Maple Run Golf Course in Autumn: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture - 
By Glynn Wilson - 

THURMONT, Md. — If you are reading this today, October 15, 2022, then I’ve defied the odds and outlived the curse of 64.

I’m now alive and well and 65-years-old. According to my doctor here, I’ve got the heart rate of a professional tennis player and the blood pressure to match.

It may seem a tad morbid, but not really if you consider all the mass confrontation of individual mortality by people all over the world during the global Covid crisis and coronavirus pandemic.

I mean, did you not stop even briefly to consider your own life and possible death during that crisis, on top of the hellscape year in 2020, the Year of the Rat and Trump’s final, disastrous year in the White House?

On top of all the disasters due to climate change from global warming and the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation?

And all the crazy shit going down on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter?

If you did not call a lawyer and get your affairs in order, you are a rare anomaly in the human race. Get busy.

For me, I’ve long had this foreboding about the curse of 64, since so many of my own best friends died at the age of 64.

I figure if I can make it past this curse, I might live for a long time more.

Or not.

It’s not really up to me, except to live wisely and as safely as possible without locking myself up in an insane asylum with three squares a day and a padded room.

I’ve still never contracted Covid, and just got the super-dooper October Surprise vaccine booster.

But my favorite uncle, who I knew as Uncle Virgil, my mother’s brother, died at the age of 64. He had a severe form of arthritis and other health problems, however. I don’t know much about that since it was a long time ago. I just remember he was really a nice guy and often took me fishing, and we actually caught fish.

One of my best friends ever, photographer Spider Martin, shot himself in the heart with a World War I era flare gun modified to shoot 16-gauge shotgun shells the week he turned 64, on April 8, 2003. He was trying to have a birthday party on the little mountain he lived on in Blount County, Alabama, but his immediate family would not cooperate.

Photographer Spider Martin in the Locust Fork River: Glynn Wilson

He must have felt alone up there, but I had visited him many times even though I lived in New Orleans then, staying with him in that old antebellum house every time I was in the state to work on stories for The New York Times. We maneuvered his green 17-foot Kevlar canoe down every navigable stretch of the Locust Fork River, and cooked salmon steaks over an open fire and talking about how the world was changing in the new 21st century.

I guess he just couldn’t take it anymore.

The Future of Democracy and the Web Press – Secret Vistas: Dedicated to the Memory of Spider Martin

Then just the other day, on October 4 at 8:51, I posted this on Facebook about the loss of another lifelong friend — at the age of 64.

John Michael Douglas, 64, at the Grand Canyon in Arizona: Photographer unknown

IN PASSING – It is with a heavy heart that I report of just learning that one of my oldest and dearest friends of 60 years Michael Douglas has died. We played together as little kids growing up in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. We partied together as teenagers, and we stayed in touch over all the years and distance. In many ways he remained a key link to the past, keeping up with everybody in ways I could not. He was always fun and funny, and to the end he was a decent human being and a nice guy. Rest in peace my good buddy. I will miss you and your laugh and smile ?

Like many people in this mobile world, I didn’t keep up with many friends from early childhood. Douglas was about the only one for me, and he kept up with everybody else we knew on Facebook, so there goes another connection to the past.

Speaking of the past, Birmingham Post-Herald political columnist Ted Bryant, another friend, had a stroke and died at the age of 64, before he could finish his book on Alabama’s forever dictator governor, George Wallace. Sometimes it seems like he’s still governor of Alabama, considering the rabid, racist policies of the Republicans who replaced him in charge of the totalitarian spoils system there. The state has still never really experienced democracy. Ever.

Also Willie Morris, the writer from Mississippi, died at the age of 64.

I didn’t get to meet him, but did lead the production of a special issue of The Southerner magazine after his death.

So perhaps you can see why I would think about this over time.

But nope, I’m still alive and kicking, and as I told my friend Don Schanche in Georgia recently, raising hell and taking names and still trying to save democracy and the planet.

