The following is an abridged excerpt from my upcoming book, "Next, We Kill The Golf Pro".

As a decorated veteran of several vicious Golf Maintenance/Clubhouse wars, the worst in my memory was The Great BrokeBack CC Conflict and it was all triggered by an 80 year old cart boy . . . or maybe it was me.

BrokeBack CC was a disaster:  Hundreds of irrigation leaks from a numbskull hydraulic design, 18 dead bent greens suffering from simazine applied by a lunatic, a crew of nuts, crazies and two guys on the FBI's Top Ten list.  That was the good news.

The bad news was the clubhouse staff, the meanest and bitterest in my memory, led by a pro living the fantasy concocted by the PGA that the club pro was the most vital cog in the machine.  He delighted in tormenting Dad with surprise shotgun starts on aerifying day and working the membership up into fits of greenkeeper hate.

The F&B guy should have been #1 on the FBI's list.  The kitchen was so foul and toxic that rats and roaches wouldn't eat there.  Not because of the filth, but out of fear of being cooked and served as the main entree in the golf maintenance crew's discount meals.

The worst clubhouse staffer was Gordie, the ancient cart boy/driving range manager.  My first encounter with Gordie occurred when I arrived to help Dad resuscitate the irrigation system. (Nobody in the state of Georgia would take the irrigation job when they learned it was BrokeBack.)  I was prone, deep in a valve box, trying to convince a valve to close, when Gordie walked up.

He was a skeleton thin, white-haired old fellow and he stepped on my hand.  Twice.  Gordie then accused me of canine birth, questioned the validity of my parent's marriage license and suggested the greens were too firm.  I thought he was an ordinary member, as he was wearing steel golf spikes and complaining, but when he identified himself as clubhouse royalty, I told him to run away or become a new mound on the course.

Gordie reacted with every swear word in at least four languages, in the space of one sentence, all while demonstrating the difficult Two-Handed Double-Bird Maneuver.  (This led me to believe he was ex-Navy)  He completed his message with severe pelvic thrusting and emanating a smell that I could only guess was sulfur.

As far as I was concerned, it was on.  I discovered a trash barrel in his locker/work area, completely filled with empty Cutty Sark bottles.  The day of a large golf outing, Gordie arrived to find his bottle collection strewn about the turf in front of the cart door, his clothes and shoes hanging from signs and the starter shed, and every single cart in the place unplugged and dead as a box of nails.  (65 reverse gear buzzers make an awful racket.)

Golf Maintenance stopped recovering Gordie's dead carts, forcing him to tow his own.  This was difficult, as any cart left out overnight was missing wheels.  Gordie's range picker became mired so deep on the back of the range, he was unable to extract it.  He claimed someone had intentionally left the irrigation on all night.  He meant me, of course, but it wasn't true.  It took three nights.

Things escalated when Gordie repeatedly tried to run over me with his cart.  One morning, while Gordie performed his task of moving the ropes and stakes on the practice tee, he had trouble with one stubborn stake.  At that very moment, a VT II malfunctioned and one of those huge Toro 970 fairway heads blasted out of the ground like a cold volcanic geyser.  The main nozzle shot Gordie in the backside at point-blank range, almost as if it had been pre-aimed.

The result was a little known medical procedure referred to as the Ydnarian Neuter-Enema.

Gordie returned to the front lines a few days later, still ready for duty, as he demonstrated by offering me his Double Bird Salute, albeit from a sitting position.

The BrokeBack CC War would go on for months, until The Golden Slop Jar Incident ended the conflict and brought peace to BrokeBack CC.