Playing Through

I have always thought my decline began in earnest about 12 years ago when I had a gig with a Bluegrass band at a Northern Kentucky country club. I drove over in a wet winter twilight with zero visibility, one of those dreary days that crop up so often in Cincinnati just after Christmas.

The job we were playing was for friends of the banjo player Jeff Roberts, and the pleasures of his company sometimes kept chaos at bay. Unfortunately, I could tell immediately that this wasn’t going to be the case by the snake-oil tone of voice he used when he first called me.

“We’ll be in and out of there in no time,” Jeff said, talking really fast like when he’s eaten a lot of Little Debbie Snack Cakes. “The magician and the nun who does the animal balloons are working most of the last hour anyway.”

“The nun who does animal balloons?”

“Sister Agatha. I hear she’s great,” Jeff said smoothly. Then, “Gotta go. See you Sunday.”

On Sunday I left the house right on time, threw my guitar in the back seat of the car and turned on the radio. It was a good car, a Ford with a heater that would run you out of there, as hillbillies always say. By the time I hit I-275 South, the warmth and the sound of Country music on the radio felt like a cocoon.

I could drive all the way to Nashville, I thought, but I took the right exit and saw a building that had to be a country club. “Nothing to it,” I said to myself.

Following instructions, I pulled into a narrow black-top lane in back of the main building. The blacktop lane began to narrow, and I couldn’t see 10 feet ahead of me. That’s when I found myself driving right onto the golf course.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I kept on going. I was afraid if I stopped I would sink into the underworld.

No one was playing, of course — it was winter. The grounds were saturated from the rain, so I inched forward, enjoying the feeling of my tires sinking into the ground, gouging up hunks of costly green turf. I liked the little sucking sound it made every time the wheels pulled clear again.

I began to hum a merry-go-round song in my head, and for a few minutes I was a little girl again, playing mud pies. But when I had to gun my car to get up a small hill, I found myself stuck in a trap somewhere on the fourth hole.

Crime doesn’t pay. I saw the klieg lights before I heard the walkie-talkies. Suddenly a uniformed man was running toward me, yelling, “Stop!” — which was silly since my car was clearly wedged between two trees.

When he got to the car window and got a good look at me, he seemed a little red in the face, and he pressed the “talk” button on his radio and said, “Aw, Darryl, it’s just a woman.”

Maybe it was the way he said it — “it’s just a woman” — that brought me back to my senses, but suddenly I felt a little silly sitting there in my old cozy Ford, all dressed up for a party wearing a snazzy pink sequined baseball cap.

“Lady, do you know you’re in the middle of a golf course?” the guard said gently, giving me a look that suggested I might need my medication changed very soon.

“Yes, I know I’m on a golf course,” I said in my best haughty voice. “I thought I was on the right road, but it seems I wasn’t.”

Then he led me through the trees, off the course and onto the main highway, much the way you’d shoo a housefly out an open window.

I was late for the gig, of course. Sister Agatha had already twisted 10 or 11 balloons into dachshunds by the time I walked into the room, and she gave me a pinched superior look while I was taking my guitar out of the case.

I had to explain the whole thing to Jeff without looking obvious, and he sniggered, then just started laughing outright, and I noticed he was having trouble tuning the banjo.

“You drove through a golf course?” he asked again.

“I did,” I said. “And I can prove it.”

“I can’t believe you drove through a golf course,” he said again, just before he kicked off “Shuckin’ the Corn.”

We walked outside to the car when the gig was over and examined the back fender, where the rolls of turf had wound around it about 12 times.

“Do you think you could help me knock some of this dirt off?” I asked. “It’s making a rubbing sound.”

“I think we’re going to need some tools here,” he said. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“What sign?” I asked.

“The one that said ‘Don’t drive on the golf course?’ ”

I gave him a hard look. He was laughing.

I was to hear that laugh years later when another car I was driving caught fire and burned up. It looked like a charred turkey carcass; the tires made little popping sounds as they blew. But that’s another story.

Jeff always says just because a joke is old doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be told anymore. “Why, sometimes,” he says, “you’re just beginning to get the hang of telling it on the fourth go-round.”

I’m writing this story again, just for Jeff. It’s a true story, and it made him laugh. I’ve never heard the end of it anyway.

This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2006.