In the good ole days, they put a limit at 100 members. There was a waiting list to join. They played in tournaments all over California. The “Year Ender” was at the finest courses in the Palm Springs area. The tournament concluded with a huge dinner for the golfers and their wives in places like the PGA West clubhouse. The tables were full. The prizes were spectacular.

It began, if i remember correctly from what i’ve been told, in the 1950’s. They played a different course in the San Diego area once a month. For years, Art Fristad, managed the affairs and had a great working relationship with the golfing world in the Southwest corner (Today, the name of the tournament is The Art Fristad Desert Classic).

The outfit is named San Diego Telephone Company Golf Association. We called it Telco, and today, it still goes by SDTGA with the Southern California Golf Association. In addition to Art Fristad, many others stepped up to make it all work. The ones i know will likely give me grief for omissions, but i wasn’t into the inner workings. Marty Marion, Phil Greco, and Jim Hileman, my Pittsburgh Pirate and San Diego Padre co-fan, have kept it going.

i don’t know the reason such golfing groups like these are fading. Perhaps younger telephone guys aren’t golfers. Perhaps golfing is no longer the chosen pursuit of the younger generations. i have always considered it a wonderful sport that allows you to play at your level throughout your life. i wish i had urged Bob Padgett to teach me the game when, at 14, he took me out to shag balls at the Lebanon Country Club. i might be a better golfer, but i doubt if i would have had any more fun. Our ranks in TELCO continue to decline.

This past weekend, we gathered again in the desert for the “Year Ender.” It’s a two-day team tournament. There have been numerous formats for the rounds, but they all have been fun and many producing golfing stories that will last in old golfers lore.

Yesterday after the tournament and before the drive back from the desert to the Southwest corner, i sat in the small dining and bar area of the Desert Dunes Golf Course. The thought struck me i and these guys were old boys on this weekend. The rest of the year, we are mostly old men, men who were work men. Telephones and friendships with telephone men was the glue, that and having fun with golf.

i can guarantee none of the banter was politically correct. Like my curmudgeons in our weekly golf game, “asshole” is a compliment. But we laughed and had fun. There is a camaraderie there.

i felt a sadness when Jim Hileman, the main manager of the group announced it was not likely the Year Ender will be in the desert next year. Our group was supposed to be six foursomes. Illnesses, a car wreck, and other complications took our number down to twenty-one, a far cry from the ole days.

Cost of play has become a problem. It is something i don’t understand. When it seems the courses are getting less play as the younger generation has other recreational pursuits, i’m not sure why they keep raising their prices for everything, green fees, cart fees, equipment. Yeh, i know maintenance costs and water have made it difficult, but at least a half dozen courses i used to play have gone under. None of it makes sense to me.

Golf is sport you can play throughout your life. i’ve played with folks who passed away within days of their last game, like my father-in-law Ray Boggs, who played his last round at Singing Hills before he passed fourteen days later. The handicapping system gives everyone a chance to win. With carts, you don’t even have to walk to play. And if you are like me, golf gives you a chance to scream profanity and let off some steam.

* * *

And fun. Remember the old joke about the foursome playing their usual Saturday morning on a round? They were on the 12th green. One guy was getting ready to put when a hearse led a funeral procession to the nearby cemetery. The guy putting stopped, took off his hat, and hung his head as the procession passed. The other golfers were impressed and complimented him on his respect for the person who had died and the procession itself.

“Yes,” the golfer said, “She was a good wife.”

* * *

i’m sure the year-ender will continue for a few more years, just not in the Palm Springs area. We are likely to play a local course.

The raucous stay with Jeff Middlebrook (who is the latest in a long line of great guys who filled out our foursome over the years) at Pete Toennies’s time share has been a boys weekend out. Pete has been a team member for quite a while now, and even i was not an original member — Hey, Mike Kelly, you are legendary and remembered; we still wish you were here and not in Houston.

Yeh, it won’t be quite the same, but we will keep on keeping on. These old boys were made that way.

Thanks, Jim Hileman, Marty Marion, and Phil Greco for keeping it going.

He hangs there suspended in the air, resting in his web. With the offshore sea breeze, i imagine it would be much like being in a swinging hammock. He is about the size of my upper thumb, the thumb that keeps hitting the incorrect key.

His web suspends from a tree on our neighbor’s side of the stucco fence i helped build about thirty years ago to the eaves of our roof by the kitchen patio. He rests about 15 feet in the air. The remains of one of his past repasts hang above him. He looks satisfied. I shall let him be.

The crow darts frantically to avoid the perceived threat of the border patrol helicopter flying low. I never know if the pilot, who lives somewhere near here, is checking out a possible illegal border crosser or letting his family know his shift is over and he will be home soon.

The Southwest corner weather has been strange this summer and autumn. Most folks around here are not thrilled, but i, who loves the feel of a seaport town, have been happy, only concerned with what comes next in these changes. Our summer has been cooler and wetter than usual. The marine layer, normally from mid-May until the end of June has persisted through the two seasons. The annual threat of wildfires is greatly diminished. We only had a couple of days where it reached 90. I can handle that.

