July 8, 2006: Saturday Story--"The Club"-- Part One
The Club
Dicky called to see if I wanted to play golf with him on Saturday. It was the summer between our freshman and sophomore years at college. He said that he would love to be able to take me to his family’s Club on the north shore of Long Island, but couldn’t because they had used up all their guest passes. “It’s really an amazing place,” he said, apologizing again for having run out of passes and for not having gotten me there for a visit that summer. He had been trying. After all, we had been best friends for almost two years.
Though his family lived in Brooklyn and the club was in Manhasset-- and even without traffic it was at least an hour’s drive to get there-- they were both eager and privileged to be members: Eager for two reasons--because though they were doing well financially they were in effect “stuck” in the neighborhood where they began because Dicky’s father, Dr. Samuel (Sugar) Traub, was a dentist and at age fifty it would have been impossible to start up again in a practice closer to the Club; and they were also eager since there was nothing nearly equivalent to the Club in Brooklyn that would be suitable for them, considering how far they had come. And they were privileged to be members for just one reason--because it was the only county club on the North Shore that accepted Jews. All the others, in the parlance of the era, were “restricted.”
So religiously each Sunday the Traubs would pile into their royal blue Chrysler sedan and schlep out to the Club, feeling it was well worth battling the traffic that perpetually snarled the Long island Expressway.
“The Club’s golf course is so much better than the public courses in Brooklyn. They have real greens there, not like the Crab Grass ones at Dyker Beach.” Which was where he and I played.
But without the required passes, we decided that we would again take our chances on securing a starting time at overcrowded Dyker Beach. He chuckled, “Don’t forget to bring both your Mashie and your Machete!”
* * *
When Dr. Traub returned from service in the Pacific at the end of World War II, he returned to the family’s cramped two-bedroom apartment above John Inusi’s shoemaker’s shop on East 56th Street and resumed a practice that had barely gotten off the ground when he had been drafted. Though he had seen the other side of the world and had been decorated in combat, the local yentas still joked, “Sure, they gave him the Navy Cross for making cavities under fire.” This always provided a full morning’s amusement during hot mornings on the stoops since Dr. Traub was famous for making a living from discovering cavities that didn’t exist.
But as the result of those discoveries and the advent of cavity-preventing Fluoride treatments which he liberally administered for a handsome fee, the Traubs began to rise and were able to move from that airless apartment to a single-family house that they had designed for them, by an actual architect, and built on what seemed a vast piece of land, on what The Daily Worker-reading glazier Mr. Perly contemptuously labeled a piece of real estate, because that’s what it was, real estate, decidedly not merely a vacant lot on the north side of Church Avenue.
And though no more than a few hundred feet from where the rest of us were destined to remain, the house, centered on its land and engulfed by a forest of landscaper-designer floribunda, looked from the south side of the Avenue like a version of Long Island—especially to those who had never been to the South much less North Shore and seen the real thing.
Further, though some had problems with the way Mrs. Trudy Traub showed off her zaftig figure and streaked bouffant, more than anything at that time the Traub’s glittering life represented the full expression of America’s promise--to be able to move from an airless apartment above a shoemaker’s shop to such a house on such a piece of land and perhaps, also in unacknowledgable truth, for Dr. Sugar Traub to have such a wife who never needed to do housework, she had a “girl” for that, because of all of this, this meant that anything was possible for the rest of us.
Including golf. I had learned to play without the benefit of lessons when my cousin Murray arranged for the entire family to have access to a hilly nine-hole course in Tannersville in the upper Catskills where my extended family spend summers—for the cool night air of the mountains and to get away from the scourge of polio which decimated neighborhoods, including ours. There were people in iron lungs on every block. With very little else to do during the week while waiting for the excitement and activities the men brought when the arrived from the city, my cousins and I sought things to occupy ourselves.
One cousin fell in love with the trumpet player from the band at the Rose Garden Hotel and spent the summer being miserable, pining for him since he had access to a bevy of stranded female teenagers and my cousin, for a variety of reasons we need not fully explore (she was more than six feet tall, need I say more?) was not among his favorites. He was, to be frank, a shit. But since feeling sorry for herself suited her, she thus had an excellent summer.
My cousin Chuck was not coordinated enough to even think about talking up golf, considering the skills required just to hit the ball, forget landing in fairways much less pars and birdies. He therefore devoted himself obsessively to swimming in the Rose Garden pool, family access also arranged by cousin Murray; and though Chuck had not as yet mastered the Australian Crawl or even the kick, he in fact swan entirely without doing any kicking whatsoever, he decided that he would prepare to swim the English Channel, a rarity at the time, and in pursuit of that goal spent endless hours literally dragging himself, using only his arms, back and forth, back and forth to the point that none of the hotel’s regular German-refugee guests ever came to the pool since it was such a pathetic and depressing experience to have to watch Chuck pulling his fleshy body through the water with such graceless torture. But to an entire generation of cousins, male cousins, his ambitions and wild imaginings inspired a belief in the pursuit of impossible transformations. That was his American vision. And golf, not that leaky hotel pool, would have been a more appropriate venue for him to achieve this if only he had been able to make both his arms and legs move at the same time.
And since I could at least manage to do that, during the week golf and the course itself were left entirely to me, and in a self-taught manner I hacked and chopped and putted my way around—across the swamp that sat 150 yards from the third tee, a lurking hazard for me since my drives averaged just 150; up the humpbacked sixth where virtually all drives wound up in the wasp-infested woods; over the precipice to the invisible seventh green; and the final 400 yard ninth—the only par five. I got to be fairly good at the game, typically shooting 45 for a round (double that and you have 90—not bad). And when the summer was over I kept at it, enjoying an occasional round at one of the city’s municipal courses.
Dicky in the meantime, with the benefit of lessons from the pro at the Club and having a full 18 holes on which to play, quickly earned a six handicap—in Tannersville no such concept even existed. And so when playing with him at Dyker or Forest Park in Queens, my only advantage was that I was a better putter on Crab Grass than he since he had gotten spoiled by and used to the immaculate wall-to-wall carpet of the Club’s greens.
“So we’re on for Saturday?” he asked. I agreed and he suggested that maybe this time we should play for money, “Five dollars a hole?”
“That’s a little rich for me,” I stammered since it was always an issue for me that in comparison to him I had very little money to spare; but not wanting to reveal just how little I counter offered, “How about a dollar a hole?”
I could hear his chuckle, “Sure, whatever you say. I just wanted to make it a little more interesting. So come over at 8:00 on Saturday. My mother said it’s OK for us to use her car.”
“But if we get there at 8:00 it will be too late to get a staring time. All those guys who get on line at 2:00 a.m. and sleep in their cars will get the morning tee times. We’ll have to hang around until at least 3:00 to start.”
“I can’t believe you Lloyd. You need to put your trust in the Dicky Man. Have I ever let you down?”
He had me there. I couldn’t remember an occasion when we didn’t get the best seats at a ball game or a table in a crowded restaurant. When with him, all doors seemed to open. I must confess, that’s why I considered him my best friend. And having occasional access to his mother’s red Fiat convertible also didn’t hurt!
* * *
We raced south across the heart of Brooklyn with the top down, the wind slapping at our faces, and the radio blasting. A lot of heads turned as we sped along Fort Hamilton Parkway, leaving behind in our wake a stream of the latest from Motown—
How sweet it is to be loved by you.
How sweet it is to be loved by you.
Feels so fine, how sweet it is to be loved by you.
To be continued . . . .
Dicky called to see if I wanted to play golf with him on Saturday. It was the summer between our freshman and sophomore years at college. He said that he would love to be able to take me to his family’s Club on the north shore of Long Island, but couldn’t because they had used up all their guest passes. “It’s really an amazing place,” he said, apologizing again for having run out of passes and for not having gotten me there for a visit that summer. He had been trying. After all, we had been best friends for almost two years.
Though his family lived in Brooklyn and the club was in Manhasset-- and even without traffic it was at least an hour’s drive to get there-- they were both eager and privileged to be members: Eager for two reasons--because though they were doing well financially they were in effect “stuck” in the neighborhood where they began because Dicky’s father, Dr. Samuel (Sugar) Traub, was a dentist and at age fifty it would have been impossible to start up again in a practice closer to the Club; and they were also eager since there was nothing nearly equivalent to the Club in Brooklyn that would be suitable for them, considering how far they had come. And they were privileged to be members for just one reason--because it was the only county club on the North Shore that accepted Jews. All the others, in the parlance of the era, were “restricted.”
So religiously each Sunday the Traubs would pile into their royal blue Chrysler sedan and schlep out to the Club, feeling it was well worth battling the traffic that perpetually snarled the Long island Expressway.
“The Club’s golf course is so much better than the public courses in Brooklyn. They have real greens there, not like the Crab Grass ones at Dyker Beach.” Which was where he and I played.
But without the required passes, we decided that we would again take our chances on securing a starting time at overcrowded Dyker Beach. He chuckled, “Don’t forget to bring both your Mashie and your Machete!”
* * *
When Dr. Traub returned from service in the Pacific at the end of World War II, he returned to the family’s cramped two-bedroom apartment above John Inusi’s shoemaker’s shop on East 56th Street and resumed a practice that had barely gotten off the ground when he had been drafted. Though he had seen the other side of the world and had been decorated in combat, the local yentas still joked, “Sure, they gave him the Navy Cross for making cavities under fire.” This always provided a full morning’s amusement during hot mornings on the stoops since Dr. Traub was famous for making a living from discovering cavities that didn’t exist.
But as the result of those discoveries and the advent of cavity-preventing Fluoride treatments which he liberally administered for a handsome fee, the Traubs began to rise and were able to move from that airless apartment to a single-family house that they had designed for them, by an actual architect, and built on what seemed a vast piece of land, on what The Daily Worker-reading glazier Mr. Perly contemptuously labeled a piece of real estate, because that’s what it was, real estate, decidedly not merely a vacant lot on the north side of Church Avenue.
