Duncan Thurly's Golf Chronicles

It wasn’t my birthday. It wasn’t Father’s Day. It wasn’t even close to

Christmas. As retirees, my wife and I made frequent use of online

shopping, but the package lacked the familiar Amazon blue and white motif

and smile logo. A quick check with email and my wife confirmed that all

of our recent orders had been delivered.

The package was a standard 10x13 manila envelope with my name and

address handwritten, lacking of a return address, stamps, and postmark. It

was heavy, it was thick, and clearly contained what felt like a spiral-bound

notebook, much like one my students would have used early in my

academic career to transcribe pearls of instructional wisdom… before

laptops were omnipresent.

Had the contents of the package arrived as an email attachment, I no

doubt would have deleted it, thinking it was nothing more than spam,

perhaps something on the nefarious end of the spectrum seeking to phish

my bank account or other identity critical information.

Rather it was in my United States Postal Service sanctioned mailbox…

at the end of the driveway… leading me to assume it came through the

mail… snail mail, the postal service. Lacking postage, it was obviously

deposited illegally. Who does that? And why?

Color me intrigued.

With a moderate amount of caution, I opened the otherwise innocent looking envelope. My initial suspicions of the content were confirmed when I retrieved a nondescript, spiral bound notebook.

Being a retired economics professor, my initial thought, as I held the unopened notebook, was that a former student had, for an undetermined reason, sent me their class notes. An autograph? Editorial corrections? Advice as they launched their own career as an instructor? When I dismissed that as highly improbable, my second thought was that a former colleague was passing along research notes, perhaps hoping to collaborate on a project. The envelop contained no letter, note, or other document that might confirm either.

As a matter of fact, I wasn’t particularly interested in either. Having retired after 39 years of academic teaching and research I had no interest in revisiting that phase of my life.

Although retired, I wasn’t exactly idle.

Rather, my energies were redirected from youthful attempts at understanding the economic reality of the world (and subsequently relaying that to students), to just making up things. That is, as a long-time fan and occasionally an aspiring (albeit unpublished) novelist, I turned my attention to a lifelong interest in fiction, primarily science fiction. Within four years of posting my final set of student grades, I had completed six novels, all self-published on Amazon and other ebook platforms.

Days before the mystery package arrived, I had completed drafts of three more novels (a trilogy of sorts) and, as I am prone to do, set them aside to mellow, leaving my mind available for other pursuits. The timing could not have been better.

Curious.

And what was the other pursuit unexpectedly thrust upon me?

The notebook was in fact a handwritten journal prepared by a man who, at least superficially, was intent on improving his golf game. Even as I write this, the absurdity of the thought amuses me. Why on earth would someone keep track of something like that? If they wanted to be a better golfer, then play golf, practice golf, no need to keep a diary. I played a little golf early in my life and was never inclined to keep a record of my activities. I played. I practiced. As Nike would say… ‘Just Do It!’

None of that was what grabbed my attention and shook it fiercely. That alone did not motivate me to postpone another half dozen rounds of manuscript revisions of my novels-in-progress to explored this fellow’s pursuit of a lower golf score.

Nonchalantly perusing the journal, a realization even less expected than the arrival of the package itself, hit be squarely between the eyes, continued on through the frontal lobe of my brain, and bounced around the parietal lobe for a while before coming to rest in the temporal lobe.

The journal I held in my hands was apparently written by a man named Duncan Thurly. And why is that noteworthy? Why would I care?

Earlier in my career (back when students took notes using spiral notebooks) I wrote a weekly Q&A column about economics for our small local newspaper. It was just a lark, a fun thing to do, motivated in part by the realization that most people knew virtually nothing about the economy and what they did know was more often than not wrong.

This gist of the column was that I, the columnist, channeled the insights of an expert named Mister Economy. Near the end of Mister Economy’s publication, a minor ‘secret’ was revealed. The brains behind the whole operation was a person named Duncan Thurly.

Of course, Duncan Thurly was entirely fictional. As far as I knew at the time, no one on the planet had the name Duncan Thurly. Perhaps you can image my surprise as I flipped through a personal journal apparently written by a man named Duncan Thurly.

Certainly it was possible that whomever sent the journal was pranking me, having a little fun with me, perhaps a former student or colleague with a perverse sense of humor. The journal was clearly hand written, with over 200 pages of detailed, dated entries. That’s a lot of trouble to go through. And to what end?

“Oh look, a fictional character created by a retired professor 30 years ago wrote a journal about becoming a better golfer. Isn’t that hilarious? I sure pulled a fast one on him, didn’t I?”

The icing on my motivational cake emerged when I Googled Duncan Thurly. In turns out, Duncan Thurly actually existed. Maybe if Google had been around in the mid-90s, I would have discovered that and opted for another moniker. Durwood Mandelbaum?

The sprinkles atop the icing included the fact that Duncan Thurly lived in Wichita, Kansas. I was born in Wichita and lived there until heading to graduate school in Iowa. Duncan Thurly attended Wichita State University. I attended Wichita State University. Duncan Thurly grew up in Park City, in a house less than 10 miles from where I lived until I was 13. Duncan Thurly attended Wichita Heights High School. My two older brothers graduated from Heights and I too would have attended had my parents not moved to the southeast part of town to shorten their work commute.

Coincidence?

Don’t just color me intrigued, paint me from head to toe with the infinite color palate of the rainbow of mystification. I had to investigate why Duncan Thurly had been injected into my otherwise peaceful retirement.

I didn’t expect what I would find.

What follows is my account of his diary in much the same way I channeled the economic insight of his fictional version in my weekly newspaper column. In this case, unlike the Q&A column, I had a wealth of his verbiage. Note, however, I also made use of a career that employed academic investigative research skills. I’m not a journalist (nor do I play one on television), but I do know how to find information. And of course, I have Google.

Granted some of the conversations are… well… let’s say extrapolated, or perhaps interpolated (neither am I a mathematician), based on the accounts of the events relayed by others I interviewed. I’m not omnipotent. I wasn’t there. But, I think I’ve done service to essence of what transpired.

The biggest challenge I faced in presenting the essence of Duncan’s story that was buried within the daily minutiae of his life. It was no small task. And it was a judgement call. Perhaps I overlooked a few things that he would have considered the ‘real story.’ If so, I apologize.

I don’t mean to speak ill of the…. Okay, let me just say that Duncan was prone to ramble. Early in my academic career, I came to realize that college professors had the ability to speak nonstop for 50 minutes on any topic (50 minutes being the length of a normal class period). I’ll modify that to say that Duncan had the ability to fill a blank page with words, regardless of the relative significance of events that occurred on that particular day. To Duncan, everything was equally important.

I struggled mightily with the best way to present his story, working through a half dozen drafts employing different narratives. My first option was simply to present the story in the chronological order in which the story unfolded, including most of the minutiae thinking that doing so would provide a more complete picture of the man. I quickly realized that doing so was less compelling that watching paint dry or grass grow or (supply your own idiom here).

After several other attempts I decided to work the timeline, focusing on critical events, as they happened in chronological order. I hope I’ve done justice to his story.

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