The Story

“Uncle Phil” calls and says “Hey Bart! The boys are all out of school and Di and I are going to hang it up with the driving range. We want to give you the first crack at it. The catch is that ya gotta move it cause we wanna keep the land.”

Just so happens that Uncle Tom owned 120+ acres right next door to the two nine hole tracks in town.  “Uncle Tom, are you willing to part with 10 acres for a driving range?” “You bet!” After careful deliberation with Dad and the Bank, the papers were signed and on we went. 

So I called up an equipment rental place out of one of the neighboring “Big Cities.”  “Hey what do you have to have to get a bulldozer?” Guy on the other line in a deep “trucker” voice says…”you got a drivers license?” I say “Yup” he says, “Where you want it?”  About a week later the guy shows up with this thing. Pulls it off his truck, I sign the papers and he says “see ya next week.” I go, “WAIT A MINUTE! Is there some kinda crash course for this thing or what?!” He looks at me, as only a seasoned veteran can and says, “Push that to go left, push that to go right, this makes your blade go up and down, this makes you go “frontwards” and backwards……if you mess up, push the dirt back where ya got it, see ya next Thursday.”

So here I am, 24 year old kid, pushin dirt all over the place. I’m on it sun up to sun down Thursday-Sunday and my buddy, that now owns the golf course I grew up on, comes over during the week to help out.  (I think I owe him my first born son.) See, at that point I was still working full time at my dad's factory and am trying to get the range built at the same time. People say, “I’ll never forget where I was on 9/11.” I was building a driving range.

After about the third night….it’s pitch black out, I’ve got the lights on and this place isn’t looking like much of anything. I stop the “dozer,” (that’s what the pros call it) turn off the lights and start to PRAY! “Ok Big Guy, I’ve got no idea what I’m doing here….I’ll drive the thing, you just show me where to put the dirt.” After a week of bulldozing, months of smoothing, trenching (sprinklers) and seeding we’ve got ourselves a homemade driving range right smack dab between two beef farms in the Prison Capitol of the US, Ionia Michigan!

And “There’s even a car out there you can hit at, bub!”