Herban Sprawl

07/05/09

I promised a friend I would date these things, but doggone it, I always forget. Anyway, it is Wimbleton time, and Big Kitty has had the tournaments on. He mutes the t.v. and follows in his own fashion.

I know nothing about tennis. I had a unit of it in high school p.e., but I never did catch on to the scoring or any of that. I earned my gentlewoman’s C in gym class, and my mother was relieved. (My sister and I were notably non-athletic.) Watching the Cubs is another matter, but that’s a story for another day.

As I watched Serena examining her trophy yesterday, I thought what a nice tea tray it would make! I guess that makes me a philistine, but all those silver trophies wind up in someone’s antique store, and they are mostly pretty useless pieces. You’d think they’d at least award a silver teapot, or something she could actually use.

We have public tennis courts in the Star City, and every now and then I see people on the one near our house. They aren’t all dressed up in the proper tennis togs; they are just out there having some fun. It isn’t like the women who, on their way home from The Club would stop by my friend’s nursery to browse and bitch about our selection and prices. (Of course, they would gladly plunk down 1/3 again as much for the same stock at the new nursery on their side of town, just so they could say they bought it at…) Here they would be, in their tennis clothes. Not a speck of dirt on that outfit, and no sweat stains on their color-coordinated visors. Did they really play? I often wondered, as I sweated my way around the nursery, dragging hoses.

Recently, I learned The Club and another country club are in talks about merging. It would seem that if they combine memberships, they’d have a collective of about 1000 members. Not too many people in terms of their bottom line. I guess that’s what happens when you exclusive yourself out of the neighborhood!

This amuses me greatly as I really have no use for those institutions. In fact, last week I had a huge guffaw when I read an invitation Big Kitty and I got to come tour The Club at an open house. Mind you, his mother is a member. And recently, in an effort to help her with her food and drink minimum, we had brunch there. The food was cold as ice and all of it had been frozen. Nothing homemade except the omelets. The pancakes were made from food service batter in cartons.

So what is their problem? In an economic downturn, the exclusivity they once enjoyed is now no longer meeting their needs. Does this mean that if an electrician and a retired teacher show up that they will offer us a membership? I have my doubts, but if they are also in talks to merge two country clubs, then perhaps they are having to reconsider their membership policies.

Ironic, when you think of it. One club was begun by the town Jewish golfers because The Club wouldn’t admit Jews. Now the two need each other to survive? Oy.

My mother-in-law can ill afford that damned membership, but she hangs onto it like some kind of badge of honor. She is still living in the day when being admitted was a sign of affluence. Hell, they needed that money, so who was snowing whom? When she and her late husband joined, The Club was still subsidized by corporate money. In those days, law firms, the railroad and other large entities paid for their upper echelon employees to belong to the country club, and junior partners were sponsored by senior partners. It was so they could network and do business on the golf course.

Nowadays, the corporate perk of country club membership has gone the way of knickers and argyles. Only a certain elitist segment of the Star City’s population sees it as part of their lifestyle. You don’t see young families joining the country club because they don’t run big fitness programs with nursery care for the stay at home mommies. Instead, they join mega churches that have those offerings in their ‘family life’ centers.

In many ways, the country club is a tradition among the upper classes that is no longer important. There are all kinds of golf courses around here, and my mother-in-law’s insistence that The Club’s is the best is heartily disputed by my golfing acquaintances. As one guy told me, each course around here offers something a little different, and he’d rather pay a daily greens fee and have the variety. Says it keeps his game sharp and he doesn’t have the overhead of “those abominable food and drink minimums.”

So, Wimbleton, because of being a fixture on the tennis scene, continues with its traditions. The Club, because of it’s antiquated membership system, is about to become extinct. Both instances are win-win in my book.