People around here are goofy over golf. With more than a dozen public and six private courses in the county, the locals have more than their share of opportunities to hit the links.
Because we know you love the game, each spring we publish our Golf Guide. The 2008 edition can be found inside today’s Daily Times. It features green fees, contact information and more about the county’s courses. In addition, the guide features stories and information about the local world of golf – including a feature on Noblesville’s sensational sisters, Ashley and Amber Prange, and their professional careers.
Golf is one game I’ve never taken a shine to. That puts me in the minority around here.
With the cost of green fees and equipment, I’ve never been able to afford to work at the game. As a result, I suck. If I weren’t so horrible at it, I’m sure I’d be able to work it into my budget. The simple fact is, I have a habit of trying to avoid public humiliation.
My parents bought me a very inexpensive set of starter clubs when I was a teen. My friends and I occasionally liked to knock around a 3-par course in Kokomo, and I’m sure my parents felt taking up golf would be good for me.
With those clubs I did try to learn the game. But, as I mentioned before, I sucked.
While I’ve never been a star athlete, I have always been able to be at least competitive and not look like a complete dork while playing most sports. This fueled my passion, and I continued to work on my skills.
Golf offered no hope. It gave me only frustration. The clubs got pushed to the back of the closet, where they’ve remained for the most part. I’ve played in various charity tournaments over the years. This only reinforced my fear of the game. Something about teeing off and whiffing in front of a bunch of strangers makes me know I’ve made the right decision.
Yet I know my shunning of golf is my loss. I would love to take an afternoon and play a round with the guys while drinking a few cold beers. Lot’s of business gets done on golf courses around here. Few of my sources would care to meet me on Conner Courts for a game of one-on-one.
I’m sure local groundskeepers are thrilled that I don’t spend the occasional afternoon chewing up their fairways. And those with houses near courses probably have lower insurance rates thanks to my foregoing those fairways.
Besides, that leaves more room for all of you. Looking to find a place to tee off? Check out our 2008 Golf Guide. Good luck on the links, and remember to replace your divits.

Monday’s news that Donnie Walsh would step down as president of the Indiana Pacers at the end of the season didn’t come as a surprise. He had said all along this — his 24th year with the team — would be his last. In recent months it became clear he would stick to that promise.

That didn’t soften the blow any. I just hate to see him go out like this.

I’ve been a Pacers fan my entire life. I remember well life before Walsh. A handful of Pacers games would be broadcast each season. Now nearly every game is on TV. Ugly curtains at Market Square Arena use to hide the fact that half the arena was empty. Under his stewardship, sellouts became the norm and the team built the sparkling gem that is Conseco Fieldhouse.

Like the other three ABA teams absorbed by the NBA, the Pacers seemed to be fighting an uphill battle in their early days in The League. Under Walsh’s leadership, they became perennial contenders. In fact, he built this team into a championship caliber organization not once, but twice. First came the Reggie, Rik, Mark and Davises era. After that team grew old and its parts moved on or retired, he built the franchise again with the Reggie, JO, Artest era.

Then came the brawl. Nothing has been the same since.

One of the league’s marquee franchises is now in ruins. The fans hate this group of players, and refuse to support the team. The Pacers have the lowest attendance in the league. The franchise is saddled with unwieldy contracts that will have them in salary cap hell for the foreseeable future. Much of this is the result of the handiwork of one of my playing idols, Larry Bird. Much of it is the result of the Curse of the Cup — that damn beverage that landed on Ron Artest’s chest and changed the team’s fortunes.

While Walsh must bear some of the responsibility for picking up and holding on too long to a cast of malcontents and injury-prone trouble makers, it is sad that this is how his time here will end. He deserved to go out on top.

The theory is he’ll be running the Knicks next year. Yet another kick in the gut to Pacers fans. This would be akin to Bill Polian leaving the Colts to run the Patriots. I just can’t believe it is happening like this. I’ve long respected and admired Donnie. I thank him for what he did for the Pacers. I wish him the best. But if he should end up in New York, well, I hope he has as much success as Isiah Thomas has had there.

