Rumination #3 – Robert W. Pease

The defending champion, out of Pittsburgh, Pa., clearly merits the honor in the “Most Names” category, “handz-dahn” croak the locals in the Allegheny valley. Over the years the list has continued to grow. To many in Lewisburg during those heady [sic] days in the mid-seventies, he was simply “Wally.” As many notables of his era; e.g., Liberace, Elvis, Bozo-he didn’t need a surname; he was “Wally”, period. Initially, to me, he was the elf that lived down the street from Brocky [Prof. Richard Brockhaus] on South Sixth Street. Eventually, smugly seeing ourselves as removed from such crass informality at “The Apartment,” we referred to him by what we all knew must be his proper name, “Walter”. “Hello Mitch, Hello Reef”, he would quip. “Hello Walter, need a beer?” we would respond, all too frequently in unison.
So let’s clarify: the guy’s name is “Robert Wallace Pease” (pronounced like “Peas” or “Pees”). And right—not Walter. For thirty years we’d called him Walter—in fact, he frequently evokes the name when playing, after a rare bad shot, “Ahh, Walter”… What the hell did we know? Or care, for that matter? Finally, he tells us a few years back that his middle name is Wallace and Mitch and I look like utter fools (neither the first nor the last time for that).
When he was the keyboardist and a vocalist for TELAPATH, Wally, Walter, Wallace, became “Bob”, or as Fonz [a name Wally gave to Ron Fahnestock, aka Ronnie Stockton] used to refer to him, “Bobby” or “Bobby Paze” (pronounced “Pays”),and we were all terminally confused. Soon, I suspect for thoroughly infantile reasons, “Bob” became “Boob”, which morphed swiftly to “Booby”, then “Booby Paze” & ultimately to “The Boob”. He still refers to himself exclusively as “Bob and Rosie’s little boy Boob”. Think about it this way: we are just a handful of the many people who know and love this man—whatever name anyone wants to give him—he just might have thousands of names…
My first memory of Robert-Bobby- Bob- Boob- Booby-Wally- Walter- Wallace-Pease, Peas-Pees-Pays-Paze- Pazely is a summer concert out at the Bucknell Mods in probably ’73 or ’74. He was fronting a make-shift and rather mangy lot of assorted musicians, quasi-musicians, gypsies, tramps and thieves. They were playing Dave Mason’s “Feelin’ Alright” (perfect for this “group”: two chords in the same repeated rhythm); and they were rockin’ it solid. And there he was. I was finally hearing the guy play and sing. He was tick-track perfect and singin’ his balls off. He made music out of a repeated, rather mundane two-chorder. He was and still is a natural. Back in the day, he was in bands I could have joined and I was in ones he could have joined. We played one gig together. Eventually, we did play many rounds of golf together and I am certain Wally would have preferred more gigs and less golf.
Ever the hospitable one, Wally was a good sport when, in the summer of 1993, he offered to host Kate, Nick (then 11 years-old) and me while we were spanning the eastern realms of the republic attending (and keeping proper score in a scorecard ; Nick insisted) professional baseball games. We saw ten games in eight cities over a fifteen day period, including two in The Burgh: one Pirates vs Braves and another, with “Walter”, Pirates vs Mets, in Three Rivers Stadium (may it rest in pieces.

Twice saw a skinny kid Nick was in baseball-love with, name of Barry Bonds…Anyway, Wally was a gracious host. The accommodations were splendid—a post WWII split-level in an eastern suburb of The Burgh, frighteningly like the houses Mitch and I grew up in on 3 Nautilus Ave, Plainview, New York, and,
32 Orchard Road, Florham Park, New Jersey.
Well, no sooner do we arrive than Nick rudely attacks the refrigerator, finding little: an open slab of Velveeta, a colorful , virtually full jar of something resembling mayo, a two gallon jug of Heinz Ketchup, little mustard packs clearly smuggled out for decades from fast food emporiums within a minute’s drive, a box of eggs, expiration date 3/15/88, a tightly wound, vaguely green, half-loaf of Wonder Bread, a plastic bag half-full of what was at one time, borrowing shamelessly from Matthau as Oscar Madison, “either new meat or very old cheese”, and two Coor’s Lights. Wally stepped in quickly, doing his best Richard Pryor, “Don’t you worry none, boy. For To-night, I’m taking your ass to the finest eatin’ es-tablishment inna citah ah Pittsburgh.” And we were off to “The O”.
Fittingly, the place where we ate has as many names as…well, you know…”him”. Located smack in the middle of the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, “The O” or “The Dirty O”, or “The Original Hot Dog Shop” is as American as Campbell’s Pork and Beans.

