Grandpa Taught Me to Read the Green and Smell the Thermos

You can learn how to navigate situations by following the advice my Grandpa gave me over a half century ago on a practice green in Fargo, ND.

The club was too big for my hands, but I clumsily gripped it as tightly as I could. I looked up wide-eyed, equal parts eager and shy, waiting for instructions on how to proceed.

“Okay, Toosie, now you will listen to me, won’t you,” he said with a hint of jocularity in his tone as he bent over to get closer to my level. He had one hand warmly on my shoulder and the other on one knee of his reddish orange trousers that were cuffed just below his argyle socks and the top of his brown leather shoes.

“It’s as easy as this,” he explained. “Read the green, keep your head down, hit it hard enough, and follow through.”

“Read the green? What’s a green? Grandpa, don’t you know that I don’t even know how to read words yet? So what do you mean read the green?” I think I thought.

But I nodded quickly, affirmatively.

It was 1963 and two years before I would learn to read “See Dick and Jane,” and before the Professional Golfers’ Association would approve the belly putter. Perhaps an uneducated trendsetter, but probably just because at my five-year-old height, I had no choice but to let the top of Grandpa’s putter nestle next to my ear and upon my shoulder as I gripped midway down the wooden shaft.

At 74 years of age, but looking 10 to 15 years younger, Grandpa had an athletic build from a lifetime of research in durum and wheat fields in North and Latin America, as well as playing golf at his beloved Edgewood Golf Course on the North end of Fargo, North Dakota. He stood over me and helped place the base of the putter next to the golf ball.

“Your putt is not too easy, but not too difficult either. It is about four yards away,” he remarked caddily.

I furrowed my eyebrows and squinted at him.

“What Grandpa?” I asked.

“Grandpa is silly. That hole is not four yards away,” I think I thought. “Our front yard at home is way bigger than these four yards. He must be kidding.”

“Oh nothing Toosie. Forget what I just said,” Grandpa said as he stepped backward off the practice green. “It’s all yours Toosie. Go ahead and hit the ball.”

At five, I was on my way to break through from the egocentrism of my former years. Because I was learning to become more obedient to my parents and grandparents, I jutted my bottom teeth out, bit my upper lip, and swung the club.

I looked up and saw Grandpa, his golfing buddy, and his golfing buddy’s granddaughter watch my ball as it rolled toward a hole with a flag sticking in it.

Grandpa and his professor friend were enjoying cups of coffee at their favorite non-university hangout. They had taken their granddaughters to the Edgewood Golf Course that sunny, colorful, and crisp September Saturday. As they watched their granddaughters play, the two old friends decided to make a friendly wager on which kid could knock the ball in the hole.

The other girl was taller and a couple of years older than me. Prior to my turn, she had hit a ball, but it did not roll in the hole.

Plink. My ball dropped in the cup and both men laughed. I smiled big. Grandpa won the two nickel bet that day.

Now as far as I know Grandpa was never much of a gambler.

Sure, it was risky to be born of Norwegian immigrants in frigid cold January on a windy tundra the year North Dakota became a state in 1889.

And sure it was treacherous that he was just five years old when his stepmother built a fire break around their sod house because a prairie fire threatened their existence one hot windy summer day when his father was away and his mother was solo caring for the 14-kid Stoa brood.

And yes, it certainly was an adventure when he left his parents’ farm to go to Fargo to attend the North Dakota Agriculture College (now North Dakota State University—horns up Bison) and stayed to graduate and head the college’s Agricultural Department for four decades.

But a gambler. Nah. He never would have considered going to Las Vegas unless it was a stopover on the way to Yuma Arizona, Southern California, or Mexico to help farmers improve their crop smut resistance.

Still, Grandpa did bet on me that day on the practice green and collected two nickels from his friend. Upon receiving the payout, he turned to the girl and me, and handed each of us the spoils of his win.

Grandpa was not a gambler, but he was a lifelong competitor. He was on the 1913 North Dakota Agriculture College Interclass Basketball Championship team, All-City Tennis Champion in 1917 (or there abouts), and an Edgewood Golf Course regular from when it opened in the 1920s to four years before his death at the age of 94 in 1984.

And he passed on his love of sport to his kids and grandkids. I remember cheering with him sitting on wooden bleachers at basketball games held in the old NDSU fieldhouse. And there was the time, he took me to a football game at the old outdoor field. It was decades before anyone dreamt of building a dome in which to play games during the sometimes brutally cold Fargo weather.

“Grandpa, I’m cold,” I said, half crying through a chattering, mishmash of baby, adult, and missing teeth.

He looked down at me and said, “Here Toosie, grab more of the blanket, stomp your feet a little, and take a sip of this.”

“What is it,” I asked as I watched him unscrew a plaid Thermos bottle that he had placed at his feet.

“It’s like hot chocolate,” he answered, more watching the game than me.

“Oh goody,” I said, muffledly clapping with my mittens. I started to grab the Thermos cup from his gloved hands.

“Be careful Toosie, it’s hot,” he said.

“Okay,” I said not slowing my roll.

I took a sip.

Yuckkkk! Aaaaaackkkkk! Ick! Whaaaahhh!” I cried. “I don’t like it!”

Grandpa laughed.

“What is it?” I asked, pouting.

“It’s coffee with milk, but it’s a lot like hot chocolate, don’t you think?”

“No, it‘s awful,” I said and rubbed my tongue on the woolen plaid throw he had wrapped around my legs.

“Ted, how could you,” Grandma said, admonishing her husband after I spilled the coffee beans when we returned to their house after the game.

“Don’t you feel ashamed of yourself for playing such a terrible trick on a child?” she said as she made me a cup of real hot chocolate, complete with a miniature marshmallow.

Grandpa just smiled, gave me a wink, and retired into the living room to do some reading and writing.

I smiled too, sat back in the red vinyl and steel kitchen chair, sipped my hot chocolate, and enjoyed basking in the warmth of Grandma’s attention, while locking in another lifelong memory.

So if you’re willing to take a swing at another life lesson, here it is. In any situation, read your green, keep your head down, hit it hard enough, and be sure to smell the Thermos before indulging.

Judi Stoa's Donchyaknow Life Lessons to see and bring out the best in yourself and others

Website: Judi Stoa Books

Blog: Donchyaknow Life Lessons