Never Saw Anything Like It

There is a documentary running on HBO titled “Elvis Presley: The Searcher.” There’s not much about The King that I don’t know by now and although there’s really nothing new story-wise here, it does include photographs and live footage that I don’t recall having ever seen.

It also contains brilliant commentary from Tom Petty, who recorded his narration parts just seven months before he died, including this gem: “Imagine what it must have been like to have seen Elvis Presley for the first time with no warning.”

You would have had to be living in the Memphis area around 1953 for that to be the case. It was in his junior year in high school that he restyled his hair, grew sideburns, and started wearing those flashy clothes. He was startling in appearance alone, before he opened up his mouth to sing – and once he did that, he became the most unique kid in Memphis and soon the planet.

So what Petty means is what it must have been like to have seen Elvis performing at a fair or high school and you had never seen a photo of him or heard him before. It had to be the ultimate in a “What the [expletive] is that?!” moment – one that very few people got the chance to experience.

So imagine, just for a moment, what it must have been like to have seen the ocean for the first time. With no warning. Here you are, some cavewoman minding her own business, looking for a bite to eat or a rock to throw at your husband’s head, when you start to hear this faint roar. You walk over some sand and the next thing you know you’re exclaiming, “What the [expletive] is that?!”

The first time I remember seeing the ocean was when I was 6 years old. A friend’s mother had a friend who had a place in Avalon for a week. Seriously, that’s how it went down. It was on 11th Street and we didn’t get down till dusk, but the first thing me and my buddies did was beg our moms to let us run down and see the ocean. An older sister accompanied us and I can still remember how awed I was by the sheer size of it. That, more than anything else about it, blew me away.

But I at least had a “warning” because I had seen photos of it in dentist and doctor offices and had also seen the ocean on TV. Which is a lot different than if you had never had any visual whatsoever of the Big Blue.

Over the years, I have entertained guests at my shore house from all around the country. Many of them had never seen an ocean “in person” in their lives. And you know what most of them do? They drive as close as they can get to the ocean, get out of their cars, and check it out before they come to my pad.

There are two reasons for this. One is that they don’t want to appear rude by running out of your house the second they arrive; and two, they can’t wait another second to see it. It’s that amazing.

So you are going to flip out when I reveal to you what floored me the first time I saw it because I had never seen one before, hence had “no warning.” In fact, you may even find it pathetic.

A miniature golf course. That’s right, a miniature golf course. Bear with me here.

I had seen golf on television. I had seen plenty of photos of golf in various sports magazines. My love for magazines, which I still possess, starts when I’m very young at Nurthern’s Barber Shop. (Where Old Man Nurthern used to hold a mirror to the back of my head and ask me, “How’s that look?” I would always reply, “Terrific!” like I had any notion of what the back of my head was supposed to look like.)

To tell you the truth, at the age of 8, I had never even seen a “real” golf course. I had seen football fields, basketball courts and baseball diamonds in the flesh by that age.

But I didn’t even realize miniature golf existed! There wasn’t a course in Southwest Philly. I had never seen it on television or at the movies. There were never any photos of miniature golf in sports magazines or in the sports section of any newspaper.

So here it was, 6:45 on a Tuesday evening. Beach time was over. So were the barbecued burgers and dogs. It’s that moment that all parents dread. You have to do something with the kids who are stir crazy down the shore and it’s not bedtime yet. What’s a mother to do? You can’t handcuff them and lock ’em up in a bedroom. (Although my older sister tried that once.)

So when Aunt Helen suggested miniature golf, we all screamed out “Yes!” without having any idea what it was. All we heard was the word “golf” and that was enough for us. We were actually going to participate in something that our dads played.

But wait. It gets better. When we get there, we discover that we’re actually going to use a putter just like we had seen in “grown-up” golf. That’s cool. But even more exciting was the fact that this golf course had windmills and moats among other cool stuff. If you shot the ball in the clown’s mouth on Hole 18, you actually won another round. On them!

So while I give you this miniature-golf moment doesn’t actually rank with viewing Michael Jackson performing the “moonwalk” dance steps for the first time, it was exciting to this 8-year-old.

I want the red ball!