Caddy for Life

Read Caddy for Life for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Caddy for Life for Free Online
Authors: John Feinstein
Tags: SPO016000
o’clock in their rooms, either working on homework or, if they finished their homework, reading a book. There was absolutely no way Bruce was going to spend two hours in his room studying or reading. Most nights he would climb out his window, onto a balcony that he shared with Gwyn, wave goodbye to her, climb down the balcony, and come back just before nine. He would smoke a final cigarette on the balcony, flip the butt away, and climb back inside just before quiet time, as it was called, came to an end.
    His study habits had to catch up with him sooner or later, and when they did, it created more tension. Chris was reeling off A’s in high school, en route to Bucknell, where she would major in French and international relations. Brian and Gwyn were both good students who rarely got into any kind of serious trouble. Bruce was always the one with the bad report cards and the calls coming home from teachers about his behavior.
    “Looking back, I think following Chris was going to be tough for Bruce under any circumstances,” Gwyn said. “My parents saw her as the norm, as what you would expect in a child. In her own way, she was just as abnormal as Bruce, because she was
so
perfect. If Bruce had been an average student, an average kid, my parents probably would have thought something had gone wrong. But when he was completely the opposite, they were convinced that something was terribly, terribly wrong. There was really nothing seriously wrong with Bruce, he was just
different
from Chris.”
    When Bruce got to high school, Jay and Natalie decided a change of scenery might help him. They sent him to a prep school called Watkinson for a year, and things did not improve. Bruce’s grades were no better, he didn’t like the school, and the school didn’t like him. “Watkinson didn’t work for Bruce,” his father recalled. “So we decided to try Marianapolis.”
    Marianapolis was a small Catholic boarding school in Thompson, Connecticut, near the Massachusetts border. Perhaps because it was so small—there were thirty-nine boys in Bruce’s graduating class—Bruce did better there. The teachers were able to give him more attention. His grades improved and so did his behavior. He even took the SAT’s and got 1,130, a solid score that would have gotten him into plenty of colleges.
    But the thought of going to college never crossed Bruce’s mind—except when his parents brought it up. To Jay and Natalie, college was an automatic, no different than going to first grade. It was simply something that you did. Bruce didn’t see it that way. For one thing, he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to study in college or a career that would follow college. “There was a bus stop right across the street from where we lived,” he said. “Every morning when I was a kid, I would watch all the men from our neighborhood walk over to the bus with their briefcases to take the bus into Hartford to go to their offices. Most of them were in insurance, but there were some lawyers, probably a couple of doctors. I remember thinking back then there was no way that was going to be my life, getting up every day and going to an office from nine to five. I knew that wasn’t for me. I just would have felt cooped up doing something like that.”
    Back then, watching the men line up for the bus, Bruce had no idea what he might do as an alternative. By the time he was in high school, that had changed. Golf had come into his life. More specifically, caddying had come into his life.
    Growing up in New Jersey, Jay Edwards hadn’t played much golf. His father played golf, but Jay was a lot more interested in baseball. Often when Jonas Edwards would go over to Riverton Country Club to hit golf balls, Jay and his dog would tag along. “He would hit flies to me in between golf shots,” Jay remembered. “I thought that was a lot more fun than playing golf.” He began to play a little bit while in college and then, after starting his dental

Similar Books

Forever and Always

Beverley Hollowed

Murder at Union Station

Margaret Truman

The Burning Air

Erin Kelly

Surprise Dad

Daly Thompson

Dead Girl Walking

Ruth Silver

New Blood

Gail Dayton

The Bohemians

Sean Michael