The O is garishly lit at night, more like an open air walk-up that you’d have seen on a boardwalk at Coney Island or Asbury Park. Flashing neon signs, traffic noise, urban detritus in all forms, people of all shapes, sizes, ages and shades: all focused droolingly on the acres of steaming flat-top grills loaded with real hot dogs,

curling and snapping in their natural casings. The aromas were intoxicating, heavenly even. Off to the left were a dozen, five gallon deep fat fryers, all on timers: LED readouts as to how much longer was required to produce French fries the likes of which I had never had before or since. They were perfect, served drained, salted and steaming in deep white cardboard wells laced with ketchup. So too were the hot dog rolls themselves, even the mustard, the onions, the green relish—all the best I ever had. The four of us had a total of eight dogs, four large drinks, and what was known as a “Mountain of Fries”.

We went through six hundred napkins, easily. It doesn’t matter which one of us picked up the tab [Ed. translation: Paze]; it was less than twenty bucks. The “O”. The “Boob” took us to The “O”.

Then it was off to Tres Rios to see Sid Fernandez…
Wally drove that night. Made sense. If he didn’t know where we were going then who would? We parked in what appeared to be a run-down section of south Pittsburgh, halfway down an alleyway, between four-story, empty warehouses; life all around for sure - throbbing, ghetto life. Following Wally down that same alleyway four hours later was a decidedly different adventure—at least it was for the Reifsnyders. Reasonably assured that my wife and child and one of my best friends were about to be sacrificed, most likely in front of my eyes, I shut said eyes and followed…Booby, of all names. When, out of the yeasty darkness, a voice said, “Coach Paze? Dat you Paze? Shit it is.” It was a group of Wally’s former students and football players…never felt so comfortable and protected in my life.

REEF'S RUMINATIONS: #2 - HEIMSCH

Unlike my research on Gordon, tracing and verifying the golf lore of the other competitors is a much simpler matter—in that we were all born in the twentieth century. And of all the combatants, it is most certainly Rich with whom I have played the most golf—in total, almost as exciting as when we used to exchange girlfriends [editor’s note: ‘do tell…’]. Over these many years we have played courses good, bad, and really, really bad on two continents. Occasionally, in our mutual and youthful primes, we actually met on the fairways, or what then and there passed for fairways. Mostly, as kids, at our home course, un-fabled Florham Park Country Club, we spent time in ivy-skeeter-and-pricker-filled woods or knee deep in fetid brown-green swamp ooze that never came out of any fabric it touched. The mansion that sat on the high ground just east of Ridgedale Avenue was the place where, in a former-future lifetime, Heimsch had-would celebrate{d} his first wedding, saddled, as with an addled partner on a bad four-ball [sic] team, with me as “Best Man.”

Truth be known, F.P.C.C. was then, in the early sixties, a mediocre public course, but had, as an additional draw, a nine-hole Par 3 course; a course blindingly lit at night from April to November. It cost a buck to play 9. Heimsch and I, along with both our fathers on many memorable occasions, were regulars at this Par 3. Nothing fancy, holes between 75 and 140 yards in length, a few changes of elevation and, for damn certain, devilishly elevated greens which were a trademark (read: an ESSENTIAL, due to the constant flooding visited upon the low-lying track in perpetuity). The pro shop would loan local miscreants both clubs and bug-spray for free. But we brought our own clubs—a five, seven, nine and putter. Believe me, the bug spray was useless

