Family Stories

In listening to Doris Kerns Goodwin remarks the other day, she noted that, "History at its best is about telling stories, stories about people who lived before, about events in the past that create the contours of the present." 

This comment reminded me of one our family's favorite stories about our father.  As an eyewitness to the story, I can retell it like it happened yesterday, when in reality it occurred over 50 years ago.

My father, his brother, and two friends played golf every Saturday morning at the local public golf course.  The tee time was determined on a "first come first serve basis."   To be one of the first foursomes to tee off each Saturday, one golfer would line up 4 golf bags in front of the clubhouse early in the morning.  With each person taking a turn, this would mean you would have to get up early only once a month to put the golf bags in line.  Since our house was closest to the gold course, each player would bring or leave his clubs in our garage for pick up and delivery to the golf course.   Then early Saturday morning the assigned golfer would come to our house, lift up the garage door, pick up the bags, and take them to the golf course to be put in line.  

This early morning Saturday ritual went on for well over a decade when one weekend morning our local Township Police noticed someone opening our garage door and removing four sets of golf clubs, putting them into the back of his car and driving off.  They decide to follow the culprit for several miles and also call for backup.   They finally stop the burglar and demand to know what he was up to.  He explains that he is, Bernie Waters, a friend of my father's and is on his way to put the golf bags in line to get an early tee time.  A likely story!  So they send the backup policeman to our home to check out Bernie's alibi.

The door bell rings at our house at 4:30 am, scaring and awakening our family.  My father makes it to the front door first.   I hear my dad responding, "Yeah, I know a Bernie Waters."  Then realizing that Bernie is being detained by the police, my father asks somewhat impatiently, "You mean you have kept him from putting the golf bags in line."  The policeman who was much larger than my father and carrying a gun, begins to explain that they had to follow up on what appeared to be a residential burglary.  My father wasn't hearing a word of this explanation.  In no uncertain terms, my father lets the policeman know that if they didn't let Bernie go right now, they would miss their tee time and he was none to happy about that!  Fortunately for Bernie and the Saturday golf game, he was immediately released from police custody.

I wonder how the police wrote up that report!