Varmint County’s New Golf Course Better Suited for Navy Seal Training

Memorial Day weekend marked an occasion of historic proportions here in varmint County – the opening of the county’s first ever golf course!

It was not, however, enthusiastically received by most locals, since few people in Varmint County have ever seen a golf course, let alone played the game.

Typical of local reaction was this exchange heard down at Smiley’s Pool Emporium & Tobacco Mercantile, when Lawyer McSwine dropped in to purchase some cheap cigars.

“Philbert, where ya going with that big ol’ bag?” Archie Aslinger asked.

“Thought I’d go down to McCracken’s Neck and shoot some golf,” McSwine replied.

“Golf? Never heard of them critters around here. You gonna use a shotgun or a rifle?” Archie quipped to a chorus of guffaws from all the locals hanging out around the counter.

McSwine was in fact one of the few Varmint County citizens who owned a set of golf clubs, having picked up the sport while in law school. Judge Hard Time Harwell was another, along with the new Methodist preacher, Reverend Adolphus Grimmach, and County Mayor Clyde Filstrup Junior.

Having a case scheduled in Judge Harwell’s court on Wednesday, McSwine decided it would be a good idea to play a few holes of golf with the Judge on the newly-opened course on Monday – and lose. Adolphus and Clyde were invited along to make a foursome.

The new course is the brainchild of none other than Caleb Hockmeyer, patriarch of the Hockmeyer Clan that owns most of the land around the rock promontory known as McCracken’s Neck. Caleb has been for some years trying to figure out how to turn his family’s moonshining and pot growing activities to more, shall we say, legitimate pursuits.

“It’s jest not been the same around here since old Elijah Haig got that contract to sell his whiskey to the Air Force as jet fuel additive. That left our clan as the only outlaws in Varmint County, and our family has been attracting too much attention lately,” Caleb told his boys Arlie, Tobias and Hooch.

As he spoke, Caleb cast an especially strong glance at Arlie, who you may recall a couple of months back had a little run-in with the Highway Patrol, the Burr County Sheriff’s Department, the Varmint County Sheriff’s Department and Lower Primroy Volunteer Fire Department.

Arlie and his cousin Tobin were running a load of wacky weed down to Burrville in Arlie’s old wrecker when he ran into a state trooper roadblock and made a run for it, accidentally hooking his tow chain under the front of a pursuing Highway Patrol cruiser and eventually slinging the hapless trooper through the front doors of Fire Station Number Two.

Long before this most recent incident, Caleb had been negotiating with Mud Lake developer Otis B. Hudsupple to lease land in McCracken Valley for an 18-hole golf course. Otis had been trying for years to find enough flat land near his Mud Lake vacation communities to satisfy demand from his city slicker customers, to no avail.

Then someone suggested talking to the Hockmeyers about the vast rolling valley and adjacent hills at the base of McCracken’s Neck. Caleb, envious of the Haig Clan’s newfound legitimacy, quickly agreed to a long-term lease for the course and adjacent clubhouse.

A well-known course designer quickly laid out a plan for nine holes, but protested that there simply wasn’t enough level land to expand the course to eighteen holes.

“We’ll just have to improvise,” Otis proclaimed. “I want a full eighteen holes. You lay out the first nine and I’ll get the Hockmeyers to help me lay out the second nine holes. Maybe we’ll come up with something unique, true to the spirit of Varmint County.”

And so the first dozen or so foursomes teed off on Saturday, following a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony organized by the Varmint County Chamber of Commerce. Most of the players were tourists from down around Mud Lake, along with a couple of pros invited in by Otis and an all-woman foursome of Gabby Aslinger, Penny Haig, State Representative Toony Pyles and Penny’s college roommate from North Carolina.

When the teams began staggering in at the end of the day, Otis and Caleb got a clear idea of what they had created.

“The first nine holes are pretty straight-forward, Gabby Aslinger observed, “Just routine three and four par holes with some sand traps and trees here and there. That tenth hole is pretty difficult, though. I’ve never tried to putt a ball on a forty-five degree slope before. If you miss the putt going downhill, the ball rolls another 200 feet before it slows down.”

“That’s why we made it a par six,” Otis explained. “The trick is to get in position to putt uphill.”

“Hmm. I’ll remember that next time,” Gabby observed. “Then there’s the tee-off on the fifteenth hole. You gotta drive the ball at least 400 feet to clear the canyon wall and reach the green on the far side. Then you gotta hike down in the canyon, ford McCracken’s Creek and hike back up the other side to finish the hole.”

“Well, it is a bit time-consuming right now, but we’re going to put a swinging bridge across the creek next week. We just couldn’t get the construction crew in here before the grand opening,” Caleb explained. “That’s why we hired drovers and a string of jackasses this weekend, to haul them fat Yankees down and up the trail.”

“I’m also a little bit concerned about the water hazard on the seventeenth hole,” Gabby continued. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Old Gnash, Elijah Haig’s pet alligator, I saw hanging out in that pool.”

“Yup. Elijah loaned him to me to give the course a little extra spice,” Caleb crowed. “But we keep him well-fed. He’s not dangerous as long as you don’t go in the water.”

“And what if someone hits their ball in the water?” Toony asked.

“That’s why it’s called a hazard, dear. Hit the ball in the water, you either forfeit two strokes or take your chances with Old Gnash,” Otis replied.

“Next time I play this course, dear, I’ll bring along my Winchester 30-30. We’ll see who’s taking chances,” Toony warned.

“Maybe you should lose the gator,” Caleb suggested to Otis. “If you get Elijah’s favorite pet shot, he’ll likely feed you to his other twelve.”

All in all, the first day was a major success. That is, there were no fatal injuries and only two foursomes got hopelessly lost. A rescue party of younger Hockmeyers found one of the visiting pros and his three companions wandering aimlessly along the bottoms of McCracken’s Creek.

The other group, four Ohio tourists renting a cabin at Hudsupple’s Whitetail Bay community on Mud Lake, blundered into one of the Hockmeyer Clan’s illicit agricultural projects and decided to test the product. They were found the next morning when the clubhouse opened, lying among fifty-two empty potato chip bags from the front porch vending machine.

Having been forewarned, McSwine, Judge Harwell, Clyde Junior and Reverend Grimmach limited their day to the first nine holes, McSwine dutifully seeing that he lost to the Judge by four shots.

“Philbert, I had one of the worst days of my life and I still beat you. You’re either dogging it or you’re one of the worst golfers I’ve ever seen,” Hard Time observed.

“It’s not that Judge, I was just a bit distracted, not knowing if you were going to want to play the second nine or not.”

“Nah, Caleb told me they’ve closed that part of the course temporarily. Apparently they’re renting it out to a team of Navy Seals who want to use it for an obstacle course.”