4  A trip to our country club. Song: Scotch & Soda

Our father often took one sibling at a time with him on his business trips, unless our mom went. Then, we went as a whole family. And, I very luckily got to see nearly all of the states. This story is about what happened on my one particular visit to our country club in CT when I was a child. It happened after my dad was teaching me how to shag golf balls for him, and I had picked them up for him until it was nearly dark. I eventually spent all day at the club pool, and even played golf with my dad or our whole family. On one of those visits while my dad took just me, he made me stay in our car after parking it in the small dirt parking lot which was near the driving range, and down the street from the main paved parking lot. He told me that he had some business to take care of, and that I was not to get out of the car under any circumstances. And, he assured me that he would be back to make sure that I didn’t break the rules. I saw him leave, and walk around on the new cemented sidewalk which wound around toward where we had hit balls together. I lost sight of him as he wound around the sidewalk, and disappeared in higher than head high swamp-like growth, and It very quickly became very dark. I’m sure that I wasn’t supposed to know that he was actually playing in a poker game. I figured that out a lifetime later.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity inside our car in the dark, dad came out to check on me, hoping that I’d fall asleep. I hadn’t. Way later, dad’s friend, who was our family friend who had already visited our home (but only very occasionally), came out and stood in the parking lot several feet away from dad’s car. Even though I was only four, it was obvious to me that he was waiting for someone to arrive, and after some time, he went back inside, but soon came out again, and stood outside the car, again, waiting impatiently, and still looking anxious. Finally, my dad’s friend realized that I was in the car, and he walked over and got in with me. He smiled ever so sweetly at me while talking “drunk happy”, while kept looking in the direction of where a car pulling in would be. Ðе finished his drink which he had offered me to taste, but I didn’t like it at all. With that, he said that he was going to make a special trip back inside, just for me, to bring me a special drink that he knew I’d like.

He came back with a glass filled with what looked like Coca Cola, and he told me that it was called a “Wing Dingy” and, after a lot of gentle but persistent coercion, he convinced me to drink the whole thing, even though I still didn’t want it. Within minutes, it gave me such a terrible headache, that it made me lightheaded, then dizzy, then nearly unconscious. However, I was still aware when my dad came out, again, because I heard them discussing something together very close-by. After their discussion, they came over closer to the car, there was a short pause, and I heard my Dad’s friend say out loud, “Don’t worry, he won’t feel a thing”. That’s all I remember of that night, so It was impossible for me to understand the what, why, and who, involved in what happened to me, but I spent a lot of my life

trying, and continuing to pay in the many ways victims pay. The photo above is of a club member (center) standing with my dad (right) from that country club.

While I healed at home from my injury, my bond with my mother became stronger. She seemed to understand what I had been through, when I didn’t. All I knew was that my stitches hurt, and I had to miss school while they healed. And, in addition, I think that because my father’s other friend,(the drunk happy one) started arriving with gifts just for me, it was when my brother’s hatred and jealousy toward me,noticebly,more seriously began. It certainly continued for our entirely life .this very day, it certainly lingered on well beyond the sudden, and short-lived, onslaught of toys that I received following my “special†injury,

I also think,that the extra attention that i received from my injuries during my childhood years, may have made me accident prone even in my old age. Like, when I was reaching from my roof to drape a replacement canopy on the old frame, and with one foot’s weight, stepped from the roof onto the canopy frame to be able to throw the canopy over the top half, but because the frame was rusted on the inside, it snapped off, making me either have to land on my wife standing directly below, or push off from the roof with one foot to get beyond her. I swan dived over her, and flipped myself in the air hoping to land flat with my head low enough to the ground so that it wouldn’t snap and knock me out, or kill me. Miraculously, I landed perfectly flat, caught my breath, and just had three big black and blue bruises forming a triangle. Another past accident happened while I was pressure washing a roof, and something slippery made me fall on my back with my head pointed downward. I slid right off of the roof heading toward the top of a cement privacy wall which would have broken my back, and/or neck. Miraculously, branches from of very rare tree saved me (which happened to be the same type of tree which grew outside of my church where I had volunteered working as their groundskeeper for many years). I fell off a another roof landing on the sharp end of my aluminum ladder shattering my heel (fixed with three screws), and breaking my wrist (fixed with a plate & two screws), resulting in having to use a knee scooter for four months, crutches for another few months, and then a cane.

Later on during another one of my Dad’s golf trips to that country club, my Dad took my big brother, and they arrived home with a brand new set of kid-sized golf clubs. I was taking my nap when my mom came into my room and woke me up with her usual natural loving smile. She told me that I could go out into our backyard to see the new golf clubs that my dad had just arrived home with. I asked who they were for, and she said that they were “for you and your brother to share and enjoy”. So, I meandered outside into our back yard, and walked over to my brother who was practicing swinging with one of the clubs he had taken out of the new bag of new clubs which lay nearby. He was swinging a brand new Spaulding Executive four wood driver.

