Tag Archives: Golf

Down by the River: Not your Great-Granny’s Ireland

Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River opens ominously with a road in a verdant and decaying rural Ireland. “The road is silent, somnolent yet with a speech of its own, speaking back to them, father and child, through trappings of sun and fretted verdure, speaking of old mutinies and a fresh crime mounting in the blood.” Hey, wait one hot second, Gladiola! Yes, dear reader. This is all wrong. My great-grandmother was born in Ireland, and I went there last year on a golf trip. Where are the wee folk and the pints of Guinness? The songs about unicorns? My apologies, dear reader, but this is a story by Edna O’Brien. She’s Ireland’s William Faulkner. Or, perhaps better put, William Faulkner is America’s Edna O’Brien. She writes about Ireland in all its melancholy and sordidness, so fear and superstition appear on every page – song too, but no wee folk; no unicorns.

Mary (that’s a loaded name in a predominantly Catholic country) is 14 years old. Her father is James. He loves horses, but he’s a cruel man who believes in “might before right.” He’s been raping Mary for quite some time now, and she is desperate to get away from him. She and her sister, Elizabeth (another loaded name), visit a remote shrine and pray for their father to be cured of his “epilepsy”. They speak in code, because the truth is too awful to say, even to God.

There’s another truth too awful to say: birth can be a brutally violent act. Mary witnesses this when her father helps a mare give birth. “Mare and foal, though of the same flesh, are warring, two warring things, not like a mother and its young, each fighting the other, except that the foal is stronger, her energy and her thrusting prodigal now.” Soon after, Mary becomes pregnant. When James finds out, he attacks her with a broom stick trying to cause a miscarriage. He was kinder to the horse and foal.

This is Ireland in the 1990s. Abortion is illegal. Bishops control the medical profession, and society decries the “abortion holocaust” taking place in England. Mary concludes suicide is her only option. Betty, an older cousin, rescues Mary from the river and figures out her secret. She helps Mary get to England, but a neighbor discovers the plan and alerts the authorities. Betty and Mary are brought back to Ireland before the abortion occurs.

Now the bishops and lawyers get involved. Mary becomes public property, and the public presumes to know what is best for the born and unborn. But the public only knows Mary as the “Magdalene” so how could they know best.

Time is relentless, and a decision must be made. But who gets to make it. Everyone demands to be heard, but whose voice should be heard? It’s telling we don’t hear Mary’s voice until the end. It’s beautiful.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

The Club

I was at the club when a golf ball shaped minister said
give him a second chance.  Hear what he has to say.
He makes more sense now that he's a CPA.

Then a putting preacher proclaimed the good news:
he went to Wharton and got an MBA.
Hearing that, I dropped to my knees and prayed.

And Jesus put aside peace in the Middle East
to sanctify the deductions I should take.
The truth depends, he chanted like a Gregorian,
on how much the Emperor thinks you make.

For you must render unto Caesar what is his
but only confess what he already knows
then set up a charity in the Caymans
and watch as your blessings grow.

I invited him for golf and a Bloody Mary or two.
But isn't your club anti-Semitic, he asked.
Jesus Christ, I laughed, you're not a Jew.

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief

The Moral Universe

When I hear downtrodden people complaining about how they’ve been denied justice, I feel their pain. But how does one comfort people who have been cruelly denied rights and dignity? By quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, of course. So I counsel these desperate people to relax, because the “arc of the moral universe is long but it tends toward justice.”

Typically this just makes them angrier. So I assure them God is on their side, and someday he will help them. Or maybe He’ll help their children. Or their grandchildren. They just need to be patient. And then I walk away as quickly as I can.

Over the years, I wondered whether I was being genuine with these pathetic folks. Is there really a moral universe? Does it truly bend toward justice? Is God paying attention? Finally I can emphatically say YES to all three questions.

Every Sunday morning for forty years I golfed with my cousin. He was always better than me, and he would frequently bet that I wouldn’t sink a putt or chip out of a bunker. I ended up owing him a lot of money. So I wondered, where is God? Why won’t He save me from this suffering? Finally He did.

Six months ago my cousin had a massive stroke. He can no longer golf. Or talk. Or feed himself without assistance. And I am now free at last, free at last, on the golf course. So take heart, oppressed people. The universe is moral, and eventually God will answer your prayers.

Father Orifice (pronounced Oree-fee-chee), Chaplain of Pungent Sound Technical College of Technology