Some thanks in advance of Thanksgiving

A “Shoe” comic strip in Wednesday’s newspaper was a classic that undoubtedly struck a chord with anyone who has ever hacked his way around a golf course and found it difficult to suppress creative commentary when the wheels commenced to fall off his game along about the fourth hole.

In the first panel, the old bird of an editor in his treetop perch peruses a letter to the editor: “Dear Editor: My husband swears a lot for no reason. What should I do?” In the next panel the worldly-wise ink-stained wretch punches out a reply on his laptop computer: “Have him take up golf.”

Should the man of the house need a valid reason to curse, golf – the sport that Mark Twain described as “a good walk spoiled” – will surely provide it. Even Tiger Woods, the alleged greatest golfer on the planet, periodically succumbs to the urge, as any television viewer remotely skilled in lip-reading one-syllable words of naughty import can attest.

Show me the golfer who has never once cut loose a cuss-word while making his rounds at some point in his life and I’ll show you a person you’d probably not want covering your back in your next bar fight.

In his poem “Comfortless,” the poet Edgar Guest told of one duffer encountering another, the first disconsolate soul seeking advice for curing a bagful of woes ranging from a faulty stance and failure to get off the tee to shanked fairway shots and cup-rimming putts.

“Poor man, I said/Tis very sure/No hope for you appears/The woes you bear I tried to cure/Myself for 30 years.

“And still my mashie shots I shank/And still I slice the drive/And with the dubs expect to rank/As long as I’m alive…”

Guest’s protagonist patiently explains to his fellow dub that though time heals all wounds, it does make one exception: “The miseries of golf endure;/To them there is no end.”

As Thanksgiving nears and we rummage around for the things in our lives for which we should be thankful, it strikes me that most golfers of my acquaintance – including those who play to an obscenely low handicap – should give thanks daily that they are not professionals trying to make a living on tour.

When all that stands between a man and the poorhouse is sinking a winding 10-foot downhill putt on the final hole of a tournament as thousands look on – the golfer half-expecting some boozed-up bozo to scream, “You da man” just as he begins the critical stroke – the security of a regular job down at the local paper mill with its regular paycheck would likely seem like a swell idea.

So as we begin the countdown to Thursday’s thank-fest you may put me in the column that includes those who are thankful that their regular job never included having to consistently hit a little white ball from an impossible lie in order to place food on the table, keep the wolf from the door and pay off the mortgage.

The daily newspaper reminds me of a lot of other things for which to be grateful, including the fact that I don’t know any of the people of whom Dan Gwadosky, executive director of the Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations, spoke in a story by A.J. Higgins in Thursday’s newspaper.

Gwadosky said erosion in Tri-State Megabucks lottery ticket sales because of Maine’s participation in the nationwide Powerball lottery has been minimal. Mainers remain loyal to Megabucks, he said, and many “actually like the idea of winning a million dollars instead of millions, which they say they wouldn’t know what to do with…”

I am just as happy, too, that I am not President George W. Bush and routinely getting blamed for everything from the Iraq War to why Johnny can’t read. The man’s job would get old early on, I should think, its generous perks notwithstanding. Better to be the guy who has to clean a major league baseball dugout after 25 pampered multi-millionaires have spent the past three hours spitting tobacco juice on the floor and throwing crumpled-up Gatorade cups about.

As well, I’m appreciative that last spring I was not a bank robber between jobs who might have hooked on with those two deep thinkers who bagged an area bank, then fled in a subtle purple pickup truck sporting decorative red flames painted on the body, the nondescript getaway vehicle of choice – a yellow and black school bus with “School Administrative District 64” stenciled on the side – apparently not being readily available.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.