Help!
Help!
On the 8th green at midnight 4 teenagers respond to a cry for help
It’s like something out of a Stephen King novel. Four teenage1 kids — me, my older brother Mike, our friend Ande, and Lorraine, a girl who lived just across the street from me, but who I didn’t know very well — having rendezvoused just before midnight on this warm summer night — July 19, 1965 — on the green of the eighth hole at Greenbrook Country Club, in North Caldwell, New Jersey — are nervously awaiting a promised signal.
The moon is five days past full. Shadows from the trees fall on to the edge of the fairway, but there are no shadows on the green except those cast by our adolescent bodies — and of course, the shadow from the flag in the hole.
We wait. Midnight will strike soon. I have in my hand the pocket watch I got for my 10th birthday. It goes tick, tick, tick.
The four of us don’t say much. Basically we’re all amazed that we managed to sneak out our houses and make it to the golf course without getting caught either while leaving our houses or while walking down the empty small-town streets. We’re all worried that somebody might get noticed when we sneak back home. If we do get caught, Ande’s parents might not be too harsh. Mike and I will be in trouble, but it will pass. But Lorraine? Lorraine’s father was very strict. If she gets caught? Let’s not think about it. She’ll have to tell him who she was with and we’ll all catch hell.
We see the headlights of a lone car approaching down Grandview Avenue. The four of us immediately drop to the ground. Please, God, don’t let anybody sees us! The grass on the green is like a woven carpet. It is wet with dew. The car turns right and heads down Greenbrook Avenue. Phew! We get back on our feet. Check the time. How much longer? Did we miss it? Did midnight happen already? Tick, tick, tick.
When the signal finally comes, it’s not what we were expecting. It’s like nothing any of us have ever heard before — a man screaming Help! from somewhere right next to us but somehow oddly distant. Help! he calls again. And again, Help! The four of us look at each other in utter amazement. What are we supposed to do now?
Won’t you please hear my plea?
We’ll get back to the man crying Help! on the golf course nearly sixty years ago in just a second, but can you focus your attention on the here and now, please?
Because in the here and now I am earnestly asking for your help. I need your help, I really do. And you know how good you feel when you help somebody! Why not grab yourself a little dopamine hit right now! It’s easy! Just ‘like’ this post! Or better yet, like it and share it! Easy as that.
Won’t you please hear my plea-ee-ee?2
If you remember a post that you’ve liked in the past it’s easy to go back now and share it! Here’s a handy link to the Sundman figures it out! archive.
Some Greenbrook Country Club memories
I was a caddy there every summer from when I turned 14 until when I went to college — and then again, for a few months, after college, after I got back from Africa, six years after the last time I had looped. (That was trippy.) I have walked that golf course several hundred times. I used to know every tree, every blade of grass on it.
Years before I was a caddy I went sledding there every winter. It was the best place to go sledding in all of North Caldwell. We would start from the edge of the woods atop that steep hill above the 7th fairway, cut across it and ride all they way down the 9th fairway, almost to the clubhouse. Another sledding spot, ‘Suicide Hill,’ led from the edge of the ninth towards 8th green. Only, there was a bridge over the brook at the bottom of the hill, and if you didn’t make it — well, they called it ‘Suicide hill” for a reason. I only tried it once. That was enough.
A 4-minute drone’s eye view of the golf course. It’s kind of gorgeous, actually. Plus, you can see the bridge at the bottom of Suicide Hill on the 9th hole.
The year I was in fifth grade there was a great big snowfall, more than two feet, and my father decided to take the toboggan and go sledding with five of his seven kids. All except Paul, the baby. And me. I couldn’t go because I hadn’t finished writing my stupid book report yet on the stupid Landmark Book biography of Daniel Boone. My father made me stay home to do my stupid homework on the best sledding day of the year, and, what’s even worse, he crashed the toboggan at the steepest part of the hill and broke his leg and Mike got to be the hero, running to call for an ambulance an all that. Thanks a lot, Dad. (By the way that book sucked.)
Alright already. Tell us about the guy ho was calling Help!
I’m sure all readers about a certain age have figured out that the guy calling for help was John Lennon. I forget who had the transistor radio on which we listened to the new Beatles song, Help!, the very first time it was ever played in America, on radio station WABC (or “A-Beatles-C” as they called it) from New York City.
