The Part-Time of My Life

I adorn my head with a weathered visor, worn to a dull green after four years of sweat and sunshine. My dogs wait by the door, doe-eyed as they watch me place my thermos on the ground and sit to tie my shoes. They know it will be nightfall when I return, for Winter Pines is calling, and just as only you can prevent forest fires, only I can wash the dirt and glass clumps out of the wheel wells of golf carts.

The sun is always shining as I walk outside, with pure white clouds dotting an even purer blue sky. As I venture out onto the sidewalk, however, my gaze turns to the golf course, where dense black clouds perpetually hover, billowing and unfurling their reaches across the length of the course. While this is actually a good sign, because golfers will flee when spritzed with a drop of rain (which allows me leave early), for the purpose of this essay, the foreboding weather represents the disdain I feel toward my part-time job: cleaning up after golfers.

This occupation is marred by a multitude of misconceptions, beginning with golfers’ confusion as to whether or not we are a grocery store. For the record, we are not, so it is not ok to leave your cart in the parking lot. While this is wholly unacceptable, it is understandable, for a very low percentage of these carts are without traces of alcohol. Few carts overall are missing this key ingredient to a fun day on the course, which is why when people ask me if I play golf, I say, “No, I’m underage.” Golfers understand, though others often show puzzlement. I get similar looks when asking girls to go on the course with me. It’s as if there’s something wrong with asking someone if they want to “play a round.” After such an exchange, the girl in question often opts to just hit balls instead. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with golf.

The propensity of golfers to drink has other implications on the course as well. For one thing, it makes can collecting a fairly reasonable prospect, for the purpose of selling them to a recycling plant—that is, until you realize that more than one can is needed to earn a single cent. In spite of this upfront detraction, our 73-year-old ranger Ralph has been collecting them for the past 15 years. He scours the receptacles that are scattered around the course, collecting his exchangeable goods with the dream of amassing enough to purchase a new truck. After hunting and gathering illustrious aluminum for so many long and rusty years, I’m happy to say that he can now afford any truck in the 2009 Tonka lineup.

Some of the biggest contributors to the recycling plant are a group of regulars at the course, whose idea of a perfect Saturday is playing 18 holes in the morning, then sitting around in the afternoon trying to forget it. They are undoubtedly the inspiration for my favorite saying: “You can lead a golfer to the course, but you can’t make him not drink.”

They and other golfers’ prolific beverage consumption often cause them to forget about the remaining contents of their cans when they leave. While their livers thank them for such mishaps, I do not. This is because Ralph dumps the beer into the nearest trash-bag, where it re-ferments, this time not with beechwood, but with stale hotdog buns and cigarette butts. This amalgam generates the most foul, pungent smell on the entire course (if you ignore the mass unearthing of fertilizer that happens when it rains). We eventually deposit each of these soggy sacks of trash in a dumpster at the end of the parking lot, where they truly age to perfection. Not only do the residents of neighboring homes complain when we leave the top off of this rectangular cesspool, but the consuming stench even has garbage men holding their noses when they come to collect it.

Worst of all, I put myself in this situation. I should’ve known not to take this job, for I live with a golfer, and have been able to study his behavior carefully. Early in his time in college I helped him move out of his apartment, and in the throes of packing, a quick perusal of his bedroom closet revealed several empty cans of ill repute. “JEFF!” I had yelled, confronting him on his unacceptable habit, “You don’t recycle?!”