| General Fiction posted July 24, 2023 | Chapters: |
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A team of four
A chapter in the book Saving Mr. Calvin
Saving Mr. Calvin - Chapter 11
by Jim Wile
| Background A story about the origin and the future of the game of golf |
See Author Notes for the list of characters and unfamiliar terms.
Recap of the story so far: The year is 2032, and young Kevin Parsons, living in Santa Barbara, CA, has invited his two good friends, Paul Putnam and Ernie (Dumbo) Dumbrowski, for breakfast and a round of golf afterwards. Over breakfast, the three engineers lament the sorry state of golf courses in not only California but in the rest of the country, as presumably non-golfing environmentalists are destroying the game, without specifically banning it, by destroying its field of play.
They go to the golf course, which is in terrible shape due to the lack of water and other restrictions, and meet Art Calvin, a retired golf course architect who actually designed the course they are playing. He joins the boys, and they begin their round. When they reach the 7th hole, Kevin hooks his tee shot out-of-bounds. He can see it resting on the other side of an old railroad trestle. The chapter ends as he walks beneath the trestle to go retrieve his ball.
The railroad trestle is a time portal, and all of a sudden, we are in 13th-century Holland. Kilian Pauls, a 14-year-old boy, is running out of the woods and through the fields, being chased by two big boys shouting curses at him. He hears a voice calling to him and makes for it. It is a redheaded young girl who beckons him into the entrance to a cave to hide. It appears as though they have vanished, and the followers cannot find Kilian and give up the hunt. Kilian has just met a cute young girl named Arie Papin, and the two are instantly attracted to each other. She leaves for home soon after, and Kilian starts back to his hill, where he tends sheep.
Kilian has invented a new game in which he hits a ball with a “kolf” which is Dutch for “club.” He plays this game, which he calls “kolf,” with his friends, Lard and Rube—fellow shepherds like him. He teaches Arie the game and together the four of them devise new ways to play it including putting the balls into holes on greens that the sheep have grazed smooth. They create different clubs (kolfs) for different shots, and make wooden balls.
Kilian and Arie take a real fancy to each other, and Arie introduces him to her parents who also like him instantly. They continue to develop the game by creating more interesting holes to play and new clubs like the equivalent of today’s pitching wedge. Their romance also grows with the game.
Chapter 11
When I got back, after checking my sheep, I went to find Lard and Rube. I showed them the new angle-faced kolf Arie and I had made as well as the holing kolf I had completed yesterday to hit the ball into the hole. On the subject of holes, I showed them how Arie and I had dug them. I had borrowed her trowel for this purpose. I also explained the new words we had come up with for everything. Rube got very confused by the fact that we would call the entire area, from the point where we started to the green where the hole was, a “hole,” but Lard had no trouble with that.
Both of them tried out the new kolfs, using wooden balls that they had been working on this morning. Lard was especially intrigued by the angle-faced kolf, which he named a “lifter.” We were all amazed at how high it could lift a ball into the air—much higher than our more straight-faced kolfs, but not nearly as far, though. All the distance seemed to be more up and down than forward.
We also tried out a few softly-hit shots with it, which still attained some height to them. They would be perfect for short shots to the green, which would need the ball to carry over rocks or a creek or some such hazard in front of the green and not roll too far by the flag stick and off the back. Lard took an immediate liking to this kind of shot.
Rube, on the other hand, liked to smash everything and didn’t seem to have the touch to hit these short shots. Now that we were naming everything, he suggested calling his long, straight-faced kolf a “smasher.”
I enjoyed hitting all of the different shots, but my favorite types were those that would land on the green from a distance. I had the ability to judge how hard to hit these shots, and I possessed the accuracy to hit them fairly near to the flag stick. I had carved a little bit more lift into my smasher to make it more like Arie’s. This enabled me to get more height on my shots and thus make the balls able to land on the greens without rolling too far and off the back of them. I called this kolf a “middler” because the angle I had built into it was midway between the almost straight face of the smasher and the extreme angle of the lifter. Thus, we had named three of the four kolfs. I suggested that we let Arie name the other one because she had invented it and was quite proficient at using it.
