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The Citizen, 1991-07-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1991. PAGE 5. Golf isn't a game, it's an obsession Golf is a good walk ruined. Mark Twain Ah, golf. That strange game in which men and women clad in eerily hued synthetic fibres criss cross large swatches of closely cropped meadows swatting tiny white balls towards tiny black holes. I’ve never had much good to say about golf. Viewed on the boob tube or from a passing car it has always seemed a patently silly way to waste one's time. But last Wednesday I did something totally foreign to my nature: I actually investigated what I was writing about. I played my first game of golf. And I did it in style. I persuaded Lome Rubenstein to squire me around the Glen Abbey Golf Course near Toronto. Lome Rubenstein is the author of two books on golf and an ace player in his own right. Glen Abbey is a professional-designed golfers dream course, complete with flawless greens trimmed to a centimetre high brushcut, trout- filled creeks and browsing deer that The International Scene Road to capitalism not easy BY RAYMOND CANON One of the most fascinating aspects of life in Europe this year is the efforts being made to transfer former Marxist economies of the eastern part of the continent into something approaching a workable capitalist one. For places such as Rumania, Bulgaria and even Albania that has hardly got started and it appears that few people have any idea how to go about doing this. In the ones closer to the centre, such as Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the eastern party of Germany, progress is much more noticeable but one thing is certain - there are a great deal of agonizing adjustments being made and the effect on the rate of unemployment is nothing short of catastrophic. By all rights the eastern Germans should have had by far the easiest task. They were completely absorbed by their wealthy and powerful west German cousins and, while it was expected that there would be some adjustment problems, nobody was quite prepared for what is taking place. East Germany used to be the show-piece of Communism but it was apparently all done with smoke and mirrors since there is hardly a firm in that part of the country which can compete on anything approaching even terms with the West. Not only that but they, too, have to compete with the efficient Oriental producers and Canadians can, among others, tell them what it is like to do that. Company after company in Germany is bankrupt, the unemployment rolls are increasing rapidly and it will take much longer than expected to bring cast Germany industry to the point where it can compete effectively. West Germany has already had its Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle); it is obviously going to take another in the 1990's. This brings us to another problem. Under communism, nobody, at least theoretically, was out of work. Without paying too much materialize ar tne eagb or me fairway to scrutinize your chip shots. I teed off on the Versailles of Canadian golf links with the dean of Canadian golf writers telling me which club to use — not a bad introduction. I only wish I'd managed to rise to the auspiciousness of the occasion. I was horrible. Good golfers squint into the distance, select the correct club then loft long true shots that arc through the heavens with the majesty and precision of a well- lobbed artillery shell. Mediocre golfers go through the same motions, but hack half­ heated squibs that wobble and slice off in all directions. I was worse than that. My shots dribbled and crawled or went looping up in the air like woozy roman candles. Sometimes I swung mightily and missed the ball entirely. Twice, I left the ball entombed prematurely under a welter of sod. By my fifth pathetic shot I had learned the primary rule of the sport: Golf Is Hard. I suggest that the second rule of golf is that Twain Was Wrong. Golf is not a good walk ruined, it's a good walk, with the added pleasure of verdant environs, amiable company of your choosing and the chance to vent your spleen by whaling the bejeepers out of a golf ball. Golf is much more than a mere walk. It's a magical escape from the hideous web of concrete, steel and electrons we live in. It is attention to the true cost of social welfare programs, Marxist governments provided cradle-to-grave benefits. In order to protect their citizens from the downside of capitalism, which is, as I have indicated, very much in evidence, governments have tried to set up some safety nets. Poland for example, started out by giving unemployed citizens 70 per cent of their salary for three months, 50 per cent of the next six and 40 per cent from then on. Those that have never worked would be paid minimum wage while those leaving school would receive twice that. All that is not only costly but the Polish government was chagrined to discover that hordes of housewives and black-marketeers quickly got into line and only 14 per cent of those who registered were those who had actually lost their job because of a factory closing. Almost half of those registered are school leavers, many of whom have managed to find part-time jobs in Poland's thriving retail economy. Needless to say, the government is now in the process of tightening up. Hungary has tried a new ploy. The government offered loans to people who wanted to set up a small business and could Letter 1° the editor Seconds change lives THE EDITOR, In seconds on a road, lives were changed forever. My son lost his most cherished friend - Pepe Klaus. As a parent, I watched Dan struggle with his great loss and I wanted to take all his pains unto myself but I stood helplessly by. But one never struggles alone. Teenagers from this area came to our house - tears of remorse and pain on their faces as they held each other - each one trying desperately to deal with what had happened to them. And in their struggling they no longer were teenagers - but young men and women dealing with life. As they grouped on my lawn, I went to lay down to get some rest, voices coming through my bedroom window. Melissa came exercise without sweat; hunting without bloodletting; adventure without a risk. There is, alas, a downside. Bad as I was, I managed to glimpse the force