The sun is settling beyond the Pacific and is already below our hill. If i chose, i could climb that slope and watch a beautiful sunset, perhaps even catching a green flash. But i am just fine sitting here waiting for the grill to warm enough cook.

It occurred to me the spider and i have a lot going for us. There is no real need to wander from our lairs unless we feel the urge to do so. We are, the two of us, content with what we have.

I just wish i could spin a web and hang there like in a hammock.

He hangs there suspended in the air, resting in his web. With the offshore sea breeze, i imagine it would be much like being in a swinging hammock. He is about the size of my upper thumb, the thumb that keeps hitting the incorrect key.

His web hangs from a tree on our neighbor’s side of the stucco fence i helped build about thirty years ago. The span of his web reaches to the eaves of our roof by the kitchen patio. He rests about 15 feet in the air. The remains of one of his past repasts hang above him. He looks satisfied. I shall let him be.

The crow darts frantically to avoid the perceived threat of the border patrol helicopter flying low. I never know if the pilot is checking out a possible illegal border crosser or letting his family who live somewhere near us know his shift is over, and he will be home soon.

The Southwest corner weather has been strange this summer and autumn. Most folks around here are not thrilled, but i, who loves the feel of a seaport town, have been happy, only concerned with what comes next in these changes. Our summer has been cooler and wetter than usual. The marine layer, normally from mid-May until the end of June has persisted through the two seasons. The annual threat of wildfires is greatly diminished. We only had a couple of days where it reached 90. I can handle that.

The sun is settling beyond the Pacific and is already below our hill. If i chose, i could climb that slope and watch a beautiful sunset, perhaps even catching a green flash. But i am just fine sitting here waiting for the grill to warm enough cook.

It occurred to me the spider and i have a lot going for us. There is no real need to wander from our lairs unless we feel the urge to do so. We are, the two of us, content with what we have.

I just wish i could spin a web and hang there like in a hammock.

Hurricane Otis has brought unusual weather to the Southwest corner. Actually, the weather here has been counter to the usual Southwest corner style pretty much all summer and autumn thus far.

But the temperatures dipped a bit last night.

In years past when October passed it’s midpoint, i began lobbying for a fire in the hearth. i argued if we opened up the windows and turned on a fan or two (we don’t have air conditioning and this year, we never used the portable AC unit i got for Santa Ana’s), it would be nice to have a fire.

So when it got down to the low 60’s late last afternoon, i began my campaign for a fire.

Maureen just shook her head as usual.

Then i realized my argument didn’t come off very well when i was wearing shorts, a tee shirt, and was barefoot.

This is an adventure. It is appropriately on my website, which has a title “Jewell in the Rough.” It began when one night, a couple of lines came into my head. i expanded those lines into the draft for a poem, i thought. Then, i became aware of how it might relate to my Southwest corner. i did a little research and thought the words fit well with early San Diego history. The words expanded into a sort of short story. i found a great amount of the historical information from “Wikipedia” and the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society website.

It is a work in progress, although i may give it up as is. i plan to add dialogue and clean up the historical references. But it is fiction, a great deal made up by rambling ideas in my head. It may be just another fling in the dark and go nowhere. But the desire to share it with folks is strong, so i’m sharing. If i do carry on with this effort, i shall keep you apprised here.

It was in 1875 when the old man sent a letter by courier to his daughter.

The old man had been on a trading ship from New England, the bark Harriet Blanchard, when they sent him to cure skins from the trades at the trading company’s curing site on La Playa in San Diego Bay. When the work slacked off, the old man who was then young took a horse ride out to the Mission San Diego de Alcala. While at the mission, he met a Kumeyaay maiden named Aponi. After a short time together, they were married by the priest at the mission as well as having the Kumeyaay wedding ceremony where they drank out of a “wedding” vase to consecrate the union.

The couple moved into a new house in the new pueblo of San Diego. The old man thrived as a merchant, shipping agent, and landowner.

Ayana, their daughter, married Don Juan Forster’s son, Marcos.

Forster was an Englishman who went to Guyamas, Mexico and became a ship captain for his uncle, a job that sent him to San Pedro where he became a shipping agent and settled in California in 1836. He married Dona Ysidora Pico, sister of Pio Pico the Governor of California. Through that relationship and shrewd business, Forster became the largest landowner in California.

He and his family lived in the old mission of San Juan Capistrano, which the elder Forster had purchased, when his son Marcos met the old man’s daughter Ayana as the Don and the old man worked together on a few land deals. Marcos and Ayana fell in love, and they married in a huge Mexican wedding and fiesta in San Juan Capistrano. Ayana and Marcos moved into the Don’s home, and they had a son.