I’ve had many people question my heritage in recent days. From acquaintances to in-laws to longtime friends, several people have told me that I am not white trash.

Much of this conversation stemmed from my column last week in which I declared myself a White Trash American. I’ve never been ashamed of my roots, and discuss my low rent background openly and freely.

Still, people see me today wearing a tie and conjugating my verbs properly and don’t believe I could have come from the trailer parks of Kokomo. See, that’s a mistake many people make. They believe all White Trash Americans are slack-jawed morons. One must be careful when making assumptions about an entire group of people.

Being white trash doesn’t mean you are stupid. Generally it means you haven’t caught a lot of breaks in life, and in many cases, you just don’t know any better. White trash kids have no control over the fact they were born into poor families. As such, they often don’t get the same educational or cultural opportunities as those born into wealthier families. As a result, they grow up in a world with limited learning and earning potential, and live their entire life in poverty. They have children, and the cycle continues.

I was the first person in my entire family to go to college. That doesn’t mean the rest of my family was dumb. It means I had good grades, caught some breaks and got opportunities people I grew up with did not.

But never mistake the fact that I am white trash. Just a couple examples from my childhood.

My dad bought an old used Jeep when I was a teenager. It didn’t have a canvas top with it. So rather than spend the money on one, he built his own – out of plywood. So as a freshman in high school, I would be dropped off at school each morning in a red Jeep with a big, black, square wooden top on it. In my mind, it was humiliating. In my dad’s mind, he was saving money he could use to buy his seven children food.

My dad was a plumber, who fancied himself a funny guy. Our mailbox was cemented into an old toilet bowl. A wooden sign was fashioned onto the mailbox post that read “junk mail” and had an arrow pointing down to the bowl. To my dad, it was witty. To me, it meant I couldn’t bring anyone from school home to my house. I’ve got hundreds of these types of examples.

People have told me that at least I was able to leave my past behind thanks to my education. Well, as the saying goes, you can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the boy. Besides, the boy would take his trailer with him and move it to a new trailer park.

I’ve not exactly left my white trash ways behind, you see. Many times during my adult life, I’ve had more than one car. Of course only one worked at a time. When a part from one breaks, you take a spare from another, essentially creating a “frankencar.” Those cars have had their share of clothes hanger antennas, too. The rehearsal dinner for my first marriage was held at Ponderosa. I use to never throw away socks. I would sew the toes and heals and keep the same pair for decades. Once again, I’ve got hundreds of examples.

My current – and last – wife, Michelle, is responsible for making me look shinier than I am. This Tuesday we will have been married eight years. She has civilized me.

Michelle is from the exact opposite end of the social ladder than me. Her people have class and sophistication. They write thank you letters anytime someone gives them anything. They have cocktail parties with hors d’oeuvres, and serve beer in glasses. Her family resembles a Norman Rockwell painting, whereas mine resembles a Far Side comic.

Michelle has taught me it is OK to buy a replacement when something has broken rather than trying to duct tape everything back together. She, to some degree, has ended my longstanding practice of recycling Kleenex.

While my eyes have been opened to new things, and I’ve grown in my ability to move and function in polite society, I never forget from where it is that I came. Some might be embarrassed about being white trash, but not me. My upbringing made me who I am. I appreciate hard work, and the value of a buck. I am thankful for everything I have, and I never look down on others who have less. I am a White Trash American, and proud of it.

I’m a mutt. My ancestry consists of a potpourri of peoples. Best I can tell, I’m part German, part Scottish, part English and a few parts unknown. As far as my heritage is concerned, I’m primarily white trash.

Like most of America, I am gearing up to celebrate the Irish heritage that I don’t possess. While I am partial to the holidays that center around drinking – and I’ve been known to throw down a few green beers in honor of St. Patrick’s Day – I always feel a little jealous this time of year.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never minded being a mutt. It’s just that my people don’t get a holiday in our honor during which every bar has a special. There are no parades, or mayors dying rivers. Unlike Italian Americans or African Americans, I don’t have any cultural identity, nothing that makes me feel a part of a larger, special group.

