We show up at the first tee, getting ready to spend a great day together. I am playing golf with David and our friend, Kevin. We are walking the course, rather than taking carts, when there we are on the first tee and a guy comes rolling up in a cart. 

For non-golfers, if you don’t have four people in your group, they will add more people. You end up playing with strangers quite frequently. It’s usually great for an extrovert like myself. Well, it’s an older gentleman, we’ll call him, “James.” He introduces himself to me and then walks up to the boys at the tee.

“Hi, I’m James. I’m 88 years old and this is the first f-ing year I have to take one of these f-ing carts.”

I’m thinking, “Whoa, hold on there, gramps, we don’t need the “F” bombs dropping because you, somehow, think this is necessary to connect to these young men.” 

Instead, I take David aside, and say, “I’ll find an opportunity very quickly to nip that talk in the bud.” 

Then, David tees off, and doesn’t hit it that well. 

“Son, let me tell you something my teacher, Ben Hogan, taught me. Watch the club hit the ball.”

Here we go. Now, one of the sacred rules of golf is you don’t give advise unless you are asked, in particular if you are a stranger. Then dropping the “Ben Hogan” line, one of the most famous golfers and teachers of the game, ever, well kind of a bragging thing for James to offer right off the bat, but at least intriguing. And James could hit the ball, well. Amazing, really for his age.I think I’m gonna get the chance to at least ask him something about Hogan during the next 4 hours, and maybe ask him for a few pointers.

David and I are walking down the fairway now, and he looks at me with this “who the heck is this guy look” and I say,

“David, think about it. Your 88 years old, you’re still a really good golfer, and you show up in the middle of the morning to play alone. This dude must have burnt a lot of bridges over the years. We probably haven’t seen anything, yet.” 

I didn’t realize how quickly that prediction will come true. On the third hole, after we had putted out, James jumps in his cart and says, “O.K. fellows, I ‘ll see you later,” and that was it.

I looked at the guys and said, “Huh?” It’s not as if we were playing bad; actually we were playing pretty good.

Then, Kevin tells us why James might have left.

It seems James and Kevin were having their own conversation as they were coming down the fairway. James asked Kevin how old he was. Kevin told him he was 21. Then Kevin tells us, James says this:

“When I was your age I was haivng a good time on Omaha Beach.”

Kevin says, ” O ya, is it a nice place?”

(Now, let’s pause here.  ”Omaha Beach” doesn’t necessarily register with younger folks, especially if they haven’t had a history class for awhile. For me and those older than me, of course, we would instantly know what James meant.)

James says in a huff, “No, it wasn’t a nice place. If it hadn’t been for guys like me, you wouldn’t be here enjoying your freedom right now.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to say to this. So he replies.

“Look, I’m just here to have fun and play some golf.”

After hearing this story from Kevin, David and I goofed on him, for a little while. After all, I know pretty much all there is to know about D-Day and the Normany Invasion. Actually, as a child, it was a little confusing, because I thought “D-Day” was short for “Dana Day.” You see, my birthday is, you guessed it, June 6th!

For David the situation is also a “no-brainer.” He went through four years of NJROTC, and is actually excellent at military history. But, we weren’t too hard on Kevin.

Here is what I know. First of all, James probably set Kevin up with the whole “Omaha Beach” thing. Why did he have to bring this up, out of the blue? Might have been similar to dropping the “Ben Hogan” line. To tell you the truth, many veterans I have known over the years don’t want to talk at all about their service. Especially, the battles and bloodshed. If one does speak of this, that’s fine, but be gracious enough to cut the kid a little slack.

Come to think of it, Kevin’s dad, my good friend, Ray, served in Vietnam, and my hunch is he didn’t get the same type of response as Joe did when he came home. I’m just saying…

Kevin handled the situation admirably, as he could have responded in a lot of different ways. So, let me do the same.

James, whoever you are, and wherever you are, I am going to cast this situation in the best of light and assume, you simply were in more of a hurry than us and didn’t want to wait for three walkers to play the round with you, as you had a cart. If you jumped ahead of us because you were perturbed, however, well, that has way more to do with you, than anything else. God bless you, my friend.