The Flying Golf Cart

In my young years, life was all about flying and before Bellingham airport became a fenced business park which happens to have a runway, it was a young boy’s dream. It was a place where you could ride your bike right up to a parked airplane and press your nose into the window. The smell of aviation oils and leather interiors are still logged in my memory. Evenings, we would bring home model airplanes and spend hours in my bedroom building them, only stopping when we could not see straight from smelling the rubber cement. This of course led to the need to build something bigger which we could make fly, so we put wings on a cart.

Using my sister as a test pilot, we pushed her down the hill of our front yard until she claimed the wheels actually left the ground. Unfortunately, with her lack of pilot training, she flew our airplane across Marine Drive narrowly missing getting crunched by a truck. Her days of test piloting were over.

When I was 16, I began training to become an airplane pilot and later a helicopter pilot to emulate my dad. The training was long and costly, but dad was proud to pass on his heritage. So, you can understand my pride when I found out my daughter had been training to drive the flying golf cart. (The lineage stops here though because my grandson is the dog Milton Barry.)

My father-in-law lived in an adult mobile home park across from one of the prettiest park/golf courses in the county. Five days a week he would get up at dawn, hop in his golf cart and drive a half mile up the road to play golf. It got to be such a common sight; the sheriff stopped pulling him over to tell him to get off the road. It was a waste of the deputy’s time, and you really can’t change the habits of an eighty-year-old man who doesn’t want to be late for his tee time.

I believe that it was his little secret, something that was too special to share. Maybe it was his fear people would scoff in disbelief — but his golf cart could fly.

It was a warm summer afternoon when my 12-year-old daughter and my wife went to the mobile home park to visit grandma and grandpa. The daughter was wearing a tank top, shorts, and flip flops. (By the way, I was informed by her that I cannot call them thongs anymore because thongs are something else, just like I cannot say wieners anymore because it makes the next generation blush. They are to be called hot dogs. Did these changes take place at the United Nations? Why didn’t they post them in the newspaper?)

My daughter has always had a great affection for her grandfather. She has also been able to con him into competing with her. Once in his late 70s, she challenged him to a foot race across the parking lot of a pizza restaurant. At a mere fifty feet, he stumbled and landed on his face tearing the skin on his nose and breaking his glasses. You think he would have been a little leery when she asked him, “Grandpa, could you teach me how to drive in the golf cart?”

The 55 and over mobile home park was built into a hilly section of woods. It has its own lake and a stream which runs year-round. The roads wind through the park and up into dead end cul-de-sacs which access the hundred-plus homes. Even though there are many seniors who live there, there is not much car traffic on the 5 mph roads. Therefore, Grandpa said, “Sure, you can drive. What will it hurt?”

Grandma gave him ‘The Look‘ and in her stern voice said, “Now John Harold!”

With that, my daughter sat behind the wheel and grandpa slid into the seat beside her and off they went. He gave her directions on driving and, for the most part, she listened. She has never told me if he mentioned anything about it being a flying golf cart.

The drive around the lake was on level ground and they were travelling so slow that driving seemed to be a piece of cake. The trouble started when she drove up a hill into a cul-de-sac. The cart was underpowered to go up the steep hill, but she made it all the way to the top. Upon reaching the top, she was unsure what to do next to turn the cart 180 degrees to drive back down the hill. She cranked the wheel hard right and the cart made a sweeping turn facing downhill and immediately started picking up speed.

Realizing that she had lost control of the cart, Grandpa grabbed the wheel and jerked it to the right while trying to reach the brake with his foot. The centrifugal force of the turning cart threw my daughter out of the seat and onto the blacktop. The hard landing tore the skin off the top of her left foot.

Still trying to get control of the cart and trying to get out of the downhill steep right turn, Grandpa over-corrected to the left to straighten the cart out. The centrifugal force then threw him out onto the blacktop and he went rolling.

Now, the little golf cart, totally free of human control transformed itself into the airplane it had always wanted to be. At maximum speed it rolled to the edge of the cul-de-sac. Its front tires hit the curb and with a mighty leap it spread its wings and flew up, up, up, and then out, out, out, then down, down, down and stuck itself into the side of a park model mobile home.

The daughter and Grandpa stood looking at the little cart down below them. Damaged was the daughter’s foot. Damaged was Grandpa’s face and broken glasses. Damaged was the little flying golf cart. Damaged was the outside wall of the mobile home. But really damaged was the heirloom china cabinet full of china which was just on the other side of wall of the mobile home.

Grandma and my wife were sitting on the porch sipping lemonade when the daughter and Grandpa limped home covered in makeshift bandages. Grandma said that if Grandpa had been beating a war drum and the daughter had been blowing on a fife, it would have looked like a 1776 war painting of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’.

In conclusion, the residents of the mobile home were away for the week and insurance paid for the hole in their wall. The little golf cart was pulled back to the road and resigned itself to a life on the ground at the golf course. Grandpa and the daughter are scarred but healed. The community association had a meeting a week after the accident and added to the bylaws a rule against children driving golf carts in the park.

As for the china in the cabinet, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put the china back together again.

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