We took a break from practicing after a while and sat down in the shade of a tree. It was starting to get warm now, and we were all sweating. “Hey guys, Arie and I are going to play some holes again this evening. Do you want to join us? She’s looking forward to another game with you.”
Rube’s face lit up. “I’ll play. I like Miss Arie.”
I looked at Lard. “Sure, I’ll play too,” he said. “Where have you been playing?”
“We laid out several holes that start down by that cave I told you about—over there in the direction of her farm,” I said as I pointed to the east. “Why don’t we meet here after the evening meal, and we can all walk or run down there together. We’ll meet her at the cave.”
“Oh boy,” say Rube. “I’m going to show her the new ball I been makin’.” He pulled it out then and started whittling it some more, making it as smooth and round as he could. He would also scrape it on a sandy patch of ground he had found to further smooth it.
“Kilian, how about another readin’ and writin’ lesson now?” asked Lard.
He seemed to be taking this very seriously and was even practicing at home I could tell. Today I had brought a scroll from home that my ma had made. It was a simple story about a shepherd boy tending his sheep, who made up a fib about a wolf attacking the sheep. We got busy with it as Rube stretched out for a snooze.
We met up after the evening meal and jogged down to the cave together with our kolfs and balls. Arie was there already.
“Ruben, Lars! I was hoping Kilian would bring you this evening.”
Rube’s face lit up when he saw her. “Hullo, Miss Arie. Look what I made,” he said as he removed his ball from a pocket and handed it to her.
“Ruben! This is magnificent. How did you get it so smooth?”
“I done rubbed it in the sand, over and over. Then I rubbed mutton tallow all over it. Ain’t it a beauty?”
“Indeed, it is. Shall we go start a game now? Kilian and I have laid out some new holes with greens. He did tell you about the holes and flag sticks and the greens, didn’t he?”
“I told them all about it,” I said. “We’ve already dug a few ourselves and played them this afternoon.”
“Splendid. Then let’s go over to that green over there and play the first hole.” She led the way. When we arrived at the green, Arie demonstrated to Lard and Rube the method she had developed for stroking these short shots to the hole, explaining how you had to consider the slope of the green to determine where to aim.
“Arie,” I said, “since we’ve named the other kolfs already, we think you should choose the name for your new kolf, since you invented it.
She thought for a second. “How about “Gertrude?” she said.
Lars and I cracked up at that, and Arie laughed too at her joke. She had pulled this on me before, so I knew she was kidding around. Rube, however, didn’t see anything funny about it and said, “Me thinks Gertrude be a fine name, Miss Arie. Why does everyone laugh?”
“I don’t know, Ruben, but perhaps something else would be better after all. How about a ‘holer’ instead?”
We all agreed that made perfect sense. As we only had two holers among the four of us at present, we would need to share them today.
“Why don’t you boys hit first to that green way over by those elm trees?” she proposed then.
Eager to try out his new, perfectly smooth ball, Rube went first. He took a huge swing at it. It made a loud CRACK and flew up nicely, but then seemed to dive down suddenly and only landed perhaps 60 paces away. We all watched this in astonishment. With the way it had started out, it seemed like it should have soared a long way. We were all very puzzled by this. Rube hung his head and muttered, “I must not a made it too good.”
Arie was quick to reassure him. “I’m sure you made it just fine, Ruben. That was only a fluke. You’ll see.”
Lard and I both hit good shots, and we headed toward Rube’s ball where Arie said she would hit from. I explained to the others that Arie needed to play a shorter hole to be able to compete with us. Neither Lard nor, of course, Rube had any objection to that.
Rube set up to his new ball and swung again, even harder this time. Once again, the ball flew off smartly but dived down all of a sudden and only traveled perhaps 70 yards this time. Rube normally could hit a ball three times this distance. We were all dumbfounded. To add insult to injury, Arie proceeded to knock her ball twice as far as Rube’s with a good strike. Rube hung his head in shame.
She reached up and patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, Ruben. We’ll figure this out. Let me try hitting your next shot and see if it happens to me too.” When we got to his second shot, Arie took a swing at it and, sure enough, it started out well but dove down and ended up only 40 paces away.