As a white trash American, my people are known primarily for our penchant for living in trailer parks and fighting on Jerry Springer. The closest we get to cultural celebrations are NASCAR races.

In the great American melting pot, I think there are a lot of people out there like me. We’re like a human goolosh, with no background or nation of origin providing the bulk of our cultural identity. So we identify with the environment in which we grew up and we latch on to those bits of others’ culture with which we can identify.

I think that explains why St. Patrick’s Day has become a celebration of the masses whereas other cultural celebrations have not. All that you have to do to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day is drink and wear green. I like to drink, and I look good in green. So it is a celebration of heritage that I can embrace.

So many others are closely tied to religious practices. This requires a heavy investment on the part of the celebrant. I mean, have you ever attended a Passover Seder? With all the reading and ritual, it’s a very participatory … and long … evening. As a Gentile, I don’t exactly feel like I fit right in each year as my wife’s family celebrates Passover. Besides, Maneshevitz is not my drink of choice.

But put a green beer in my hand, and surround me with dozens of green-clad bar flies, and I feel right at home, despite the fact I don’t have a lick o’ Irish blood in me.

I’d always heard that when you have kids who go to school or daycare, you would get sick constantly because of all the bugs they bring home, but soon you’d build up some superhuman immunity and never be under the weather again.

Bullsnot … which is the substance I think is emanating from my cranial orifices even as I write this. I have had roughly 58 colds this winter. Or, more accurately, 1 cold — which I caught in September and which remains lodged in my lungs and sinus passages today.

I’ve had a kid in daycare/nursery school for more than four years now — two the past two years. While each has the occasional sniffles, the little carriers seem to be remarkably healthy considering the number of bugs they’ve brought home to me in recent years. My question is when does my superparent immune system kick in? I should be like freaking Wolverine by now.

My God. Well, guitar god at least. Eric Clapton is coming to my neighborhood, and I don’t know that I’m going to be able to see him.

The Noblesville Daily Times reported today that Clapton will play Verizon Wireless Music Center — literally blocks from my house — May 30.

Slow Hand has always been one of my favorite guitarists. As I’ve written before, no one makes it look easier. I’ve loved his work through every era of his career, from the Yardbirds, to his fiery Blues Breakers stint – when “Clapton is God” began appearing across London — from his groundbreaking work with Cream, all of his various supergroups to his solo stuff, I love to watch and listen to him play. My dog and constant companion for 13 years was named Layla for chrissakes.

But fatherhood, a low-paying career choice, and escalating ticket prices have conspired to limit the number of concerts I attend nowadays. I use to go to any decent show in the area, but now I’m forced to pick just a few that I simply can’t miss.

I’m already planning a trip to the Bonnaroo festival in June, and I’ve got my prime seats lined up for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in July. That pretty much exhausts my concert budget for the summer.

Clapton’s tickets are $175 for lower pavilion and $89.50 for upper pavilion. I don’t think I’m going to be able to swing that with a lot of other things going on in my life right now. Lawn seats are $38, but I can’t see spending that much to sit a mile from the stage.

I’m going to have to make some tough choices. I don’t know that I’ve ever missed a Clapton show in the Indianapolis area since I was 16. Add in the fact that this very well could be my last chance to ever see him, and I just don’t know what to do.

Of course, my beautiful, intelligent, funny, saint of a sister-in-law (who just happens to be a regular reader of this blog) is in the music industry. Over the years she’s fed my Slow Hand cravings by giving me recent releases for Christmas (including remastered deluxe packages of “461 Ocean Boulevard” and Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” as well as the “Me and Mr. Johnson” disc and various concert DVDs), and this year gave me his autobiography. Hmm, tickets sure would make a nice birthday gift. Hey sis … you out there? Maribeth? Hello?

