The Caddy Chronicles part I

"How many bags did you bring?" I asked my girlfriend of a couple of years, Michelle, when I walked up to her front door. It was snowing again, and we were picking her up early, at 5 AM, to get on the road for West Palm Beach, Florida. It was January in upstate New York, and the snow both on the ground and blowing in the air could be a potential adversity to driving over the Tug Hill plateau. That is to say, you probably had about a 10% chance of being stranded in a snowbank at this time of the year on your way from Lowville, over the hill on route 177, to Adams Center, and the entrance to interstate 81 south.

In the car, or I should say, getting out of the car, in the deepening snow, and now opening the trunk of her 1986 Sedan De Ville, was my grandmother. Gram was just 60, and probably the hardest working person I have ever known in my life. She, nearly single handily, had built a public golf course on her family's 120 acre farm. The course had opened in 1978 and Gram liked to say we were letting the golfers pay for our trips to Florida in the winter. Actually she used that excuse every time she opened her purse. Spending money for her, a child of the depression, was something that was not done lightly. This trip we were taking, with five of us riding hard for two days in close quarters, was her way of splurging. Yes, I said FIVE of us.

Michelle was allowed to bring only one suitcase because the trunk was full. The reason it was full was because of the two sets of golf clubs in the bottom of it. One set belonged to yours truly, of course, and the other set belonged to my 15 year old first cousin, Daryl. We were planning on doing some golf in sunny Florida, and as far as we were concerned this was the main reason for such a trip. Daryl and I both worked at Gram's golf course during the summer months, and we played a lot of golf together. Daryl was an only child, and I was until my sister was born when I was twelve years old. Our father's both hunted at the same hunting club, and Daryl and I both tagged along each fall. I guess because neither of us had siblings that we naturally became pretty close, at least as cousins go.

The real reason for this expedition was my great aunt, Julia. Julia was Gram's sister and lived in West Palm, just north of Miami. She had lived there since retiring a number of years ago, and Gram made it a point to visit her when she had the time and money. When I and my cousins were very young we always looked forward to seeing Aunt Julia because she used to give us a dollar whenever she saw us. I personally got a charge out of her because she spoke with a thick Hungarian accent, and cooked the best dishes I knew. She was always smiling and it was hard to feel down around her.

The last companion, seated in the back, passenger side seat, was my aunt Kathy. Kathy was not Daryl's mom. Kathy was not my mom. Kathy was not Michelle's mom. One of those folks, traveling with their child, and their mother, to Florida, would make way too much sense for this group. Kathy was the third child of my Gram, and I guess it was Kathy's turn to go to Florida. Kathy had two children of her own, two boys about Daryl's age. They were not going to Florida. Kathy was divorced from her kid's father and now living with a nice enough man, named Dennis. Kathy was always threatening to chop Dennis up and stick him in her kiln. It's sort of funny how you don't really consider things when you are young. Family life was just normal. As we all piled into the car, with Michelle squeezing into the back seat between Kathy and Gram, Kathy made sure I knew to be careful.

"Ya know, the hill is goen to be rough". She said with her nasally whine.

"Yup, we'll be good, it hasn't been snowing long". I replied, although I had no clue.

Kathy gave sort of a snort, and started a sentence with what would become a moniker for this trip. "Dennis said we ought to be goen through Watertown anyway, lot quicker and safer with the snow on the road."

"That might be true if we were leaving from Gram's, but we had to pick up Michelle". I answered. Watertown was north, and we were headed south. We were not going through Watertown. Kathy was the type of person to find the bad in whatever she could. This much I knew, and I didn't want to listen to her all the way to Florida. Maybe she'll sleep a lot.

"Well, Dennis said...". She sort of mumbled.

And with that, we were off. Down Park ave., turning right onto Shady Ave. driving by the movie theater and the Jrecks sub shop, and then up Dayan street and out towards West Lowville and Route 177.

Gram tried to spread the fun, and I'm sure she looked forward to these yearly excursions as she toiled on the golf course, sunup to sundown, each and every day, from the end of April until Halloween. We were all family, with a girlfriend thrown in, but I'm not sure any of us had spent more than two or three days in a row together. That didn't include Gram, of course. She had been like a second mother to Daryl and I. But the rest of us knew each other only through family holidays and random dinners. We all knew each other, but nobody KNEW each other. I didn't think about it at the time, but that was going to change on this trip.