Some times it's better to be left in the dark.
My normal pre-dawn morning commute to work is usually cloaked in darkness, just me and the deer playing our early a.m. game of dodge ball.
But we're preparing for a move out of our longtime offices in the Primos section of Upper Darby, and on Sunday afternoon I made one more drive into the office to start the process of cleaning it out, keeping some things - including many of the front pages that adorned the walls for years, tossing lots of others, and boxing up a few things that will go with me to our new digs in Swarthmore.
It's not a happy task, but it was not the saddest thing I saw Sunday.
I was stunned as I drove my usual route down West Chester Pike at what I saw when I cruised past Edgmont Country Club.
A couple of things you should know. I am a golf nut. Yes, even though I rarely get the chance to play, unless you count me tinkering with my chipping and pitching stroke in the back yard.
I never had the opportunity. And now I never will. Edgmont is no more.
But that's not what stopped me in my tracks yesterday.
Just about every day for 30 years I have driven past the course, even if it was in the dark.
But what I saw Sunday is beyond sad.
These are not the best of times for the golf industry. I guess that gives it something in common with the newspaper industry.
Mother Nature has overrun Edgmont, which closed its doors a few months back. It's been sold to a developer. Soon houses will sprout where those beautifully manicured greens stood for so long.
That's what grabbed my by the throat yesterday. As you drive by on Route 3, at the bottom of a hill there sits what had always been a pristine green. That's not what I saw yesterday. In fact, you could barely see the outline of what once was that green.
I actually thought about stopping and taking a photo, but I think I prefer to remember it the way it was.
My friend Pam Mariani, whose father built the course and whose family ran it for decades, once told me that a ghost inhabited the old main clubhouse at the course.
I think I saw it Sunday.
Rest well, Edgmont Country Club.
And know that you have not been forgotten by once saddened old duffer.
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