Oh well, in the meantime I’ll just crank up “Promises” on my way home, and watch clips like this on the computer.

I’ve always been a TV junkie. I was a latch key kid for a lot of my youth, so TV served as a babysitter, friend and learning tool. I know, that explains a lot about my intelligence, or lack thereof. Even as an adult, I’ve watched a lot of television. So the writers’ strike really sucked for me as it stretched beyond three months and led to the hiatus of most of my favorite shows. I’m not a big reality TV fan, and the non-stop diet of reality shows had me in a winter funk. With the strike settled, and new shows about to hit the airwaves – real shows with scripts and plots and all that stuff we too often take for granted – I thought it was time to look back at the past few months and list my five favorite shows that got me through the strike. In no particular order:

1. Survivor

 One of the very few reality shows that I’ve ever watched regularly. I’ve watched it from the first season, before networks realized how comparatively cheap it was to produce reality programming and began hammering out reality show after reality show. Survivor’s always been well made, though, and is a little more compelling than watching washed up wrestlers or rockers “living” their every day lives. I was so excited when the new season started.

2. The First 48

 Although this A&E series has been around for years, I just stumbled upon it during the strike, when I was scouring every channel on my satellite to avoid yet another airing of “New Adventures of Old Christine.” Now I’m hooked. Luckily, A&E shows about 50 episodes of it every day. The real life detective series that shows homicide investigators tracking killers in cities across the U.S. is gripping. Shot in a documentary style, I cannot watch the beginning of an episode without staying on to find out “whodunnit.” 

3. Later with Jools Holland

 Yet another series that has been around forever that I only recently discovered. I came across this live musical variety program when I got my satellite system and got hooked on Rave HD, an all live music channel. Holland, former keyboardist for Squeeze, brings a half dozen or so acts into a small studio, each on their own stage, forming a circle. The cameras are stationed in the middle of the circle and turn from one act to the next. Each episode offers a huge variety from world music, to rock to folk to pop, with each act playing a couple songs. As I watch both new and old episodes of the show, it seems EVERYONE has been on “Later.” In just the few months I’ve been watching I’ve seen Pearl Jam, Wilco and Old Crow Medicine Show — and that’s just bands I really like a lot.

4. The Universe

 This History Channel program is outstanding. Anyone even remotely interested in the cosmos would enjoy this show. It’s like astrophysics for dummies, with incredible visuals.

5. Man vs. Wild

 The adventures of Bear Grylls have been a guilty pleasure of mine for some time. I know a lot of the trials and tribulations faced by this former member of the British Special Forces are staged. But man, it’s fun to watch him eat all the gross stuff he does as he offers tips on surviving some of the earth’s most inhospitable environments. The desert episode where he not only eats raw zebra meat off a half-eaten carcass, but also drinks “moisture” that he squeezes from a huge pile of elephant dung, is a favorite of both mine and my son Zach’s. To this day, Zach will hold a wash cloth over his head in the bath tub and squeeze out the water while squealing, “Look daddy, I’m drinking elephant poop.”

Before I had kids, or at least before my kids were able to walk and talk, I use to see the little mini shopping carts at various stores and think they were a great idea. I figured they would keep the kiddies occupied, and even let them feel like they were helping out by pushing their own cart carrying various items. Aww, how cute.

Well, my kids can walk and talk now, and I think the mini carts were forged in the fires of hell by Satan himself as a way to bring turmoil upon otherwise happy families.

If you have more than one kid of at least toddler age, you know why I make such a claim. Try taking your kid into a store and NOT let them push one of those carts once they’ve spotted it. If you say no, it is not going to be a happy shopping experience for the kids, for you, nor for anyone within earshot. A child who wants to push their own cart will not let you forget just HOW much they want to push their own cart the entire time you are in the store.

If there is only one mini cart available, and you have two kids, and you give in and say “sure, you guys can push that cart, but you have to share” … well, it is not going to be a happy shopping experience for the kids, for you, nor for anyone within earshot. Youngsters, no matter how polite and cooperative, revert to some primal beast when they feel they have been slighted while participating in a sharing arrangement. And they WILL feel slighted, even if you time each sibling’s turn pushing the cart with an Olympic timing device.

Best case scenario, there is one mini cart available for every child in tow. But, even if every kid has a cart, it is not going to be a happy shopping experience for you or anyone on foot not wearing a suit of armor. Despite their promises to go slow and stay near mommy and daddy, my kids turn shopping trips into the final laps of a NASCAR race when they each have their own cart. They trade paint with each other’s carts, with the cart mommy or daddy is pushing, every display and the occasional shin of an innocent bystander.

I’ve taken my kids to thousands of stores, thousands of restaurants, and I think for the most part, they are pretty well behaved and we typically have fun. Throw a mini cart or two into the equation, however, and it spells misery.

If anyone would like to join with me in forming a grassroots campaign to have these devices outlawed, let me know. I’ll take it all the way to Washington if I have to.

Rampant rumors and nearly nonstop speculation led the Hamilton Southeastern school board Thursday to finally offer some insight into the termination of Superintendent Concetta Raimondi’s contract.

In an e-mail to parents, the board said district administrators were fed up with Raimondi’s leadership. The board spelled out all that went into the decision and what is on the horizon.

My question is – what took so long?

That message was sent nearly a week after the board decided to cut ties with the superintendent. In the note, the board said it came to the conclusion last Friday, Feb. 22, that a “change in leadership was urgent.” The news was delivered to Raimondi the following day.

Monday the board made it official, saying only that it was seeking a change in direction and wanted a superintendent with more experience managing large school corporations as well as a greater focus on developing math and science curriculum.

The community saw right through that. After all, the board had just given Raimondi a three-year contract extension in August worth $151,800 a year. It was clear the board was either being less than open concerning the reason for the termination, or it was monumentally myopic to offer a raise and contract extension to someone it didn’t feel could get the job done.

I, like most in the community, believed the board wasn’t telling the truth, or at least the whole truth.

On the heels of the Scott Syverson debacle, without any reasonable explanation for the termination, the community was abuzz with conjecture. Everywhere I went this week people wanted to talk about the situation. Many believed the termination had to be connected to the Syverson situation despite the board’s statement that the two were unrelated.

Other rumors were much more insidious, offering up possible reasons far worse than an administrative mutiny.

The board could have avoided all of this gossip by simply coming out Monday and saying what they waited until Thursday to say in an e-mail. I understand the board is limited in what it can disclose in a personnel matter. But if they could clue parents into the rift between Raimondi and administrators on Thursday, they could have done it on Monday.

By being secretive, the board gave the appearance that something far more sinister was at play and thus provided grist for the rumor mill.

I’ve seen it happen so many times in my career. Someone releases just enough information to fuel speculation, only to have to come back later and douse the flames by providing facts that could have been provided all along.

In this instance, I felt the school board owed taxpayers an explanation for why it would soon be paying two superintendents in the Hamilton Southeastern district. Under terms of an early termination clause in Raimondi’s contract, she is entitled to approximately $266,000 in severance. The Noblesville Daily Times continued to ask questions. The district was obviously getting questions from many parents, too, as indicated in the e-mail sent Thursday by the board.

On our Web site, our online poll asked if readers felt the district owed taxpayers more details about the situation. In two days 66 people responded. Of those, 57 said yes, the district needed to provide more information.

In the post-9/11 era, government has become increasingly secretive. Too much governing is being done behind too many closed doors. A frightened populous allows this to happen when it hands over its rights in exchange for a feeling of security.

March 16-22 is Sunshine Week – a national initiative to open dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. I urge you to think about and discuss the need for open government. I urge you to continue to hold public officials’ feet to the fire to make them do your business in front of you. To learn more about Sunshine week or to participate, go to http://www.sunshineweek.org/.