that drives so many people to play the game. That force is masochism. Golfers play to suffer. As Arnold Daly said: "Golf is like a love affair. If you take it seriously, it's no fun' if you do make it seriously, it breaks your heart." Perhaps I'm in the only happy stage a golfer ever reaches - so inept that I can still laugh off my bad shots. So green that I can't imagine living long enough to break 100, much less 80. Mind you, I have already selected my golf mentor. Lome Rubenstein? Nah, he's 'way to good. I worship before the sacred tee of Mister Brent Paladino of Kensington, Connecticut. Mister Paladino, is also a bit of a novice. Like me, he's ... somewhat weak on the long drives but 10 feel from the pin he putts like an Exocet missile. And he's working on that drive. He hits 300 balls, day in, day out. His golf prowess has already landed him an appearance on the David Letterman show. Last year, he conducted a clinic at the Canon Greater Hartford Open. Some might consider Mister Paladino overly obsessive about the game. In restaurants he covers his napkins with doodles of fairways and bunkers. He once cried out in his sleep "Hey Dad, I'm stuck in a sandtrap." Brent Paladino is four years old. demonstrate that they were unable to find work elsewhere. The loan was equal to about Can$ $6,500 with no interest to be paid for four years. In theory a nice thought but in reality people started quitting their jobs in droves or else got themselves fired so that they could take advantage of it. The offer had to be dropped. Trying to list the problems being encountered by the various nations of Eastern Europe would take books, not just a few paragraphs, and what I have done is indicate just the nature and seriousness of the situation. In one way perhaps the most disillusioned arc the East Germans who expected so much with reunification and have discovered that the road back to capitalism is not an easy one even if you have a wealthy and generous relative. Perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, I can hazard the guess that the Hungarians have had the easiest road to follow since, at the time of the collapse of communism in Europe, they were furthest along the road. The irony of all this is that these countries look great compared to what is going on in the Soviet Union but that is another story and a long one at that. in to shut the window but I slopped her. They were laughing - laughing of memories shared with Pepe. Their laughter was healing them from the deep hurt they were all experiencing - together as friends. Slowly after hugs and spent concerns, they left. All having reached out to help one another. People are always down on our young people but if you could have witnessed what this family has, one could testify to the love, concern and responsibility these young men and women do have. I cannot truly express my gratitude to Dan's friends and schoolmates but from the bottom of my heart - Thank You. Sharon E. Blake Brussels. Letter from the editor How did we survive? BY KEITH ROULSTON There's a commercial on the radio these days that kind of neatly sums up how far we've come in creature comforts these days - and how much we take them for granted. In this commercial a husband and wife arc discussing (loudly) the fact she seems to be dragging her feel getting ready to go visit friends. She admits she doesn't want to go visit their best friends because it’s hot and the friends don’t want to have air conditioning in their home. They finally decide to invite the friends over to their air- conditioned home instead and give them the address of their air conditioning contractor. Hmmm! Aside from wondering how long I'd be friends with a couple who didn't want to come to my house and gave me the name of an air conditioner contractor, I couldn't help remembering that when I was growing up in the nol-too-dislant past, we just never thought about air-conditioning. Yet in last week's heat wave, people who worked in buildings that weren't air- conditioned were looked on with the same pity as if they'd announced they had to use a privy out back instead of indoor plumbing. One day, driving in my air- conditioned vehicle, thinking of my un-air- conditioned office awaiting me, I looked out the window and saw some farmers slugging hay bales on a wagon and somehow instantly felt instantly cooler. Nobody has experienced heat until they have stacked bails on a day when the temperature is over 90 and the humidity near liquid air. I know. I spent my summers as a teenager going from one farm to another bringing in hay. Well, maybe there’s one experience even hotter: stacking bales in a hay mow just inches under a steel roof with not a whiff of fresh air. But back in the 1950s and 1960s, most of us in this part of the country didn't know what we were missing when it came to the cold comfort of air-conditioning. About the coolest I remember was when I was little and the ice man used to call to drop off ice for the ice box (we didn't have the luxury of a refrigerator until later). We used to crawl up in the back of the truck and enjoy the cool and hint around until we were given chips of ice off the big blocks. The only store that was cool was one with a big freezer for storing meat. There weren't many offices around in those days but people who worked in them knew they didn't have any alternative but to sweat. Factories were just plain unbearable but work went on. There's no doubt things are probably a lot more efficient in these air-conditioned days. People who can work in a cool environment probably get more done than people a couple of decades ago whose one answer to a heal wave was to slow all activity to a snail's pace. I have no argument with people being comfortable and productive but it would be nice at least if people realized just how privileged we are in our artificial environment. We have a luxury unknown even a decade or two ago. We have air­ conditioners for our two-month summer when hundreds of millions of people in hot countries do without even though they could use it 12 months a year. We were properly appreciative the first year or two we got air conditioning but our memories are short and now most of us take ii for granted. We've got it so good it would be nice if we at least acknowledged how fortunate we are.