Grapes

“Grapes?”
Chuck Martin

“What ya figuring on planting on these ten acres, Vic?” I asked as he drove me around his families forty-acre ranch. There are two homes, one above the other, built on a hill with a beautiful view of the valley. One house is for Vic and his wife Nina and, one for his daughter and son-in-law. They have a lot of different varieties of fruit trees, a pond, and some horses. He was showing me ten acres of bottom land on the edge of the property. Vic’s was in his eighties then and, like me, a little hard of hearing.

“We’re thinkin’ about grapes,” he answered as we drove in his electric golf cart to the edge of a small pond.

“A friend a mine, in the grape business for forty years, says there’s too many people planting grapes. He says one a these days the bottom’s goin’ ta fall out and growers will be left holdin’ the bag,” I informed Vic.

“How many geese ya see over across the pond?” he asked.

“Four.”

“Should be five.”

“It seems like golf would be the thing to put in,” I said. “Pretty popular around here.”
Vic pointed, “There’s the other one. That makes five.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“We miss counted, or he was under that bank over there.”

“No, I mean about the golf!”

“Been tryin’ to figger out how to get the moss out of this pond,” Vic stated off handedly.
An idea flashed through my mind, “You could do it with just one putting green, with eighteen holes, and different colored and numbered flags.”

“I don’t care how many holes you drilled it wouldn’t drain the pond to get to the moss!” Vic stated.

“No, I mean golf. You could have eighteen driving greens, all lined up in a circle, and each ending on the one putting green. You could tee off and when you reach the putting green find your particular hole to shoot. It’s different. It’s brilliant, and you could make a lot of money. What ya think?”

Vic lifted his straw cowboy hat, scratched his bald head and asked, “About the moss?”

“No,” I stated impatiently, “the ten acre golf course.”

“Grapes, we’re plantin’ grapes.”

“Oh,” I muttered.