They named him Armando Buckingham Forster. Buckingham was the old man’s mother’s maiden name who emigrated to the Boston from England right after the Revolutionary War. The old man’s parents had given him the middle name of Buckingham. Ayana, when she found out the origin of the old man’s name, thought it was lovely, and she insisted to Marcos that their son’s middle name would also be Buckingham. By the time he was four, everyone called him “Buck.”

For a while, the couple lived in the Mission San Juan Capistrano with Don Forster. The Don and all of his family later moved to Santa Margarita y Las Flores, which was located in what is now Camp Pendleton. They were living there when she received her father’s letter.

The old man’s letter (he was now a widower,) asked Ayana to send his grandson Buck to visit for a fortnight. The old man explained his health was failing, and he would like the comfort of spending some time with the boy, now 14 years old.

The courier delivered the letter to Ayana in one day, a fifty-mile trip. She sent a return letter to the old man to let him know she was complying with his request. She and Marcos, helped Buck pack, and one of the vaqueros drove a small carriage to San Diego. The trip took a long two days.

The vaquero returned to Santa Margarita y Las Flores on the stallion that had pulled the carriage. The old man had an ample stable of horses. He and Buck rode horseback around San Diego and places the old man wished to show his grandson.

The two rode up the hills of Point Loma and had lunch in the lighthouse with the owner and his wife and family.

They went to La Playa and the old man pointed out where he had cured the animal skins when he was a sailor on the Harriet Blanchard.

There, as they looked out the channel past Point Loma, he told of his youth growing up in Massachusetts and the pleasure and perils of sailing on a bark around South America, then up and down the coast of California. He included his harrowing experience of sailing into the storms and turgid waters around Cape Horn.

From there, they rode out to the mission, and he wove the tale of how he had met Aponi, his wife and the boy’s grandmother, as the priest was reaching out to the Kumeyaay tribe to become Catholics. He explained how he and Aponi had escaped from the ongoing feud between the Kumeyaay and the Mexican and Spanish citizens and how the town’s population had decreased to 100 or so after having about 600 citizens in the 1840’s because of the conflicts between the natives and the new residents.

The old man went on about how, because of the conflict, he moved to the east to a Kumeyaay village with Aponi and lived with the native tribe for several years until after the United States had claimed California during the Mexican war and made it a state in 1850.

He told of the life in a tribe’s village and related when the unrest had settled down for a while, how he and Aponi had moved back into the town and how he began to acquire land. He explained to Buck that was when he and Don Juan Forster began to do some business together and how his daughter, Ayana, Buck’s mother had met his father, Marcos.

And the old man took him to the peak southeast of town to the grave at the crest where Aponi was buried with the rites of the Kumeyaay, how she had come down with an unknown disease and, in spite of the spells and prayers of the Kumeyaay shaman and fighting the illness for a week, Aponi passed away. At the grave site, looking out over the Pacific, the old man cried again.

For a fortnight, the grandfather and grandson traveled all over the area, to the Kumeyaay village in the east, to the newly established border with Mexico, along the coast and tidelands, and fished in the bay. The old man with the help of his Kumeyaay family, taught the young lad some of the Kumeyaay language.

The boy could tell the old man’s health was failing. He knew the old man was making an effort to do all the things that they were doing, and the old man was doing it because he wanted Buck to know all he could learn about his grandfather. Buck was glad he was learning about the old man’s life, but he was concerned about his health.

The day before Ayana was sending the vaquero back with the carriage, Buck packed his clothes and gear. He would be leaving the day after the vaquero arrived. After packing, he walked into the old man’s bedroom to say goodnight.

The old man was wheezing and coughing but stopped when Buck entered the room. He motioned for the boy to sit in the chair next to the bed. When Buck was seated, the old man told him life was fading.

He then said to the boy, “If I make it to tomorrow before you leave, i have a request.”

Then the old man began a chant, a mixture of his native language and that of the Kumeyaay. Roughly translated he said:

Take me to the top of that mountain.
No, it’s better that I walk.
There’s a path I used to take there with Aponi
When we were young,
Oh yes, when we were young,
We walked those hills together,
Admiring the wildness of the land.
Every month or so,
We reached the top of that mountain
To gaze upon the great Pacific
And watch ships like
The bark that brought me here.
We survived hard times;
We walked and worshipped
These lands to acknowledge
Our survival was because of our union.
I would like one more time
To walk to the top of that mountain
And lay beside my beautiful Aponi
Forever.

The old man closed his eyes. Buck knew his grandfather had died. He laid his head on the old man’s chest and cried for a while.

When the vaquero arrived the next evening, Buck related the events. The next day, he and vaquero put the old man in the carriage. They rode to the top of the mountain. They buried the old man next to Aponi.

Buck looked out over the Pacific and made a decision. He told the vaquero to go back to Santa Margarita y Las Flores.

“Tell mi madre what has happened. Tell her i am staying here in my grandfather’s house. I will write a letter for you to take to my parents. It will explain my decision and ask her and my father to come and visit.

“You see, this is my home with the old man now.”