THE first time I saw the Arcade in Webkinz World, I had only one thought: Miniature golf course!
I have been a mini-golf aficionado since I was "knee-high to a grasshopper." When I was very small there was a miniature golf course down Gansett Avenue, between the baseball field and the Burger Chef. Sometimes on sultry summer nights we would walk there to get a Del's lemonade (there was a pocket-sized frozen lemonade stand across the street) and watch the golfers as well as the flocks of moths dashing around the big floodlights. We never played often; with only Dad working we didn't have a lot of money.
Sometimes we played mini-golf at Rocky Point Amusement Park, but again it was a rare thing. But by the time I went to work and could earn money to play mini-golf there were no more courses in Rhode Island.
In 1968, after my mom went to work part time, we finally had the money to take a vacation that didn't involve staying a week at a relative's house in Massachusetts. We went to a place one of Dad's co-workers suggested, Lake George in the Adirondak Mountains of upstate New York. It is still one of my favorite places in the world. And it had four miniature golf courses to boot! I don't recall that we ever played the big course up on the hill at the exit off I-87, but we did play the two near the lake (Around the World in 18 Holes and Around the U.S. in 18 Holes) and the small one inside the games arcade. These were mostly the old-fashioned kind of mini-golf courses, with the little barn with the door that opened and closed, putting a ball in an animal's mouth, etc. For a few years there was a tiny "designed by professional golf players" course on one corner; the lot was so small that several of the holes were on an upper level. When you putted the balls they rolled through tubes to the lower level, which made the course much more fun!
It got to the point where we'd discuss where to go for vacation and I'd suggest Lake George. Mom would give me "that look." "You just want to go so you can play miniature golf." Well, yeah... :-)
The later type of courses such as we experienced in Lake George have survived here in Atlanta as Pirates' Cove and Rainforest and Mountasia and we play them when we can (mostly when we have a coupon).
So you can see why I was delighted to find Webkinz Golf. I pretty much play one game every day. My bete noïre was hole 17 until I accidentally landed in the sand trap and realized that was the trick to getting the hole in par.
Putt-Putt Forever!