But I had to take a Birthday break with another close friend this Wednesday. Brooks Boliek of College Park, Maryland, also originally from Birmingham — who I’ve known since we worked in the same news room together at The Decatur Daily in 1985-86 and for a time lived in the same house — agreed to play golf with me for my birthday. Neither of us gets much of a chance to play anymore.

As I was recently telling the story to a National Park Service ranger, I played tennis in college, but took up golf when I got into the news business in the early 1980s. It was then THE social game everybody in news and politics played. Many big business decisions, political decisions and news stories came from rounds of golf all over the country, so I got as good at it as possible and played regularly for probably 25 years.

In New Orleans, briefly, while working for The New York Times, author Rick Bragg joined our friendly game at the old Audubon Golf Course.

Due to circumstances beyond news and politics, however, I pretty much gave up the game in 2008, about the same time George W. Bush did during the Bush Great Recession, claiming he did it for the troops still fighting his unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“For the first time,” The Politico reported, “Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.”

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” Bush said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Giving Up Golf For the Good of the Country

But after Bush was gone from the White House, I did sneak back out on the course a few times, just trying to keep up my chops in case I might need them for something in the future. You never know.

Being here so close to Camp David, I wanted to try the local public course played by so many presidents in the past anyway, so we made a T-Time at Maple Run in Thurmont. After splitting firewood all summer, increasing the strength in my arms and hands, I figured I could whack the crap out of a golf ball.

Constructed by the Moser family in the early 1990s, Maple Run has supplied many memories in its nearly 30 year existence, according to its website. Purchased in 2001 by current owners, Jeff Ellis and Mark Hahn, Maple Run continues to offer quality golf to local and visiting golfers alike, they say. In close proximity to Camp David, Maple Run was once a favorite destination of President Bill Clinton during his time in office, and has been played by other presidents when visiting Camp David.

President Clinton tees off at Maple Run Golf Course in Thurmont, MD. Sunday April 6,1998: Photo by Mark Wilson

In 2004, the course was used for filming the popular TV show The West Wing, with stars Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff and other members of the cast. From celebrities to politicians; first time golfers to child prodigies, “Maple Run is truly a course for all to enjoy.”

To top it off, the green fees on Wednesday were only $20 a player, including the golf cart. The six pack was more, but believe me when I tell you this is cheap public golf for the average player. In other words, it’s no gold plated Trump country club where the former president can cheat his way to the course record, with the unethical help of the damn Secret Service.

And we caught it on a beautiful Autumn day when the leaves are changing colors in the trees. It was great fun and a fine way to spend one’s 65th birthday.

We had an old saying in New Orleans, when we would often run into a 90-year-old Cajun playing golf at Audubon in the summer heat, who swore the reason he lived so long was due to the game of golf.

“Any day you find yourself on the golf course,” Boudreaux would say, “you’re winning the game of life.”

Or something like that.

Even though Boliek nipped me by a point or two in the round, we both felt like we were winning the game of life — just by being here, still able to swing a club, hit a ball, and sip a beer to boot.

That’s winning.

To top it off, on the back nine, there is a long par 5 with a downhill slope down the fairway to the green. I rared back and whacked it and hit my typical fade down the left side of the fairway. The little white ball rolled out of sight down the hill.

When we got over the rise, it was nowhere in sight. We looked and looked, and I urged Brooks, who was driving, to keep going toward the green.

“There’s no way it went this far, man,” he said. “This is 300 yards.”

But sure enough, there was my Callaway 3, just in the rough on the right side of the fairway, within an easy approach shot to the green.

So in my 65th birthday week, I hit a 300-yard drive.

Top that, bitches!

Brooks Boliek and Glynn Wilson on my 65th Birthday: Brooks Boliek

The Beetles: When I’m Sixty-Four

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a Valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four

You’ll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four

Ho!

___

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