It had been announced a week earlier that the new Beatles song would be played at midnight on July 19, and that’s why we were there. And when we heard it we were astounded — but we were always astounded by what we heard by the Beatles. Every song they did was different than all the others that had come before it. The Beatles did to our young minds what the monolith does to the astronaut at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just when we thought we had some idea where we were and what was going on, they took us to a whole new place, even more challenging than the last one.
The release of a new Beatles song was such a big deal that 12 year old kids would sneak out of their houses at midnight and go to the golf course where transistor radios got a better signal to hear it. Waiting until morning was out of the question. When we heard it, all we could do was look at each other.
I’m glad that Taylor Swift exists because that makes it easier to explain to people who weren’t around then just how big the Beatles were in the 1960’s. If you take Taylor Swift, add in Travis Kelce and the Super Bowl, then add Tik Tok to that combination, and then double that, now you’re starting to get close.
By 1965 the Beatles were already so big that John Lennon was calling for help, and they only got bigger from there.
Help! I need somebody Help! Not just anybody Help! You know I need someone Help!
If John Lennon can admit that he’s in a spot and could use some help, well, I guess I can too.
I gotta tell you it hasn’t been an especially easy 14 months around Casa Sundman since I launched this thing. For a whole bunch of reasons I’m at least 10 months behind schedule on my book projects. They’re all really, really close to being done but they ain’t done yet, and until they are ready my income from book sales is, well, . . . I can’t find the word I’m looking for. The phrase ‘suicide hill’ keeps popping into my head, crowding out everything else.
So, help? If you don’t already subscribe to Sundman figures it out! won’t you give it a shot? It’s easy to unsubscribe if you find it’s not your cup of tea.
And if you’ve been a free subscriber for a while and have enjoyed it, won’t you consider moving up to paid? Again, it’s easy to move back to ‘free’ whenever you like.
Greenbrook on the chopping block?
And now, according to this story which I came across this morning, Greenbrook Country Club is going to be carved up and houses are going to be built on it. 2024 is going to be the last year of the club’s operation.
I didn’t enjoy being a caddy all that much. I didn’t like many of the club members, and those bags got heavy. Especially towards the end of your second 18-hole loop on a hot Saturday. But still, the job offered its pleasures as well. Sure beat flipping burgers.
The farm my family had at 31 Grandview Avenue got taken by eminent domain in that same year, 1965. They build West Essex High School on it. The only other two remaining farms in town were gone by 1970. The woods behind Lorraine’s house that Mike and I used to cut through on our way to Ande’s house were given over to a tacky development about the same time. It’s remarkable that Greenbrook has remained an oasis for as long as it has. I haven’t been in North Caldwell for ages, yet I’m still sad to know that golf course will soon be filled with more tacky McMansions. But I guess, as Mick Jagger said, time waits for no one.
So that’s all I got. Won’t you please, please help me, help me, oh?
I was 12; didn’t turn 13 until that November.
“Won’t you please hear my plea” is a lyric from the song “Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague” from Uncle Meat by (Frank Zappa and) The Mothers of Invention, an album well known to close readers of Acts of the Apostles and or Biodigital.
I caddied there too, but very briefly. I do however remember a sign in the clubhouse admonishing players
“foursomes! Play with your member.”
I never knew exactly how to respond to that. Should I whip it out?
While I wasn’t there, I do remember your dad breaking his leg. So much for the old hands trying to show the young ones how it’s done.
I also remember suicide Hill quite well. Actually, I went down that death trap many times with one notable story to tell.
As per usual, I had been sledding with you and Mike and that was the junction where we were to part company and you would go up Grandview Avenue to go home and I would turn right to go home. It was around desk and we did one last ride down the hill since it was on our way.(meaning suicide, Hill.)
You guys left and I decided that I would give it one more go. The hill, however, was extremely icy and I was having difficulty caring my sled straight up and maintaining any balance. At a given point I fell straight backwards striking my head rather hard and getting knocked out. That was the first time that it ever happened to me. I apparently slid down the hill a little bit, and when I woke up, I remember that it was dark, I could see the stars. Of course I wasn’t stupid, I didn’t tell my parents, just made up some bullshit about why I was late.
I have always felt that all this was personally your fault. I am open to being compensated for your lack of support. Call me and we can talk numbers.
Good one.