We didn’t need tees, other than to fix, at times, deeply if not damply cavernous ball-marks, left when a high shot landed with a characteristic “Tha-WOP”. Heimsch’s brother once lofted a gorgeous nine-iron skyward on #2, and though we all knew it was going to be very close and we all saw and heard the ball come to Earth, we never found it. The second green had eaten Gary’s Maxfli; he was monumentally ‘not amused’—earth the consistency of firm pudding had opened and closed, telling neither him nor anyone else a single secret. On each hole, we teed off while simultaneously trying to stabilize the woven rubber mat beneath us by spreading our feet as wide as they would go so that it wouldn’t snap our johnson off and roll us up like a brittle old map.
We didn’t really need to bring more than one ball as there were hundreds of them in the woods. We played that course endlessly, every day in summer if we had the scratch, over and over again, the same little nine holes; well…day and night.
And it was at night when the true character of the course emerged. Everything changed. Everything looked different, smelled different, felt different, was different.

So one night we stroll into the Pro Shop to see our “good buddy” Snapper, the officious but brain-dead nighttime proprietor of the golf shop, an angry, diNobile cigar-chomping, moronic fifty-something who had caught us at least two thousand times sneaking on to the course and fuckin’ hated us. We each drop a buck on the counter, grab and fold a scorecard without looking, and as I turn and head for the door, I hear Heimsch behind me beginning touchy negotiations with Snapper …

“I’d like to borrow two 3 irons”, Heimsch said to him.
“What for?” snapped Snapper, ever the suspicious one, drooling diNobile juice down his chin.
Coolly and calmly, Heimsch said, dead-panning over at me “To play golf, of course”.
“Get outta here, you clowns don’t need no 3 irons on dat course.” He had a maniacal grin, a grin that said ‘I gotcha!’ “Look, we’re working on a new shot, and we need two 3 irons, OK?” Heimsch had beaten him again, and we were off. I never bothered to ask him why he thought we needed 3 irons.While none of the holes were particularly scenic at any time of day, there was one, the eighth, that always took on an eerie presence, and especially so at night. In order to make a golf hole at #8, a fifty-yard by three-yard earthworks and stone jetty had been constructed, down which one advanced twice: once, at night at least, going back to the brilliantly illuminated tee, and again in the other direction after you had offered your Spaulding Pacesetter to the Moth Gods by night and the Mosquito Gods by day (and night). On that tee—whenever one was there-- you were surrounded by what are now referred to politely as watersheds or wetlands; but these were, and still are today, Springsteen’s swamps of Jersey. Organic and vast, and in August at 9:00pm, you’re there on #8 tee, and it brings out the primal in you. Or at least it brought out the primal in Heimsch and eventually this reporter on one night many moons ago.
You see the entire jetty at number eight was always crawling with frogs. And at night in the summer, the spotlight at the end of the jetty drew a variety of flying creatures to their eventual demise, to be snared away and devoured by any one of the lightning quick tongues of upwards of three million frogs. Not that we were sorry to see billions of mosquitoes—Jersey’s State Bird—disappear every second. I mean we’re talking mosquitoes with big-ass talons and license plates…and moths? Moths the size of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.
Well, during the day, the bugs are fewer and the frogs—huge frogs, I mean frogs bigger’an snapping turtles--were mercifully asleep on the slimy rocks below. But the collective roar those frogs gave off at night, during their full-feed phase, was out of the Old Testament, other-worldly. And, as it happened one night, when the contest between Heimsch and this writer was tied, and the tension on the eighth tee heavy as my sodden Keds, a frog made a fateful leap out of the then shimmering purple ooze and on to the tee just as Heimsch was about to offer a 7-iron shot up to Mothra.
He got so pissed, he dropped the club mid-downswing, bent over, picked up one of Snapper’s 3-irons and brained the bloated amphibian, sending a good bit of its hind end to the left, toward Florham Park and most of what remained of his top half to the right, toward East Hanover. Next thing I know, fire in his eyes, Heimsch is scaling his way down into the murky darkness, clubbing frogs indiscriminately. Seconds later I too was in the croaking fray. Suddenly I realized why Rich brought the 3 irons along. We had often kidded about clobbering a few of the frogs, and now we were at it, but not with our clubs, rather with Snapper’s.

