General Fiction posted September 1, 2023 Chapters:  ...28 29 -30- 31... 


Excellent
Not yet exceptional. When the exceptional rating is reached this is highlighted
Aggie's surprise
A chapter in the book Saving Mr. Calvin

Saving Mr. Calvin - Chapter 25

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 past few chapters: After Kevin and Paul pass through the portal, we end up at the beginning of a battle between the Scottish and the English in 1458 Scotland. Kirk Pate and Putney Pell and their friend Alex are Scottish archers about to engage in battle. At the call of “Charge,” they join the fray and battle until the few remaining English are allowed to retreat to their ships. The battle is over for today, but is just one of many between these foes at that time.

The three are allowed to return home and split up when they come to the crossroads, with Kirk and Putney (Putt) heading to their town of Foon and Alex heading to the nearby town of Castasnogwary. Back in Foon, Kirk and Putt enter the Bonnie Brae Tavern where Kirk sees his fiance, Aggie, who is the innkeeper. She runs and jumps into his arms and begins crying. She asks Putt if he will take over the innkeeper duties while she and Kirk go upstairs, and he gladly accepts as the first bit of payback for Kirk’s having saved his life in battle.

Kirk and Putt resume their house-building job the next day, and we learn the history of how the town of Foon came to be. Five years ago, Kirk, Putt, Aggie and their families had been living in Castasnogwary, but tiring of its ponderous ways, moved away and settled on an abandoned tract of land nearby and created their own town which they named Foon. The town has been growing and thriving ever since. Each year they hold an annual golf match with the “Snogs” as they call them. They are the “Foos.” When they return to the Bonnie Brae, Aggie serves them lunch and hints at a surprise to show them later.
 
 
Chapter 25
 
When Putt and I walked up to the first tee, Aggie was already there swinging her play club to warm up. The starting area for each hole has recently become known as the tee (from the word teaz) or tee box. It is named as such because it houses the little wooden box that holds the sand used for making a small conical mound to lift the ball off the ground. The unwritten rules of gowf allow this, but only on the first shot of a hole. Gowfers can now hit the ball higher, farther, and won’t top it as often by teeing their balls up.

“Why don’t you boys take a few swings and then hit first?” Aggie suggested.

This was very unusual because Aggie always wants to hit first, but I figured there was a purpose here, and I didn’t question it. After six or seven practice swings to loosen up my muscles, I scooped a little sand from the box and constructed a tee to set my ball upon. Balls have fairly recently been made of a leather pouch stuffed with straw or cow hair, and the more tightly this could be stuffed in before being sewn shut, the farther the ball would go. They were much more time-consuming to make than wooden balls, but they tended to fly farther and higher because they had some “give” to them, meaning a springlike effect when struck. I struck a fairly solid shot for my first blow, then Putt stepped to the tee and hit a better shot. Putt’s swing was short and very fast, like everything he did, and you might miss it if you blinked at the wrong time, but he was a skilled gowfer and knocked his ball twenty ells past mine.

Now it was Aggie’s turn. She refused to play the links from a shorter distance than the men, even though she was much shorter off the tee. She is very competitive—always has been—and has always wanted to beat us at the same game that we men play without advantage. She teed up her ball, took her typical graceful but athletic swing, and sent a towering shot sailing just short of Putt’s ball and rolling a few feet past—a remarkable opening strike!

“So that is your surprise,” I said to Aggie. “You seem to have swung the way you always do, so how did you manage to outhit us?”

“The secret’s in the stuffing. I made this ball with goose feathers instead of cow hair. First, I boiled them to soften them greatly so I could stuff more of them into the leather pouch, which I filled as tightly as I could. It took about a pail of them, if you can believe it. But I also wet the leather before sewing it up. As the goose feathers dry, they expand, and as the leather dries, it shrinks. Together, they make the ball much tighter and firmer, yet it still has the springiness that the wooden balls don’t have. And the result is what you’ve just seen.” *

“Aggie, that’s amazing. Well done!” said Putt.

I marveled at her ingenuity. “I don’t suppose you have one for me and Putt to try, do you?”

“But of course I do,” she said as she removed two new balls from her pocket and handed them to us.

“This looks fantastic,” I said as I turned it over and over in my hand. “So firm and round and beautifully sewn. But why all the little nicks in the leather?”

“I also discovered that they fly farther that way. The more I played with a ball and the more scuffed it became, the farther it seemed to fly. So, I began scuffing them on purpose.”

“You are pure barry, my dear.”

“Thank you. I’ve even begun teaching Jack and Isla to make them. In fact, they helped make the ones you are about to try out now.”

“Well, let’s see how they did.” I proceeded to tee up my new ball and take a normal swipe at it. It rocketed off the face and flew far and straight, seeming to hang in the air for an extra few seconds before coming down 30 ells beyond Aggie’s ball and a good 50 ells beyond my first strike—a distance of approximately 220 ells. I had never hit a ball that far, even with a strong trailing wind. “Utterly Braw!”

Putt achieved a similar distance with his strike, and the two of us just shook our heads at Aggie’s new invention. Goose feathers! Who would have thought?

I said, “We must make them for the rest of our team, but keep them a secret until after our match with the Snogs, then we should begin making them in large quantities. I’m sure they will be keenly sought once gowfers see how much better they are.”

“That sounds like a worthy enterprise,” said Aggie. “Shall we keep going now and see how we must adjust our distances with the longer balls? They won’t do us any good until we can learn how far they will go with the different clubs.”

