Evans “Buddy” King
I read several months ago that the Meadows Golf Course and Swim Club had been sold and that the purchaser did not intend to continue the use of those beautiful parcels of land as a golf course.
One of the problems with writing a column from a distance is that the writer doesn’t always know local current events, but I am assuming that there will be no reprieve this time, that the bulldozers will roll and that those pastoral rolling hills will be leveled in the name of progress and profit.
The desecration of the golf course—which will always be known as Round Meadow Country Club to me and many others—doesn’t rank up there with the reaction there would be to building a housing development on the hallowed ground of Gettysburg.
And I am one who believes in balancing preservation with the need for progress. You can’t hold on forever to things just because of the memories. But as an old school Virginian, I usually come down on the side of more hillsides and rolling valleys and fewer developments.
So, while not the same as would be building hotels on the beaches at Normandy, let me briefly lament the passing of RMCC.
People who have read my pieces in the past may remember a tongue in cheek column I wrote about Round Meadow a couple of years ago. That piece emphasized how my father and I were at odds over my refusal to “take advantage” of the opportunities presented by RMCC when I was growing up in Christiansburg in the 60s.
How I did not want to hang out there with creatures known as Bobcats (the Radford High variety) who made up the vast majority of the club, or so it seemed to me.
I was playing football and baseball against those guys, and I had no desire to be friends with them. I think in more recent times, students from different schools get to know each other and become friends, often playing on offseason “traveling squads” as teammates.
In my day, the only packs we ran in were from our own school and each town had one—and only one—school. The “R” on the Radford High letter jacket might as well have stood for Russia for all I cared about being friends with the guys wearing those jackets.
Notwithstanding, my disdain for RMCC for my own uses, I like to remember what it meant to my father and his friends. The Club was established sometime in the mid 50s I believe, around the time I was born.
It was formed as a non-profit by people in the community and was not an elitist club as people often think of when they hear “country club.”
RMCC was, as I am sure was true of many similar clubs that sprang up around the country in the 50’s, a symbol of post World War II success and prosperity.
For many Americans, this was the first taste of the “good life.” Many if not most original members of RMCC, such as my Dad, had grown up poor through the Great Depression and had fought a war that saved the world from tyranny and oppression.
They had known little free time in their lives, growing up working on farms, going to school for a better life, working after school jobs to help support their families, taking jobs as young adults and then going off to war.
No frills. Who should begrudge them the pleasure of a pastoral place to play golf and relax with their friends, with a “cement pond“ (thanks to Jethro from the Beverly Hills) for their kids (the baby boomers, another post-war luxury) to swim in? RMCC was a form of celebration—life could actually be enjoyed!
Our parents had learned to swim, if at all, in cow ponds or lakes with quicksand bottoms. Golf was mainly something played by the super rich in Florida or California.
But RMCC was more a club for the masses—a place for working families. My Dad exemplified this by defying the image of the typical country clubber —wearing long white socks with ugly Bermuda shorts and chewing tobacco on the course. Farm kid turned golfer.
So my fondest memories of RMCC are those I enjoyed vicariously through my Dad. For roughly 40 years, he played up and down the hills of RMCC, much of that time walking, not riding, the original nine holes.
Most of his well-earned spare time during his working life (of which there was not nearly enough), as well as much of his retirement, was spent with his buddies on those nine holes—the “Ray’s”—Lupold, Lester and Dyer (a Radforder of all things), the Edwards brothers, Charlie and Hugh, Dr. Grub and the indomitable Reginald Roscoe “Railroad” Rose, manager of Christiansburg’s Roses Five and Ten (the Toys R Us of its day and a place that held a special place in the hearts of Christiansburg kids of my generation).
In his early 80s, my Dad was still playing in a regular foursome made up of these guys, all of whom were within a year or so of being the same age, my Dad being the youngest by a few months and quite a bit more aggressive than the others with his golf swing.
He regularly outdrove the others by 10-20 yards, and every time he did so, his great friend Ray Lupold would say, “that’s what youth will do for you.” I still smile when I think of it.
I have many great memories of that beautiful meadow. For instance: my Dad playing 45 holes one Memorial Day (walking the same nine holes five times), playing a round with my Dad and his brother Cline when they were in their 80’s, Tim Collins (unquestionably the greatest golfer ever produced by RMCC) shooting a course record 59 and making a hole-in-one on a par four, my cousin Joe falling into an icy creek a few days before Christmas when he tried to show off his state championship long-jumping skills to my Dad when they were running through a sleet storm to get off the course, the Swain’s—Robert and Bobby—one of RMCC’s great father-son teams and the original clubhouse at the bottom of the valley where John made the world’s best hamburgers.
I am obviously a sentimentalist. I like to tell my friends who don’t share my fondness for remembrances my favorite Virginian joke.
It goes like this: how many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is 100. One to change the light bulb and the other 99 to have a party and talk about how good the old light bulb used to be. So if I ever happen (which would probably only be at gunpoint) to see whatever development grows out of that beautiful “round meadow,” forgive me if I think about how good it used to be.
Evans “Buddy” King grew up in Christiansburg and graduated from CHS in 1971. He lives in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where he practices law with the firm of Steptoe and Johnson PLLC. He can be reached at Evans.King@steptoe-johnson.com.