After rinsing off the evidence in the still “stream” behind #9 Rich took the clubs back in to Mr. Charm Himself, who quipped, “So smart-ass, how’d yer new shot work out?”
“Hit ‘em all square, Snapper…see you tomorrow”

Handicapped Movement

With only ONE Handicap Revision remaining prior to the field taking to the course for AI-XVI, the players currently sport the following (numerical) handicaps per today's GHIN revision.

Our reigning Champion continues to sport a 3.6 index which means he gets 4 shots at Arnie's Place. PAZE contemptuously deigns not to play in the months leading up to this year's event, apparently of a mind that the field does not merit even so much as one round prior to the defense of his title. Given the rest of the field, this is not an unfounded belief.

HEIMSCH has gained another half an index point and now rests at 9.3, adding a stroke to his BH handicap, now 11. He is planning to play another 37 rounds prior to the Four Ball however, so it is difficult to predict exactly where he will finish.

As we have previously noted, GORDON uses a handicap system that he alone understands but is necessary to accommodate his unique method of scoring a round of golf. According to his calculations, his index has somehow dropped to 16.5(allowing him 19 shots) even though the last time he played he reports: "I took an 11 on the first hole--two shots into different water hazards and a third on the bank of a still different one. I also hit a sign that stood about 3 ft off the ground and sent me backwards about 50 yds."

BURKE continues to sputter and hack his way towards an increasingly unlikely 9th title and now sports a 10.5 index, good for 12 shots and, more importantly, only 7 short of GORDON.

Time........marches on.

Reef's Ruminations: #1 - GORDON

With the AI’s Sweet Sixteen Party soon upon us, this reporter thinks it’s time to look back, to pause and reflect a bit, maybe even break a little wind. With that metaphor established, the still bewildered Champion of
AI-X offers a series of ruminations on the personnel, the shamelessly Spartan provisions and accommodations, the eternal expanses of time with absolutely nothing planned, and perhaps even the grueling events themselves.

Ever the historian, my goal to unearth the loamy golf history of Gordon was, again and again, thwarted by endless hazards, unverifiable stories full of odd twists and dead ends, photos now so faded as to render them empirically useless (one for example, although non-golf, looms in the loam as my favorite to date: a 3 inch square black and white of a young man—slender, lean, athletic; Gordon likes the word “chiseled”—in a baseball uniform, caught at the peak of his wind-up, left knee as high as his head…). No fucking way that’s our Gordon, but I digress.

There just did not appear to be a way to divine his golfing past. Then one day, after weeks of sifting through all known and extant sources, I stumbled upon these gems.
In manifestly authentic diary entries, two of Gordon’s contemporaries each refer to the day they met and first played with Bauer. The first of these two giants of the game, Francis Ouimet, winner of the U.S. Open in 1913, wrote in an entry dated June 11, 1909: “Neither Harry nor I were particularly eager to play with this stranger, who approached us haltingly—god, his outfit was atrocious: more colors than me Grandma’s quilt, both elbows shot through his shirt, hair unkempt, bottle of Coca-Cola in one hand and a handle of Captain Morgan’s in the other—and explained he was ‘looking for a game.’ Looking for a game are you Gordon? After four holes I suggested Parcheesi.”

It’s all about the gravitas of primary sources. And so, in addition and on the same day, this entry, by a another titan of the sport, the legendary six-time winner of the Open Championship himself, Harry Vardon, who would go on for years drinking with Gordon, but remained resolutely unwilling to ever try golf with him again. Vardon writes of that same day in June of 1909, “Francis never did like Gordon—a French-Irish vs. German-Scot deal, I think—but, if not the cut of his pants, at least I liked the cut of his jib, and I figured, ‘easy money.’ So, after the fourth hole, Francis refused to walk anywhere near Gordon and I thusly spent the next three hours in the presence of unspeakable genius—unbridled talent, no, not in golf, but rather in drinking. At the turn, he left briefly, only to return with yet another bottle of, I think it was scotch…I remember nothing at all of the back nine, other than knowing I had met someone with a rather prodigious capacity for drink, one who obviously understood the secrets of longevity and bliss; in short, a friend for life.”

