HOLE 18
The entryway has a rack of tourist pamphlets: rafting, go-karts, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
Jason comes out of the bathroom. He’s surprised I didn’t know Fallingwater was in Pennsylvania. A quote on the brochure describes Fallingwater as “a house that summed up the 20th century” and Wright’s “most sublime integration of man and nature.” Jason calls the ticket office.
There is only one tour opening. It begins in forty minutes. We can make it but would have to leave right now. This makes the decision easy, though I’ve heard Fallingwater’s gift shop has a few gems.
We are standing on top of the largest cave in Pennsylvania, but we’ve actually come for what is advertised in the putt-putt pamphlet.
Opened in 1999, Kavernputt was built to be a wheelchair accessible cavern with “the broader purpose” of an eighteen-hole miniature golf course.
I give the cashier a ten, and she gives me two balls and two putters. We go through a wooden saloon door with a snap spring.
It’s dark and the walls and ceilings feel like the fake rocks you hide keys in. It is way better than I imagined. There is a little bit of a grandpa’s basement smell. But if it weren’t for the Astroturf and ADA-compliant pathways, Kavernputt could look like a real cave.
The golf course is difficult, mostly because it is very dark. There are no windmills, only rock formations.
My night vision kicks in and I get a hole in one. Jason gets a hole in six. This can’t last.
It doesn’t.
All of the holes have a geological theme and employ different tricks. They are charming and inspired. The hole about echoes has voice-activated lights. I repeat “echo” over and over, making them flicker.
In ancient Greece, Zeus was saved by a cave. His mom, Rhea, hid him in one. She did this so Zeus’s father, Cronus, wouldn’t eat him. Rhea then wrapped a rock in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus.
Cronus swallowed the fake baby ASAP, because it was foretold that one of his sons would overpower him.
My father would never have eaten the rock baby.
One of his core beliefs is that as a parent you shouldn’t try to be too wonderful. Being perfect makes it so your children can’t compare and gives them a complex.
If you set the bar low your kids are sure to at least be more successful than you.
Zeus grew up to overthrow Cronus. He also grew up to swallow his unborn baby and wife.
I point out a homemade stalagmite that slumps like a soft penis. Jason laughs but still sinks the putt.
We love the course and consider it a work of art, but are both relieved as hole 18 swallows our balls for good.
THINGS
As kids my dad would take us each on walk nights. There were five of us, and rather than try to give us all attention at once, he would split us up. Every night was a different kid.
A walk could be simple as crossing Seventh Avenue to the Mexican restaurant called Caliente Cab Co. Not to eat—they had a giant plastic margarita bolted onto the wall. It hung twenty feet above with a permanent tidal wave of dripping foam. My dad would stand under it, head tilted back and tongue sticking out. He would rub his belly and say how good it tasted. And I would do the same, only more. Squinting my eyes, pulling on his hand as I tilted back, saying it was the best margarita I had ever tasted.
That was my brother Zack’s favorite walk. He was forever asking, “Can we go drink the margarita?” We all had our favorite spot.
My brother Danny loved to go to the Chinatown arcade, where he would pay a quarter to lose to, and one time tie, the tic-tac-toe-playing chicken. Minda loved to go to a bar on Seventh Avenue named McBell’s and drink a Shirley Temple while my dad drank Diet Coke.
Mine was the Waverly Diner. I’d pick our seats at the counter, and Dad would ask what I wanted as I hopped on the stool.
But he knew what I wanted: a fresh-squeezed orange juice.
Across from us was a fully automated orange juicing machine. The oranges sat in a cage on top. When we would order, the waiter in a black vest would flip a switch. The machine would come to life and 8-year-old me would float above the earth with delight.
Once a man was sitting next to us. He got a hot water with lemon and nursed it. Then he added sugar to his ice water and dropped his used-up lemon wedge in. Dad and I were at the diner a long time and left at the same time as the hot-water guy. His check was twenty-five cents and he left a five-cent tip. Our check was fifteen dollars and my dad left a five-dollar tip.
My dad never really taught us to believe in God. He did teach us: If you like the service, leave a good tip. If you like the restaurant, buy a soda or an iced tea.
I’m sure we both had fountain Diet Cokes along with my fresh OJ. The check was likely filled out by an English muffin, a goblet of red Jell-O cubes, and a cup of chili.
Hot-water guy and us walked south on Sixth Avenue. As we approached St. Joseph’s my dad switched places with me so he would be the one next to the vagrants on the steps. There was always a mess of them because St. Joseph’s gave away free soup.
We were behind hot-water guy, who we had decided was a mooch and wouldn’t ever let him sit in our restaurant making lemonade from our sugar.
Then hot-water guy stopped and talked to the panhandlers. He put a dollar in each of the bums’ cups. And my dad’s jaw dropped.
We didn’t give money to bums. We gave money to small businesses because we knew how hard it was to make rent in New York.
My dad would tell that story a thousand times. Each time drawing a new and deeper meaning, positioning himself as an ignorant asshole, speculating that this might be the root of our problems as a nation, that we don’t feel enough sympathy for people who are not like us.
The meat and potatoes of a walk night was going to and from the target. We’d hold hands, and Dad would ask questions and life would just fall out.
My dad learned about walks from Willy. When they first started hanging out they would walk to the hardware store together, or to buy film, stupid errands.
Most of the buildings on Morton Street had a single-pipe steam heat system.
Radiators in each room and a boiler in the basement. Steam would be made in the boiler and rise through a pipe that ran up the building.
A big problem the single-pipe system had was as the steam went up, its heat would be absorbed by the cold pipe. So by the time it got to the third or fourth floor, it wasn’t so steamy anymore.
Sometimes it wasn’t steam at all; it would be so cold that the steam condensed into water and dropped down, not heating the top floor at all.
This made the floors get progressively cooler, the higher they got.