There’s a theory that men aren’t nearly as apt to make friendships with other men as women are with other women.  That can be chalked up to the sheer number of words women say every day, 20,000, compared to the number men do, 7,000.  Maybe men can’t get a word in edgewise.  Maybe they are just so sparing with their words, they don’t have enough left over, after everything else, to start a conversation deep enough to spark a friendship, barring time at The Grounds for Divorce, of course.

For every rule, there is an exception.

Chuck and Norton were a pretty well known exception around Fort Stockton, back in the day. They lived next to each other as kids, back when moms would kick their offspring out the door in the morning and tell them not to come home till the street lights came on. Kick the Can, Cowboys and Indians, Red Light / Green Light. All the childhood games played back then were played by Chuck and Norton. Stayed friends through elementary school, junior high and even Jim Bowie High School (“Home of the Fightin’ Knives”), where they mostly sat the bench together through four years of football, basketball and baseball.

They went off to college together, roommates all four years at Bonham Baptist College, came back to Fort Stockton and each married local gals within a year of each other. Chuck married first, Norton eleven months later. Having different degrees, they went to work at different places, Chuck out at the proving grounds, Norton for the city. But they still spent quite a bit of time together.

Having taken up golf in college back in Bonham, it was natural that the links would provide an excuse for the pair to still get together on a weekly basis. They had a standing tee time every Saturday morning at Mesquite Valley Municipal Golf Course and Shooting Range, just down from Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Gardens. It was almost a ritual. They shared a passion for the game, despite a talent for the sport that could only be described as moderate. Sometimes they would go for six or seven holes with neither saying a word. Other times, they’d talk nonstop, telling each other things they probably didn’t even share with their spouses.

Such was their dedication to the ritual that back in ’65 the two of them pooled their resources and purchased a brand new Jato Walker Executive 360 Series Golf Cart. It was the epitome of style in 1965. White with turquoise accents, either could drive from whatever seat he was in with the ‘tiller’ type steering. The white umbrella that covered them both would keep them from getting burnt to a crisp during Fort Stockton’s nine month long summer and allowed them to even play in the rain, when the groundskeeper would let them.

In working out the details of the purchase, Chuck said they could keep the Jato Walker in his garage and he would make sure it was always maintained and charged. In turn, Norton said he would purchase a trailer to be able to pick up the cart, and Chuck, every Saturday morning and take it over to Mesquite Valley. And so he did. Folks in Road Runner Estates would see Norton’s 1964 Ford Country Squire pull into the subdivision like clockwork every Saturday morning at 6:30 sharp. Chuck would already have the Jato Walker at the end of the driveway, ready to drop the ramp and drive the cart up onto the trailer.

From there it was straight to The Grounds for Divorce for a hot cuppa coffee and the ‘Saturday Links Special’, a couple eggs died green and fried over easy, a tiny flag stuck in the yolk, and tiny sausage links formed to look like golf clubs. (That was back before Lucinda took over, so other gimmicks were needed to draw in male clientele.) From there it was off to Mesquite Valley for 18 holes, 36 if their wives were involved in something over at Second Baptist that gave them the afternoon free, in addition to the morning.

The ’64 Country Squire was replaced by a ’70 Country Squire, then a ’77 Thunderbird with T-Tops when Norton was going through his mid-life crisis, after the last of his kids graduated and left Fort Stockton. Come to think of it, Lucinda had taken over the Grounds for Divorce by then and Norton was stopping by a lot more often than just on Saturday mornings.

Anyway, the ’77 Thunderbird was traded in for an ’82 Ford EXP the same year Norton got his hair plugs and liposuction.  His second wife didn’t care much for the little two-seater, just like most of the rest of the car-buying public.  It was traded quickly for an ’83 Thunderbird, complete with the ‘aero-look’, much like Norton’s.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep the inevitable from taking place.  His second wife fell for her tennis instructor, closer to her own age and in possession of a full head of his own natural hair which had been cut into a mullet, reflective of the times and his morals.

Norton’s third wife brought her own brood of offspring to the marriage. The pool of possible marriage prospects was shrinking every year in a burg as small and observant as Fort Stockton. It was back to the Ford dealer for an ’85 Country Squire, a wagon once again being needed. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But through all the changes, the golf game on Saturday mornings remained a constant, as did the cart pulled behind each of Norton’s successive new Fords. The classic 1965 Jato Walker Executive 360 Series golf cart provided the stability in life that Norton’s string of wives and cars couldn’t. The seats were recovered at least three different times over the years, Bill over at Bill’s Trim and Bait Shop carefully matching the original Jato Walker patterns each time.

In about 1984 the two of them had been in the cups pretty good, drinking Lone Star Longnecks out of an ice chest hidden behind Chuck’s golf bag in the back, when they overturned the Jato rounding the sand trap just off the green on Number 7. Norton was pinned under the umbrella long enough for him to rededicate himself to God. It was after that he proposed to wife #3, despite her brood of curtain climbers. A nasty dent was discovered behind the right rear wheel of the Jato back at the club house, indicating that God may have been thinking over Chuck’s offer of rededication before taking him up on it. Loading the damaged cart up on the trailer, Chuck and Norton dropped it off at the body shop of Frontier Ford. Told Cecil, the manager, to fix the dent and give the whole thing a ‘refresh’. New paint. New rubber mat on the floor. Three new Goodyears.

The refreshed Jato Walker Executive 360 continued to serve them well for several more years.  It was in the fall of ’91 ,when they had just chipped on to the green of Number 11, that something odd  happened.  It was a clear crisp day, wind blowing out of the north so the feedlot next to the airport was barely noticeable.  The sun was shining through the wispy clouds of dust and oil rolling in from the oil fields.  It was idyllic.  Made them both even more reflective than those first few weeks after the incident involving the Jato overturning in the sand trap.

A hearse drove by, on the way to Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Gardens, followed by a long line of cars, each with their headlights on.  Officer Phil, riding sidesaddle on his Harley, a result of complications from his recent vasectomy, was leading the procession.  Chuck stopped lining up his put as he glanced the direction of the long line of slow moving black cars.  He stood straight up.  Took off his golf hat and stood motionless till the hearse had passed.

Norton was a bit dumbfounded.  “In all the years we’ve played golf here, there’ve been dozens of funerals pass by.  Maybe hundreds.  I’ve never seen you bat an eye, much less get emotional.”

“It seems like the least I could do,” Chuck explained as he sunk the put for par.  “We were married for 46 years.”