Over the next couple of hours, we continued playing the new feather balls, and the three of us began to develop a good feel for the distances we could achieve with each club we carried. What a marvelous new tool Aggie has given us to help defeat those Snogs this year.
 
 

An annual tradition we began as soon as we had built the gowf links was to hold a gowf competition with the Snogs. Each year we would alternate between their links and ours and run the matches in an agreed-upon format.

Putt and I were the co-captains of the Foo team, and it became our responsibility to plan the matches against the Snogs. As I said earlier, we would be hosting the tournament at the Foon Links this year, so we got to propose the rules to be followed, although the Snogs would have to approve them first. We were usually quite lenient in adopting the other side’s proposed rules, often constructed to the hosting side’s advantage, because we would have an equal opportunity the following year. However, there was typically a bit of bargaining that went on before they were finally settled.

Our friend, Alex MacGillycuddy, and another fellow named Cameron NicEachainn were the Snog captains, with whom we would meet in 12 days. Alex has been a captain before, but this would be Cameron’s first opportunity, and we were not looking forward to it. Alex was a reasonable fellow, but Cameron was the quintessential Snog with a very provincial demeanor. Putt and I figured he would balk at any advantage he seemed to think we would have in our format for the matches this year. I had a feeling there would be a great deal of negotiation before we would be able to settle on the rules. But I had confidence we would prevail in the end.
 
 

Putt and I were done working for the day, so the three of us headed back to the Bonnie Brae to help Aggie prepare for tonight’s dinner. I decided to discuss my plan with them while we worked. Aggie was serving a fish stew tonight, and while she kneaded bread dough and prepared vegetables, Putt and I butchered the fish.

“You ken,” I said, “the first two years we did right well against those Snogs. Granted, they won the first one, but we won the second, and both were close. But for the past couple of years, we’ve been slaughtered. Can you guess why?”

“That’s easy,” said Aggie. “They play at the pace of a snail. It’s aggravating, and I, for one, begin to lose sharpness.”

“That’s it,” said Putt. “They discuss every shot so thoroughly with each other that you want to vomit. They take forever to construct a perfect tee of sand, to pull a club to play, to judge the speed and direction of the wind, to look at their balls on the greens from every side, and to brush away every little speck on the grass. I think they are slowing down just to annoy us.”

“I don’t think that’s quite it. I don’t think they are purposely playing slower; we just notice it more the longer we’ve been away from Castasnogwary. They’ve always played like that. We’ve just sped up. We can do all the necessary things to prepare for a shot in a fraction of the time it takes them to do them. And they aren’t good enough for all the time they take to matter very much anyway when it comes to improving their scores. They can take an additional minute or two to read the break on a green, but they will most likely miss regardless. So, what good does it do them?”

“The thing I’ve noticed too,” said Aggie, “is that when we play by ourselves, we always just hit the ball when we are ready, no matter who is farthest away from the hole. I’ve never liked that rule that says the ball farthest from the hole must hit first. If you’re ready, then hit, I say.”

“I agree with that,” I said. “Especially when one of ‘em hits it into the tall grass and spends a long time trying to find it when the rest of the group, who may be closer to the hole, have to wait until he finds it and hits. They could all have hit their balls in the time it takes to find the errant ball.”

“And there’s no limit to how long they will take looking either,” said Putt. “We never take more than about three minutes, but they may take five times that to try to find a ball. Ridiculous!”

I said then, “I think we’ve identified the problem. Now here’s what I propose for a solution.”

While continuing to prepare the meal, we spent the next hour discussing my plans and perfecting them. Both Putt and Aggie offered good suggestions, and by the time we were ready to serve dinner, we had a plan. We would need to hold some practice sessions with the rest of the team (there were eight of us altogether) to see how practical the ideas were, but we had a week and a half to practice and work out any flaws before we met with Alex and Cameron.
 
 

We had a few minutes before the guests began to arrive, so Aggie and I went upstairs to wash up and put on fresh clothing. We would be announcing our marriage plans to the crowd tonight, and she told me she wanted us to look our best.
 
 

Write A Review



* The ball that Aggie invented is known as a "feathery" and is attributed to the Scots. According to many, the feathery started being used in 1618, continuing until the late 1840s, but there is evidence that it was in use as early as the 1400s. I choose to believe the latter, so that I can have Aggie become the inventor of the ball.


Scottish words


gowf: early term for golf
ell: unit of measure equal to about a yard (37 inches)
links: golf course by the sea
play club: long club or driver
ken: know
braw: brilliant, fantastic
pure barry: utterly fantastic




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 - 1458 Scotland

Kirk Pate: A 22-year-old house builder and part time soldier from Foon. He is the narrator of this part of the story.

Putney Pell (Putt): Kirk's best friend and business partner in Foon and a fellow soldier

Alex MacGillycuddy: Kirk and Putt's childhood friend who lives in the nearby town of Castasnogwary and is a fellow soldier

Aggie Lang: Kirk's 22-year-old fiance. She runs the Bonnie Brae Inn and Tavern owned by her father

Jack and Isla Lang: Aggie's younger siblings
Pays one point and 2 member cents.


Save to Bookcase Promote This Share or Bookmark
Print It Print It View Reviews

You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.


© Copyright 2024. Jim Wile All rights reserved.
Jim Wile has granted FanStory.com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.