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I’ll bet it has to do with the smoothness of his new ball. That’s the only difference I can see between his and the rest of our balls. Rube, why don’t you try taking the shine off and scuffing it up some and see if that has any effect?”
“Okay, Kilian.” He ran forward, picked up his ball, and returned with it, huffing a little from the run. We all took a turn roughing it up by scraping it with knives and jagged stones and rubbing it in the dirt until it was quite ratty-looking.
“My beautiful ball looks all ruined now,” he lamented, turning it over and over in his big hands.
“I know you worked very hard on that, Ruben, but if it goes farther now, isn’t that the most important thing?”
“I s’pose you’re right, Miss Arie.” He placed the ball on the ground then, took his stance, and whaled away at it once again. As before, it took off like a shot, but this time, it hung in the sky forever and gently fell to the earth some 230 paces away and rolled a few more. Rube’s face lit up. “I guess that was it alright.”
“See, Ruben? You taught us something interesting. A smooth ball does not fly very far. * (see note) We must make sure to roughen them up when we make new ones. This lesson might come in handy someday. You never know.”
Rube was over the moon, and for the rest of the evening, he outhit all of us by at least 40 paces. As well as he hit the long shots, though, he had no feel for the short ones and consistently hit these short shots, including the ones on the greens, way too hard. All of us were able to beat his scores for the holes for this reason. But he didn’t care. He just exulted in smashing the ball with his smasher as often as he could. That was his chief delight in the game.
Arie was one of us now. Lard and especially Rube were very fond of her, and she added just the right touch of seriousness and silliness to the game to make it so much fun for all of us to play together. Whenever she hit a bad shot, she just laughed about it. We played all of the holes she and I had created yesterday, and we laid out two others as well. The three of us boys vowed to keep the greens short by continually grazing our sheep in these areas.
When we were all done for the day, Lard and Rube left us, and Arie and I made plans to play together again in the morning. I walked her home and we kissed goodbye at her door.
* Note: Due to aerodynamics, a smooth ball will behave exactly as Rube's ball did, diving down and going a much shorter distance. This is the reason why today's golf balls are dimpled.
kolf: a club in ancient Dutch. It is also used as the name of the game that uses it.
kolven: the verb form of the word, i.e., clubbing or golfing
CHARACTERS - 2032 California
Kevin Parsons: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old mechanical engineer living in Santa Barbara, CA.
Paul Putnam: A good friend of Kevin who is an electrical engineer.
Ernie (Dumbo) Dumbrowski: Another good friend of Kevin who is a computer genius.
Art Calvin: An old, retired golf course architect whom the boys meet one day while golfing.
CHARACTERS - 1247 Holland
Kilian Pauls: A 14-year-old shepherd boy in 1247 Holland.
Arie Papin: A 13-year-old farmgirl in 1247 Holland.
Lars (Lard) Jansen: A fellow shepherd boy and friend of Kilian.
Ruben (Rube) Meijer: Another shepherd boy and friend of Kilian.
Fredrik Papin (Dhr Papin): Arie's father
Mevr Papin: Arie's mother
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. kolf: a club in ancient Dutch. It is also used as the name of the game that uses it.
kolven: the verb form of the word, i.e., clubbing or golfing
CHARACTERS - 2032 California
Kevin Parsons: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old mechanical engineer living in Santa Barbara, CA.
Paul Putnam: A good friend of Kevin who is an electrical engineer.
Ernie (Dumbo) Dumbrowski: Another good friend of Kevin who is a computer genius.
Art Calvin: An old, retired golf course architect whom the boys meet one day while golfing.
CHARACTERS - 1247 Holland
Kilian Pauls: A 14-year-old shepherd boy in 1247 Holland.
Arie Papin: A 13-year-old farmgirl in 1247 Holland.
Lars (Lard) Jansen: A fellow shepherd boy and friend of Kilian.
Ruben (Rube) Meijer: Another shepherd boy and friend of Kilian.
Fredrik Papin (Dhr Papin): Arie's father
Mevr Papin: Arie's mother
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