Dave Wright Writes

  Perceptions at a Country Club by Dave Wright The three of us lingered in the parking lot of the country club—all with our hands stuffed in our pockets, all bored, all eager for school to start, and all feeling poor—having spent the last of our allowances on Bazooka Joe bubblegum, baseball cards, and popsicles. There was Ricky, the neighborhood ginger, whose freckles splattered down his arms and legs like a poor stucco job, and whose dad worked in the pro shop. He was a juvenile expert at golf. There was my younger brother, Jim who was smaller than either of us, but tougher than both of us together. And then there was me, a scrawny specimen of delayed adolescence who wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt buttoned to the neck and whose black spectacles carried a perpetual wad of adhesive tape on a broken bow. Ricky told us that there was a golf tournament scheduled for that Saturday, and that we might be able to make a few bucks by offering to caddy for the golfers. Jim and I knew not