's Day. It was fun. The two dads got along great. Dad would tell stories and Doc was an eager audience. Johnny could guide us on the golf course and I could just have fun. The two dads would become kind of smart-assed and obnoxious. Johnny & I were the adults trying to keep the kids in line.
I had just started MCSI and dad wanted to buy my office furniture. He was excited and wanted to help. It was his way of saying he was proud, and after 30 some years of a tempestuous relationship, dad and I had settled into a growing one. I wanted to pay him back for the furniture when I earned the money, but he wouldn't accept. The alternative was to give him a Christmas gift of a golf trip to Hilton Head. It would be the three Bratsakis men and Doc who covered his airfare and was part of the group. Dad's first comment was, "I already belong to a club, why would I want to go play somewhere else?"
Hilton Head had no mystique for dad, it was a place to play golf that was far away, and expensive to boot. Johnny & I convinced dad it would be fun. Begrudgingly, Dad accepted.
We get to Hilton Head and stayed at a Hilton resort. Johnny knew the courses and had us set up to play. Harbor Point was great. It's where they play the RBC Heritage Invitational right after the Masters. The day was cloudy, balmy, and on the cold side, but we had fun. I'm still befuddled how I could duck hook a 3 wood, 150 yards, 130 degrees to the left into the side of a house, just missing a window. That being said, it was a rush to play a championship course. The small greens, the chutes the pros tee off through, the course management and of course, the bonding. It was just us. Boys in one cart, crazy dads in the other. Doc would spend 60 minutes looking for a ball, dad realizing he was on a championship course started feeling the power of the Heritage Plaid Jacket and history of the course. Johnny was blazing away with humongous drives, mostly on the fairway and certainly avoiding peoples' homes. In spite of my below average play, I just loved being with the guys. Hitting up to the 18th, seeing the towering trademark red and white striped lighthouse, shanking my approach into the front trap was great.
Day two was the Arthur Fazio Course. Everyone was psyched to play the luscious, undulating, curvy, green course...was I just thinking of Zoe Saldana?...I digress. The course was beautiful and on our approach, Doc asks me to stop. He is ashen white, as if he had just seen the ghost of his mother-in-law whom he never met. I ask Doc, "what's wrong?".
He replied, "That sign says that we can bit by snakes and eaten by crocodiles. I don't think it's safe."
I reply, "Doc, people golf here all the time and the Arthur Fazio course has had no casualties in, like, the last 100 years. We will be fine! The crocodiles will not eat you, not with a tasty Bratsakis or two, near."
Doc says, "Okay, but if something bad happens, you have to contact your mother-ion-law." Since I didn't wince or flinch externally, he assumed we must be safe and we soldiered on.
As usual, Johnny crushes drive after drive and we get to the third hole. Johnny blasts one on the left part of the fairway and I stripe one straight down the fairway. We play my shot and get to Johnny's lie, which may be in a separate zip code. Suddenly, I'm like where's dad & doc? Johnny replies, "I don't knooooow.........what the shit?"
At that moment we saw both Dad & Doc using there pitching wedges as epee's parrying with imaginary swashbuckling Musketeers Athos & Porthos. We turn around the golf cart to find out what was wrong. As we drew closer dad gleefully looks over his shoulder and says, "We found crocodiles" while continuing his spasmodic fencing of Athos. Doc, then looks over his shoulder, pressing Porthos, and announces, "They're just there, we're trying to get them to move."
As they pressed the invisible musketeers back, the dads slowly were working their way down a grassy embankment to the water. There, in fact, were two large green/gray crocs, just hanging out. Now Doc had gained a slight lead on dad and imploring the crocs to "dance". The Crocs had no interest in dancing or an early meal. The crocs were just....crocodile rock, staying in place and not moving.
John yells at dad to get back, we're playing slow, and they will likely get eaten, which at this point, would have gotten us back to fast paced golf. The dads just stared at us and finally got back to playing golf.
The long weekend was much better than expected and it was time to come home. We get to the airport and our flight is cancelled. The salamander shaped line was long at United check-in. People were yelling at the counter clerk. Dad & Doc got in line, both wearing blazers, nice dress pants and shirt. Johnny & I are in topsiders, Bermuda shorts and a golf shirt, unshaven with our big goatees. We looked like Izod dressed dock workers.
The dads were from the golden age of travel, where people were not a commodity, decorum was part of travel, and the airlines actually appreciated your business. They were not prepared for the modern feeding frenzy of piranha-like customers, hounding the poor counter clerk mercilessly, in line, that felt they were owed, not just a flight, but a million dollars for their inconvenience of standing in line.
Since people had become a commodity in the airline business, the poor ticket people were admirably fighting the fight.
John and I knew better. Bratsakis Brothers in action! Johnny tackled the airfare issues, I tackled the car rental. Hertz is ALWAYS reliable. We told the dads we had this and they let us know they knew better, because Father Knows Best. I secured a black Ford Explorer, while John got us tickets out of Charlotte and a hotel room. It was a five hour drive, but it got us off the island, so we were cool.
We went to tell the dads but they were next in line and waived us off. The man in front of them was a Tommy Bahama, orange floral shirt, sandals with white socks and Maui Jim sunglasses wearing, raving lunatic. He yelled so loud, Johnny & I almost jumped in to break him in half, but the dads were there. After the mad diatribe, he got tickets for two days later. The dads were up. They were polite, kind of old man flirty, suave, finished, and left with a grin.
Dad, "She had tickets for us to Charlotte with a hotel room. All we have to do is get a vehicle." The two dads were very proud that they had negotiated such a grand settlement. We didn't have the heart to tell them we know but that the Ford Explorer is loaded and ready to go.
The drive to Charlotte was great. Doc would often say, the trip back was one of the most memorable times he ever had. Dad, as per usual, was stoic. We ate strawberry Twizzlers for 5 hours straight.