So the champion of AI-I, Gordon Bauer, inexplicably still in search of a game, will again defy logic and return to Orlando on March 8-12, 2012, very near the site of his still hotly-debated victory in the Inaugural AI, MetroWest, now rendered unplayable since the archaeological dig began in 2000. Under enormous pressure from, among others, the scientific community, golf historians and the local AA Chapter, MetroWest ceded the land so that the enormous commercial imperative could be met for anything even resembling a relic of Bauer; it is now demonstrable on eBay, that a mere half of a broken tee once used by Gordon is going for—if you can believe this--$300.00. If the tee still has a “Stan” reference anywhere on it, the price quadruples. Anyone who can claim to have a signed scorecard from that fateful day in 1997 when Gordon, sensing doom, vanished from the course with only nine holes to play, in full denial of the charge being put on by this very reporter to overtake his narrow two-shot lead, might fetch an amount estimated as high as six figures from well-heeled collectors for that now iconic souvenir.
In the course of my research on Gordon, I had occasion to interview my son Nicholas, himself a “participant” (read: hostage)in AI-II. Here is a transcript of just a small part of the uncensored conversation:
“…well, first of all, I couldn’t fucking believe that my mother MADE me come along on this deal. It had to ruin your {my} fun, just totally ruin it for you. I had no desire to: one, play golf at all; two, do so with my Old Man and his occasionally humorous but totally warped friends; and three, what I really wanted to be doing was lying on the couch in my house watching college hoops on TV—I mean, the March Madness thing was underway and instead I end up looking for tee shots that Gordon hit, which, not one of us saw leave the tee much less land…it was fucking nuts.” Nick continued, “But I did see one thing that I can never forget much less explain. It was Falcon’s Fire, I think, Gordon and me riding together, you and Mitch together, and, imagine this, one of Gordon’s titanic and somewhat wayward drives had left the fairway, if not the premises. We looked and looked. You guys drove over, we all looked…and we’re about to call off the search when we hear Gordon bellow, ‘I got it’, as if he were under a fucking pop-up instead of looking for a battered Titleist, and, well, you should have seen this lie. The ball was sitting free, but in a well formed by the confluence of dense roots from a massive pine tree just a few yards behind the ball. In front of him, about fifteen yards ahead, was a copse of young trees, thickly knotted together, seemingly impenetrable. Sensing his disappointment and allowing for the near century’s difference in our ages, I commiserated that he had no option and reached back for a wedge so he could punch out to the fairway. It was a short five par, about 485 or so; he could get there in three anyway. And Gordon says, and I’ll never forget this: ‘Driver please Nick’. So he lines up, with a driver now, OK? And, aiming straight into the trees, narrowly missing on his backswing the big pine behind him, he flails as hard as I had ever seen a man swing a golf club, and the fucking ball came right out of the well, screamed straight through a non-existent opening in the trees, and rolled for about fifteen minutes to within ten yards of the green. He nonchalantly bumped a seven iron to three feet and made birdie. The most incredible shot I have ever seen and most likely ever will see—in person, on TV, in my dreams. You can’t make this shit up.”
Nor should I add, would you want to.

Reef's Ruminations

When the now Tournament Director cobbled together a surprise and somewhat impromptu weekend of golf, food, drink & a (still extant) trophy in March of 1997, there was more concern that someone would pull a muscle than there was thought that it would be the beginning of a running joke that would last, to date, XVI years. Reef & Gordon had not seen each other since June of 1978 when the three denizens stumbled out of the building at 300 North Derr Drive, Lewisburg, PA 17837 - "The Apartment" - and saw the sun for the first time in 2 years.