And though no more than a few hundred feet from where the rest of us were destined to remain, the house, centered on its land and engulfed by a forest of landscaper-designer floribunda, looked from the south side of the Avenue like a version of Long Island—especially to those who had never been to the South much less North Shore and seen the real thing.
Further, though some had problems with the way Mrs. Trudy Traub showed off her zaftig figure and streaked bouffant, more than anything at that time the Traub’s glittering life represented the full expression of America’s promise--to be able to move from an airless apartment above a shoemaker’s shop to such a house on such a piece of land and perhaps, also in unacknowledgable truth, for Dr. Sugar Traub to have such a wife who never needed to do housework, she had a “girl” for that, because of all of this, this meant that anything was possible for the rest of us.
Including golf. I had learned to play without the benefit of lessons when my cousin Murray arranged for the entire family to have access to a hilly nine-hole course in Tannersville in the upper Catskills where my extended family spend summers—for the cool night air of the mountains and to get away from the scourge of polio which decimated neighborhoods, including ours. There were people in iron lungs on every block. With very little else to do during the week while waiting for the excitement and activities the men brought when the arrived from the city, my cousins and I sought things to occupy ourselves.
One cousin fell in love with the trumpet player from the band at the Rose Garden Hotel and spent the summer being miserable, pining for him since he had access to a bevy of stranded female teenagers and my cousin, for a variety of reasons we need not fully explore (she was more than six feet tall, need I say more?) was not among his favorites. He was, to be frank, a shit. But since feeling sorry for herself suited her, she thus had an excellent summer.
My cousin Chuck was not coordinated enough to even think about talking up golf, considering the skills required just to hit the ball, forget landing in fairways much less pars and birdies. He therefore devoted himself obsessively to swimming in the Rose Garden pool, family access also arranged by cousin Murray; and though Chuck had not as yet mastered the Australian Crawl or even the kick, he in fact swan entirely without doing any kicking whatsoever, he decided that he would prepare to swim the English Channel, a rarity at the time, and in pursuit of that goal spent endless hours literally dragging himself, using only his arms, back and forth, back and forth to the point that none of the hotel’s regular German-refugee guests ever came to the pool since it was such a pathetic and depressing experience to have to watch Chuck pulling his fleshy body through the water with such graceless torture. But to an entire generation of cousins, male cousins, his ambitions and wild imaginings inspired a belief in the pursuit of impossible transformations. That was his American vision. And golf, not that leaky hotel pool, would have been a more appropriate venue for him to achieve this if only he had been able to make both his arms and legs move at the same time.
And since I could at least manage to do that, during the week golf and the course itself were left entirely to me, and in a self-taught manner I hacked and chopped and putted my way around—across the swamp that sat 150 yards from the third tee, a lurking hazard for me since my drives averaged just 150; up the humpbacked sixth where virtually all drives wound up in the wasp-infested woods; over the precipice to the invisible seventh green; and the final 400 yard ninth—the only par five. I got to be fairly good at the game, typically shooting 45 for a round (double that and you have 90—not bad). And when the summer was over I kept at it, enjoying an occasional round at one of the city’s municipal courses.
Dicky in the meantime, with the benefit of lessons from the pro at the Club and having a full 18 holes on which to play, quickly earned a six handicap—in Tannersville no such concept even existed. And so when playing with him at Dyker or Forest Park in Queens, my only advantage was that I was a better putter on Crab Grass than he since he had gotten spoiled by and used to the immaculate wall-to-wall carpet of the Club’s greens.
“So we’re on for Saturday?” he asked. I agreed and he suggested that maybe this time we should play for money, “Five dollars a hole?”
“That’s a little rich for me,” I stammered since it was always an issue for me that in comparison to him I had very little money to spare; but not wanting to reveal just how little I counter offered, “How about a dollar a hole?”
I could hear his chuckle, “Sure, whatever you say. I just wanted to make it a little more interesting. So come over at 8:00 on Saturday. My mother said it’s OK for us to use her car.”
“But if we get there at 8:00 it will be too late to get a staring time. All those guys who get on line at 2:00 a.m. and sleep in their cars will get the morning tee times. We’ll have to hang around until at least 3:00 to start.”
“I can’t believe you Lloyd. You need to put your trust in the Dicky Man. Have I ever let you down?”
He had me there. I couldn’t remember an occasion when we didn’t get the best seats at a ball game or a table in a crowded restaurant. When with him, all doors seemed to open. I must confess, that’s why I considered him my best friend. And having occasional access to his mother’s red Fiat convertible also didn’t hurt!
* * *
We raced south across the heart of Brooklyn with the top down, the wind slapping at our faces, and the radio blasting. A lot of heads turned as we sped along Fort Hamilton Parkway, leaving behind in our wake a stream of the latest from Motown—
How sweet it is to be loved by you.
How sweet it is to be loved by you.
Feels so fine, how sweet it is to be loved by you.
To be continued . . . .
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:07 AM
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