Giving Up the Ghost

There are many kinds of ghost stories. Here’s one.

One night in June 1984, I took a girl from my high school named Laura to meet my friend Jimmy at a local miniature-golf course, the Putt-O-Links.

Putt-O-Links was located at the end of a long strip of abandoned industrial buildings outside of Canton, Ohio. Canton was once a blue-collar Mecca devoted to making vacuum cleaners, ball bearings, and steel. During the 1980s, Canton, like the entire Midwest Rust Belt, was in absolute denial that its way of life was dying right before its eyes. I don’t think
globalization
was even a word then, but places like Canton were already experiencing it firsthand.

Each spring the world around Putt-O-Links got smaller and smaller. One by one the nearby factories closed. Next, the car dealerships down the street moved. After that, the diner closed. Eventually, the Putt-O-Links and the ice cream stand next door were the only signs of life for half a mile in any direction. Then, that spring, the Putt-O-Links didn’t open either. Neither did the ice cream stand. There were no
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS
or
THANKS FOR THIRTY GREAT YEARS
signs, just tall weeds and a fallen rusty chain that had once closed off the parking
lot. It looked almost as if the owners had just forgotten that summer was coming and it was time to open again.

My friend Jimmy didn’t let Putt-O-Links’s change of fortune slow him down; he still went golfing there at least three times a week just like he had every summer. Every time I was with him, highlights of his mini-golf exploits were always part of the conversation. He shared his secret for getting his little pink ball exactly up the middle of the big clown’s tongue and explained how the now stationary windmill blades always screwed up his hitting par on the twelfth hole. So when I told him I wanted us to hang out with Laura, a girl I’d only recently started spending time with, he immediately suggested meeting up at Putt-O-Links.

Jimmy had been designated as the drummer in my budding quasi-fictional rock band, Ritzo Forte, a group that largely existed in order to impress girls with the claim that I was in a rock band. I’d seen Jimmy sit behind his drum kit and play for about three and a half seconds one time when we were doing bong hits in his basement. That was good enough for me. I was to be Ritzo Forte’s singer, songwriter, and principal stylist. I owned a Radio Shack microphone and a mike stand on which to put said microphone. Ritzo Forte had a name, a list of influences, even some song lyrics and titles. The only things missing were bandmates, equipment, complete songs, rehearsals, and actual performances.

However, I had put a great deal of thought into this band and its potential awesomeness. It was just a matter of time until everything fell into place. I was trying to impress Laura with my seriousness and determination, so I thought it would be good for us to go out with Jimmy.

It was almost dark by the time we got to Putt-O-Links. Introductions weren’t necessary. They weren’t that kind of
people. Laura knew who Jimmy was; he knew her. Jimmy had been briefed for the occasion. I reminded him of all the cool bands he was supposed to like, drilled him on the titles and lyrics of the songs we hadn’t written yet, and confirmed our plan to buy matching knee-length leather coats for all Ritzo Forte members.

Jimmy and I had gone to school together for six years but were never really tight until our senior year, when it became increasingly apparent that we were both going to be “Left Behinds.” Left Behinds were those kids who weren’t visiting many college campuses or filling out a lot of admission applications. It just seemed like a waste of time. It was obvious that we weren’t going anywhere. Jimmy and I bonded because we both knew that when all our other friends left for school that fall, we’d be pretty much all we had left.

“Someone broke into the storeroom and stole all the putters,” Jimmy said, pulling a decrepit set of clubs from the trunk of his car when we arrived. “But they left all the balls. I don’t get that. I mean, you could think of a lot of stuff to do with buckets of golf balls, but what could you do with all those clubs?”

I should have pointed out the hundreds of other potential uses for a golf club but decided to roll with Jimmy’s line of thought.

“What could you do with buckets of golf balls?” I asked, handing out beers.

“Umm, like, throw them at stuff,” Jimmy said with a hint of indignation. “A golf ball could even be used as a lethal weapon. It’s just like we learn in jujutsu training.”