I stood casually observing with my thumb stuck in my mouth, and my brother hadn’t even noticed me. When he saw me, he was as startled as if he had just seen a ghost. He walked away from the new bag of golf clubs, and continued his swinging hoping that I hadn’t seen the new bag of clubs. I’m guessing that he believed that it was unfair to share them with me after knowing that I had received the best gifts from my dad’s country club friend on each of his recent visits, and I think that he felt that way about things with me for the rest of his life. But, I shared all of my things with him. I took my thumb out of my mouth long enough to sleepily mumble, “Can I play? He walked over, dragged me away from the vicinity of new bag of clubs, and over to where he had the idea to give me his own version of my first golf “lesson(?)”.

He showed me the golf stance, and hoping that I hadn’t seen the whole bag of clubs lying over in the grass, he put his new shiny Wilson executive four wood fairway driver down, and reached down to plant my feet where he wanted them, (probably the same way that his golf “pro” had demonstrated for him on his first golf lesson which had most likely been on that very same day). Then, he picked up the four wood driver, and stepped directly in front of me to keep me from looking in the direction of the bag of new golf clubs, and while demonstrating the golf swing, he kept me standing BEHIND him (instead of him letting me hold the club while he stood behind me). Then, while slowly swinging the club face forward, he stopped the end of the club just before it touched near the BACK of my head. I was still half asleep, and I had no clue what he was even doing.
Then, he swung the club very slowly backwards, and stopped the pointed backside of the club face just in FRONT of my head. Half asleep, and half observing, I didn’t understand at all what he was doing, but when he did the same thing again a little bit faster on the back swing, when stopping it just before the pointed back side of the wooden driver stopped in front of my forehead, I woke up a little bit more, and naturally took a step away.

But, when I stepped away, my big brother stepped backward WITH ME, and with the same hateful expression that I had noticed before, (but could never understand), he repeated the same swing, and stopped the club head just before it touched my forehead again. I instinctively took another step away again, but this made him upset, and he insisted that I wasn’t standing where I was supposed to, saying that if I wanted to play the game, I couldn’t move from standing in the exact spot that he put me in. Like the golf instructor who had assuredly planted his feet, too, my big brother (the helpful teacher(?)) insisted that I stay put). I didn’t understand: 1. Why he was being so particular about me standing in that exact place, 2. why I had to be directly in his back swing “line of fire”, or 3. Why he appeared to be aiming at my head with the head of the golf club?

Was he in a hurry to even more quickly demonstrate the golf swing, or was he in a hurry to attempt to blind me by whacking me in the head with one of the clubs he didn’t want to share with me, and if he whacked me, I wouldn’t see our new bag of clubs. He swung forward, and then backward stopping an inch away from my face, and then forward again. This final time, while on his back swing, he swung the club with the full force of a normal swing (only BACKWARD, so that the sharp back square-ended blade of the four wood driver landed a near bullseye right into my forehead, slicing a cut like a hatchet just above my left eye.

It sounded just like a baseball bat hitting an oak log. I cried, and tried talking, but my words came out all slurred because my tongue (which hung out uncontrollably when I tried to speak) suddenly didn’t work right. I think that my brother either didn’t know how to react, or he thought that I was kidding, because he laughed out loud almost hysterically at how I was trying to talk, and pointed teasingly at me saying, “Ha ha, you’re stupid Douglas, you’re stupid”. I had lost my motor mechanism for speech. My tongue was staying protruded over my teeth with each word that I tried to say, and I ran into the house terrified trying to explain to my parents what had just happened, but I was speaking profusely, so I couldn’t. I recently discovered our mom’s calendar from the early fifties where it states, “Doug was hit on head by George Walters with a golf club. Required four stitches over left eye. Treated by Dr. Wilson at United Hospital. He was very brave.” However, neighbor George Walters was never even NEAR our house! My brother must have convinced his parents that it was George Walters who had come over and whacked me with the golf club. I do know that he told them that George Walters knocked me out with our baseball bat, when it was obviously my brother, and I don’t know if he got away with everything, but our sibling rivalry never stopped.

When my two tear older brother figured out that I was finally starting to understand reading, writing, and arithmetic, I believe that he became alarmed. Just like when he realized that I could count our dart board scores, (and threw a dart in my forehead in the story on page 6 “Darts with my brother”), I believe that he felt that he had to do something even more serious in order to stop me from catching up to him academically… which I believe was when he decided to ask me to go out to play with him in our back yard, and when I walked past to meet him outside, he knocked me out cold by hitting me in the back of my head with our brown size 22 inch baseball bat!

I psychologically beat myself up trying to get answers, but anything I did was normal experimenting, and any rebellious antidotes were so infrequent, they are hardly worthy of mention, although the retribution I received was ten, to like a hundred fold, and spread like wildfire. However, I only blame myself, and feel that I should explain, but it would only prove that the truth doesn’t matter. I grew out of having my frontal lobe injuries causing any significant impulsiveness other than noticing, in my seventies, that my speech is slurring again in the same way that it was when my golf club head injury originally occurred. I think that most head injury victims are easily distracted, but I’ve learned to stay focussed. Unfortunately, I think that people take advantage of people when they see how easily they can be distracted. For example, I’ve learned to keep track of expensive sunglasses after learning how quickly, and easily I’ve lost them to people who have taken them while knowing that I was distracted. It’s sad, and useless to figure out what happened AFTER the fact, especially with extremely valuable things which I lost, but I survived physically, and I hope spiritually, too.