Hot Dogs and Sansabelts

Hot Dogs and Sansabelts From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Golf Book

Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.
~Author Unknown

We'd just stocked up on sodas and hotdogs at the turn. The 10th is a 160-yard, severely downhill par 3 with a fifty-foot drop from tee to green. My Pops, my two brothers and I all teed off and as usual, had the green surrounded but the putting surface vacant. Pops hopped into the lead cart driven by my older brother. My younger brother and I followed as we hurried off to our hopeful pars. This particular cart path plummets steeply down the right side of the fairway before making an abrupt ninety-degree left turn at the bottom, where it then gradually continues down to the green.

Rather than wait until the longer 11th hole (as many have often elected), Pops decided to eat his hot dog right then on the way to the green. As he sized up his first bite he leaned to his right, over the side of the cart, lest he dribble any mustard or pickle relish on his new Sansabelt slacks. At that unfortunate moment, my brother took the hard left turn without pumping the brake. (Sansabrake, if you will.) Close on their tail, my younger brother and I were at the proper vantage point to watch it unfold.

Pops was jettisoned from the cart like a human cannonball. Somehow, in some miraculous display of seventy-year-old man agility, he landed on his feet. But having flown 10 or so yards through the air à la Carl Lewis, the harsh rules of physics made it so Pops couldn't help but be running faster than a man of seventy should be running. Way faster! To his credit, I'll say he was on the verge of regaining his inertial balance when he came upon a small collection of course maintenance debris. Upon this he tripped, rolling head over FootJoys several times before coming to a stop. Flat on his back with his arms outstretched as if preparing to ascend to the heavens, completely motionless.

We were horrified. I screeched our cart to a halt on the slope and we jumped out. We raced towards him, praying that he wasn't hurt (or worse).

Pops sat up slowly, looked around. We inspected him for injuries but aside from a sore shoulder, the only damage we could find was to his severely squeezed hot dog, still firmly locked in his fist. I told him he must have wanted it pretty darn bad. But he wasn't quite ready to laugh.

After a few minutes to rest and regain his composure, pick the grass from his hair and dust off the Sansabelts, he hopped back into the cart, finished his hot dog. Then he proceeded to make a fantastic up and down to par the hole. My brothers and I, relieved he wasn't injured, yet simultaneously reeling with laughter, all made bogey. Pops won the skins. Again.

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