Gordon headed to the University of Hawaii where he would speed through his PhD in a mere 13 years; Reef fled back to NJ from where it took him the better part of 11 years to escape and Mitch returned to LI where he began a con involving an ersatz sport that lasted for 10 years before the fraud was exposed and he was forced to flee to FL. To their mutual dismay, Mitch had stayed in touch with both Reef and Gordon over those 20 years and had been attempting to reune the 3 Apartment inhabitants for several seasons prior to the portentous weekend in '97.

Now, XVI years on, with nearly every utterance and movement stored in gigabytes of files on a phalanx of computers at AI HQ, comes an historical perspective as unexpected as it is ludicrous. Reef, co-founder of The Apartment, rambling raconteur and hysterical, if not historical, historian, has penned a series of Ruminations on The AI and its participants that will give all who come to them pause for reflection and a short nap.

AI Publishing is proud to offer the exclusive first look at these Ruminations in a series of installments to be released over the course of the next several weeks. It is possible that the last serialization that merited such anticipation was that of "A Tale of Two Cities" published in All The Year Round in Spring of 1859. Or, as Mr. Dickens might have said, possibly not.

AI Debuts Super Bowl Ad

AI Productions debuted its first ever Super Bowl ad during this past Sunday's game between the New Jersey Giants and Foxborough Patriots. Although the spot has not yet gone viral, it is showing signs of a low level infection.

It has received high praise from the advertising community and will undoubtedly be prominently mentioned for an Addy whenever and whatever that is. If you missed it, it can be viewed here

Handicap Update

AI-HQ received an email this morning from AI-XV Champion Paze pointing out that only 36 days remain until the onset of AI-XVI. That means it has been 329 days since last we joined company and feted one another with displays of camaraderie and poor sportsmanship. At this juncture then, we commence a public examination of the contestants' handicaps for the epic battle that awaits.

As of today's GHIN Revision, the field shapes up as follows:

Our reigning Champion continues to sport a 3.6 index which means he gets 4 shots at The Hill. PAZE joins GORDON as the most consistent players statiscially, albeit at opposite ends of the HCP spectrum. PAZE has been at 3.6 since 10/1 as it is difficult to find your ball in snow drifts. His high was a mere 4.0 on July 1, while his Vijay-like work ethic saw him plummet to 2.6 on 8/1. There will be no 10+ shots for our champion this year.


HEIMSCH has done yeoman's work & also played 150 rounds to reduce an index that was as high as 11 on July 1st to a low of 6.8 on October 15th. He currently rests at a comfortable 8.8 which would provide him 10 shots at Bay Hill.

The aforementioned GORDON uses a handicap system that he alone understands but is necessary to accommodate his unique method of scoring a round of golf. According to his calculations, his index is 17.9 which starts him off at 20 under par on our home course.

8 time Champion BURKE is using the 'play infrequently and when you do play, play badly' strategy to prepare for this year's event. From a low of 7.8 on October 1st, he has managed to work his way to a 10, good for 11 shots and only 9 clear of GORDON. With 36 days remaining, it will take some doing, but he feels he can still catch the AI-I Champion.

STAN(ley) Qualifies for AI-XVI

Is a 3 shot lead safe when a STAN is in the fairway a mere 77 yards from the final hole? Would you believe a 2 shot lead with a 45' putt? How about a 1 shot lead with a 3'8" putt with a 'make percentage' of 89%? Close followers of the AI, of which there are five, already know the answer. OF COURSE (not)!

Kyle STANley proved that no lead is safe for any STAN by butchering his next 4 shots. This monumental collapse allowed him to further prove his STANhood by losing on the 2nd playoff hole when his par putt sailed 5 feet past the hole with nary a chance of going in. Thusly was he able to snatch defeat from the broken jaws of victory and prove his mettle as a STAN worthy of inclusion in AI-XVI. Another fine mess indeed, STANley.

We salute our fellow STAN and anticipate this level of play at AI-XVI.