When Jimmy wasn’t talking about mini-golf, drums, or pot, he was often talking about jujutsu. He had signed up for a twelve-week beginner’s course at the YMCA, attended four
classes, then dropped out because it interfered with watching
Monday Night Football
. He had been plotting his triumphant return for eight months, claiming to practice on his own almost daily.

“A jujutsu student learns that almost anything can be used as a weapon when necessary,” he explained as he handed out clubs and we got set up at the first hole.

Jimmy gestured for Laura to go first. She picked a ball, lined it up, then stood frozen.

“I can’t see the hole,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, it’s completely dark out here and I have no idea what I’m aiming at.”

“Fuck that,” Jimmy said, taking a swooping step toward the tee, swinging his club grandly and swiftly at the colored balls, sending one firing toward the side of a miniature church. The ball ricocheted off the building and buzzed past my head almost instantly, causing me to duck out of its way.

“It’s Beer Golf. Just swing and see what happens,” he said.

I should explain that Beer Golf wasn’t really a game. The name suggests some kind of wacky rule-heavy drinking game with madcap arcanery requiring players to swig every time they miss par or set their ball down without touching their elbows or something. Beer Golf was no such thing. Rather than modifying each other, the words simply described the two primary simultaneous activities. When not doing one, you did the other. It probably should have been called Beer and Golf, but Jimmy, as its originator, got to name it as well as determine the rules. Not that there were any rules to speak of, besides that Jimmy got to be master of ceremonies and determine who did what when, and who bought the beer (it was never Jimmy).

We continued through the next six or seven holes without
incident. Laura was very focused on the golf part of the evening, Jimmy and I on the beer part. We played in the moonlight, laughed a lot, made fun of one another at every possible opportunity, and worked through a twelve-pack of disgustingly cheap Wiedemann beer without much effort. Jimmy was instructing us how to navigate around an empty water hazard when headlights panned across the course. They were from a car entering the parking lot. Specifically, a sheriff’s patrol car.

Outside of instinctively putting down our beers, we stood completely still as we saw an officer get out of the car, put on a wide-brimmed hat, and walk toward us, shining a flashlight in our faces.

“I’d like some ID and a reasonable explanation of what you’re doing out here,” the deputy said.

“Oh, we just look after the place and play sometimes,” Jimmy said.

“Shut up,” I snapped, trying to keep my voice quiet enough that the deputy wouldn’t hear me.

“We just make sure that everything’s okay and nothing is busted or gets broken.”

“Jimmy,” I whispered.

“You know, some people will come in here and vandalize the place. We just make sure people know someone is out here watching it,” he continued.

“So the owners asked you to be here?” the deputy asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Jimmy replied.

“Do you even know the owners?”

“Yeah, sure. Not by name, but I came here for years,” Jimmy replied.

“So you have no consent or permission to be here, but you say you are taking care of the place,” she said. “Tell me how that works.”

Jimmy yammered on about civic duty and Good Samaritanism. After telling Jimmy to be quiet and collecting our IDs, the deputy instructed us to sit on a bench while she radioed in our info. We were told that if we got up for any reason, we would be stopped. Assuming that that involved a gun, we sat there quietly while she was in the car.

“Okay, you guys are clean,” she said on returning. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a serious problem.”

“Serious like what?” I asked.

“Serious like trespassing,” she said. “And theft … and open container … and destruction of property.”

“Wait,” interrupted Jimmy. “We didn’t—”

“You are playing with stolen equipment, aren’t you?” the deputy cut in. “We can tack on something else if you like.”

“Look, Officer, we obviously put no thought into what we were doing here,” Jimmy said. “It was a mistake to come here, I understand that now. I really did like the owners of this place. They used to let me clean up balls out of the hoppers to earn free games. They let me play an extra round when it wasn’t busy. I’ve spent days and days here every summer since I could walk. They were good to me. I would never do anything to disrespect that.”