Sunday broke a beautiful day for golf. Renegade thunderheads, the remnants of a couple of days worth of gulley washers, patrolled the desert skies. Their billowy tops catching the colors of dawn well before “Uncle Sol” rose over the mountains to the East. The rains and cloud cover cooled the desert temporarily. With luck and some breeze, we’d finish our round in relative comfort well before summer’s blast furnace fired up and roasted everyone and everything near the desert floor.
I got up before dawn to make the trip south and east to Tucson. I had every intention of making “Casablanca” (Whitey’s house) Saturday evening. However, a simple late Saturday afternoon conversation with the better half turned into an earnest discussion of which color to paint the kitchen. I was two-beers deep into which shade of tan/yellow/peach/butter goes best with the tile when a Sunday morning drive became necessity.
The desert between Tucson and Phoenix will never, ever make the cover of Arizona Highways. It’s composed of scrubby, lowland desert that is flat, hot, and treeless. It is so barren, forsaken, and lacking in commercial promise that it was declared an Indian reservation. This land is home to various tribes who subsided on hunting and gathering before they were hunted and gathered and placed in this treeless, dusty expanse. The natives get the last laugh now as their casinos sit on the flanks of Phoenix’s expanse and rake in cake by the shovelful. Now, as one speeds from Phoenix to Tucson, new signs of native prosperity dot the desert—perhaps the most interesting are the casino-funded renal care facilities that reclaim the vital organs of those who had their native diets replaced with pork rinds and orange soda.
But, I digress. Tucson sits a couple thousand feet higher than Phoenix, and it’s surrounded on three sides by towering mountains. The good Franciscans who settled Tucson did so because they were hoping to convert everyone on the road to El Dorado. They stopped in Tucson because it’s climate is relatively mild, for a desert climate, and it sits square in the path of the summer monsoon thunderstorms, which come rumbling due north from Old Mexico dumping twice the amount of rainfall seen in Phoenix. The result is splendid spectacle of flora and fauna, perhaps the best found in the Sonoran desert.
I’ll forgo details of breakfast at Whitey’s. There only so much one can tell about Seadog ironing yet another Hawaiian shirt. There was a brief discussion and much braying when I spotted an article in the Sunday Sports section that told of UofA’s decision to duck Nebraska and Alabama this football season and play Northern Arizona instead. Never let it be said that coach John Mackovic is a man of courage and honor.
We played The Gallery a mountain/desert course that is cut through the canyons of the Tortellina Mountains, which lie due west of Tucson proper. The view from the first tee stretches for scores of miles in three directions. The Tortellinas, according to Whitey, hold the world’s largest population of rattlesnakes, and even though we did a fair bit of tromping in prime rattler habitat, we didn’t see any snakes. The Tortellinas themselves are strewn with massive boulders and saguaros, but not so steep that a person couldn’t hike them given provisions. It doesn’t take much imagination to substitute Geronimo and his colleagues for the lone, sentinel saguaros that sit near the peaks.
This was the third outing in four days for Whitey and Seadog. It didn’t take long for them to warm up head for the first tee. They got ready. Teed their balls and hit big drives. Whitey’s ball faded a little but stayed in the fairway. Seadog hit a mammoth hook that was swallowed by a huge bunker saving it from rattler land. I hadn’t played in a week. My first drive stared left and stayed left going into the desert. Boyd, my cart mate, is an expert ball finder. He found my ball and I hacked it back into the fairway.
All Whitey’s side games were in force. There were Hogans and greenies, Yamagouchis and stickies. There were others, I am sure, but all that distracts me. Golf is hard enough with me, my clubs, the ball, and the course all entangled. I can’t worry about Baskett’s lob wedge from the neighboring green. There were presses and stroke holes. There was constant chatter about who had done what to whom. There was little visible regret when an errant shot went whistling into a mountainside.
All in all, everyone was on their best behavior although shouting in some canyons made for echoes that must have been disturbing to some of the slumbering locals. The course itself is good. Maybe a four out of five stars. However the pro shop, the staff, and the other amenities reek with the stink of phony prestige and privilege manqué. It’s like every asshole who works there thinks he’s Curtis Goddamn Strange.
As usual, form followed function. I struggled to make pars, although I should get some props for hitting the big boy’s tees. I am very proud to have played the entire round with the same ball, a rare occurrence in desert/mountain golf. Mr. Baskett putted bravely and accurately in an attempt to save a shot and a dollar here and there. And Mr. White played very well albeit complaining long and loud that he didn’t hit a decent drive until the 18th. So, how did the $$$ thing work between Whitey and Seadog? We’ll, after carefully counting all the dots, dashes, and everything else on the scorecard, Whitey announced that Seadog was out a some cash. Seadog pleaded for an out of court settlement, which Mr. Whitey begrudgingly accepted.
After golf it was back to Casa Blanca where Whitey tossed on a roast, potatoes, and corn on the cob on the grill. We sat back and watched the D-backs win and counted coup. After a few hours, we ate prime rib, potatoes, and corn. We toasted our friendship. I drove Seadog to the PHX airport. We called LaReau but he didn’t answer. He's in Savannah these days, and the three-hour time difference between us meant he had gone to bed before we called.
Cheers
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