Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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I started playing golf some time in the early 1960s at the Marysville Golf Course. I played my last game of golf on that same course, maybe four or five years later.
So why was my golfing career so short? It was because I was a pretty ho-hum golfer. Oh, I wasn’t terrible. I played in a league every Thursday, and on a skill level, I think I was somewhere in the middle.
I don’t think I ever met anyone who enjoyed playing golf more than one of my dad’s MHS classmates, Charles “Chid” Mills. He and Dwight Scott ran the Scotts seed company as a team, for years. During the summers, the two of them spent many hours together on the golf course.
As much as he loved the game of golf, Chid was actually not very good at it, but that never affected his enjoyment of the game. I think he probably figured that most of the golfers on the Marysville course were a lot like him. So he didn’t care if they saw him hooking and slicing his way from hole to hole.
I know of only one time when Chid became self-conscious about his golfing prowess. It was some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s, when Scotts was supplying grass seed for a beautiful private golf course in Pennsylvania. It was owned by Charles Schwab, one of the world’s leading industrialists and president of Bethlehem Steel Co.
Mr. Schwab was an avid golfer, and he built a beautiful course on his estate in Pennsylvania. He could walk out his front door and play golf whenever he wanted. And that’s what he did.
Mr. Schwab built his golf course using Scott’s grass seed, and he relied a lot on the company’s expertise to maintain it. He asked the company to send a representative to answer some questions about maintenance of the course. So Chid got on a train and headed for Pennsylvania.
The two men sat together with the golf course greenskeeper as Chid answered their questions. When the meeting ended, Mr. Schwab headed for the first tee, and he invited Chid to play a round of golf with him.
That invitation caught Chid off guard, and for the first time, he was wary of his golfing ability. He had never before played with someone like Charles Schwab. I mean, anyone who surrounds his home with a private golf course has got to be a pretty good golfer.
So Chid feigned an excuse. He said he had to catch a train to get back to Marysville. He really wanted to play, but for the first time in his life, he was self-conscious about his game. He did, however, accompany Mr. Schwab to the first tee to watch him start his game.
Mr. Schwab placed a ball on a tee and took a few warm-up swings with his driver. Chid watched as he stepped up to address he ball. His backswing looked good, but on the downswing, the club head didn’t hit the ball squarely. It topped the ball, sending it whistling through the tall grass, maybe 30 yards deep into the right rough.
When Chid saw that, his heart sank. He had given up a chance to play golf with Charles Schwab. And to make it even worse, after seeing that tee shot, Chid was sure he could have beaten him.
Over the years I heard Chid tell that story several times. If he could have had one “do-over” in his life, I think he would have played golf that day with Charles Schwab.