#TBT. Here’s a post that ran just over 5 years ago on June 20, 2011.
On Saturday, President Obama did something that I did 33 years ago: He spent an afternoon on a golf course with John Boehner. On July 22, 1978, I put in 4-5 hours as a personal assistant / pack mule (caddy) for the current Speaker of the House when he was just a 20-something.
I know this because I am a counter. I’m not a Rainman-instantly-count-a-dropped-box-of-toothpicks counter. But I count things.
I know that I have been on 56 TV shows; seen major league baseball games in 41 parks; and have performed 3,074 stand-up comedy shows on 475 stages, in 296 cities in 42 states – including all of the places named in The Steve Miller Band’s “Rock ‘n Me” and Sade’s “Smooth Operator” songs.
In my various “character building” careers, I made $510.72 as a paper boy, $439.89 slinging frozen yogurt, and $641.60 as a caddy. The other day I came across my caddy records and noticed that Mr. Boehner paid me $5 for the 18-hole round – which included a 50 cent tip. In his defense, that tip was fairly common. I blame the Carter Malaise. That or my inability to find lost balls. Adjusted for inflation, that $5 is like getting $18 today.
Even though John Boehner was just a plastics salesman at the time and years away from politics, I always remembered I had caddied for him. Probably because I was just out of 8th grade and with a little imagination, his name could be pronounced “Boner”. Who knows, maybe I let that slip and that is why I got the fin.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to continue preparing my treatise on the lawns I cut from 1979-1984.
Here is a page of the actual ledger from which that above image was taken:
