JULY 19, 2022 – Late yesterday morning I hiked to my make-believe scale model of “Europe’s Rooftop.” (Actually, it’s (still) a local, hilly, municipal golf course.) Switzerland was abandoned, which I figured was because of extreme heat. Rather than exercise good judgment, I pretended I was an alpinist. With ski poles I “scaled” the (60-foot-high) Eiger.
Out of the blue . . . er, green . . . a guy bombed along in a cart along the fairway below. He wore a bright red shirt. If he was a course worker sent to deport me, I thought, I’d hold my ground, but the guy didn’t notice my presence. Upon reaching the Aletsch Glacier near the Jungfrau, I saw two more guys approach. Each lugged a bag of clubs and wore . . . a red shirt. Soon another pair of red shirts strode toward the third tee 25 yards away. On the glacier, I greeted the first set of red shirts, and they responded cheerfully. They were teenagers, one taller than the other.
“Here for a tournament?” I asked.
“It’s the annual St. Agnes Catholic School student-alumni golf fundraiser,” the taller kid said, “followed by a dinner and silent auction at the school.”
“St. Agnes—that’s the church with the onion steeple over there, right?” I aimed a ski pole to the southeast.
“Yeah,” he said.
“How many years has the school been doing this?” In keeping with its proximity to Switzerland, I thought, St. Agnes did look like an old Bavarian Catholic church.
“A very long time.” said the taller kid.
“Yeah, ’bout 50 years,” said the shorter kid.
“You guys writing big checks this evening?” I asked.
“No,” said the taller kid. “We let rich alumni do that.”
“Something to aspire to—becoming rich alumni so you can write big checks to your school.”
The kids laughed.
“You guys serious golfers?” I asked.
“No, but we like to golf,” said the taller kid.
“As courses go, what do you think of this one?”
“We haven’t golfed a lot of courses,” said the shorter kid, “but we like this one.”
The taller kid agreed but added, “The layout’s a little weird.”
“Yeah,” said the shorter kid.
“I don’t golf,” I said. “I just hike. I pretend this is Switzerland—the slope up from that fairway is the Eiger and we’re standing on the Aletsch Glacier. The Matterhorn’s over there. I gestured to the magnificent winter sliding hill.”
“Have you been to the real Switzerland?” the taller kid asked.
“Huh, huh.”
“Cool!” he said. I liked his enthusiasm.
“Cooler than St. Paul is today,” I said.
Soon men wearing red shirts zoomed in carts to every visible tee. I realized a shotgun start was in the offing. I said farewell to the friendly teenagers and scurried down behind the third tee to flee Switzerland before getting pelted by golf balls.
As I approached the carts and their occupants—alumni, given their paunches and gray-flecked facial hair—I greeted them and pointed a ski pole in the direction of the glacier. “I’ve been chatting with a couple of students up there,” I said. “They’re good emissaries of your alma mater—polite, cheerful, and well-spoken.
One of the alums grunted. None seemed inclined to talk with an interloper wielding ski poles and wearing a white, Chipotle T-shirt bearing the image of a giant burrito. What further diminished the odds of a meaningful exchange was my long white hair sticking out from under a sweat-soaked baseball cap.
Upon returning home, I checked out the St. Agnes website. The red shirts reflected the Pastor’s strident politics, at least when it comes to Roe v. Wade. Perhaps those standoffish alums could tell I wasn’t neutral, even though I was “Swiss.”
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
