Second Person Singular

When I was young, I had as many crushes as the other guys did—I just couldn’t tell anyone about them.

AI image created from my description of a golf course crush

By the time 1973 rolled around I could tell my 20s were going to be anything but easy. Near the end of my junior year at U of M, I decided to leave school a year early to take a job at Huron Valley Youth for Christ as music director. (I wouldn’t finish my degree until 1981.) I’d become very involved with the YFC ministries, especially as a member of New Jerusalem, a popular evangelistic singing group that represented YFC at area rallies, churches and other events. The plan was for me to help guide that group, as well as several other fledgling music groups and soloists. It felt like something I was destined to do, rather than just heading toward an uncertain future at the end of another year of school. After all, I was starting to realize that a B.Mus. in Music Composition was most likely only preparing me for a typing job at Manpower or a lot more schooling.

The draft had ended in early January, so the uncertainty surrounding my country’s call to military service—when I couldn’t even imagine pulling the trigger on a gun, any gun—had subsided. (My grandpa bought my brother a shotgun when he turned 12; when I turned 12, he got me a telescope.)

But I was not exactly financially solvent. My folks had covered my first semester of college, but I got jobs after that to cover the costs, including supplying the steam table at the Michigan League restaurant, followed by two years as a Rare Book Room assistant at the Graduate Library. And now with all my plans upended, and heading into a job that would pay very little, I knew I needed to earn some extra money during the summer.

My mom and dad were golfers, and Dad arranged a job for me as a water boy at the local golf course. I had always suspected I would not like working nights, and that job certainly confirmed my suspicions. But I wanted very much to make Dad proud of me, and I was grateful for the job.

Unfortunately, in spite of all my efforts at being conscientious, I experienced one disaster after another. As you who know me have no doubt discovered, I’ve never been famous for my gracefulness and coordination. On this particular job I happened to be alone all night, and without the moderating influences of daylight and companionship, my natural tendencies toward calamity flowed forth from my innermost being unhindered.

I had been assigned a little room by the bar as my headquarters for the summer, where I could wait between sprinkler changes. By the time I made a complete round, I usually had to wait 45 minutes to an hour before I went out to move the sprinklers again.

I’ve never been one to fear being alone. Nor have I been afraid of the dark. That is to say, I haven’t feared aloneness or darkness when faced separately. But I learned that summer that aloneness and darkness combined can transform the most mild-mannered person into a blithering idiot, jumping from every shadow and sound.

One fateful night in June, I had to set up a portable sprinkler on Fairway #1 because one of the regular underground connections was jammed closed. It was about 3:30 a.m., and a spooky night at best—misty and windy all at once. The bar had closed as usual at 2:00, and there wasn’t a sound except the wind, the sprinklers, and the occasional rustling of a raccoon in the garbage pen.

At the appropriate time, I meandered out to my electric golf cart, got in and zoomed off. The moon was shining strongly and I didn’t need to turn my flashlight on right away, so I cruised silently toward the fairway.

I remember as I approached that something seemed very strange. Something had happened. Something was definitely not as it had been an hour before. When I finally started analyzing the situation I saw that the ground wasn’t level. Strange, I had never noticed that before. There was a big mound right in the middle of the normally flat fairway. But wait—that wasn’t all. The sprinkler wasn’t turning around either. By this time I was quite frightened and disoriented so I hurried for the flashlight. But clicking on the light did not help matters: the portable sprinkler had overturned in the wind, and its nozzle had gotten buried in the sod. Who knows how long it had been pumping water at high pressure into the ground. The force of the water had separated the sod from the ground and caused it to float above ground level—an area about 20 feet square.

For the next hour I hastily tried to correct the situation by poking holes in the grassy waterbed only to rediscover (as I might have recalled sooner in a more normal crisis) that water plus earth equals mud. What a mess! It was only by a divine miracle that Fairway #1 ever survived the incident—or me, for that matter.

It was my practice when making my rounds to ride the cart full throttle up and directly over the raised tees (some of them were more like hills) and then coast halfway to the greens. One night I was traveling this route as fast as usual when I arrived at the top of Tee #3 and remembered in a sudden flash of terror that I had placed a sprinkler directly in front of the tee. I slammed on the brakes, but by this time I was already within the radius of the sprinkler and I went careening hopelessly out of control on the wet grass until I came to a very dramatic halt. Of course, I had run right into the sprinkler, bending the nozzle toward the heavens. And as I sat there in the middle of the resultant geyser, I found myself thinking, “This is only supposed to happen in the movies.” I was awfully thankful that no one else was around to record my gracefulness for posterity.

But in spite of memorable events such as these, what stoked my private fantasy world the most during that 20-yr-old summer was the fact that I was distracted by almost every pretty face I saw. Around every corner, walking down the street, watching a TV program, in every other golfing party, it seemed there was always someone who caught my eye—and my imagination.

One morning I was picking up stones, cleaning and trimming below one of the tees. A ball came to rest at my feet among the stones. I yelled to the nearest golfer, “Hey, I found your golf ball,” and he came toward me. When I looked up, I saw the face of an angel, surrounded by a glowing cloud of yellow hair, a smile wider than the world and eyes bluer than the sky.

When I looked up, I saw the face of an angel…

After I started breathing again, I picked up the ball and handed it to him. Our fingers touched as I handed him the little white sphere. Or was it my world I gave to him? My little round dimpled world?

I floated through the rest of the day, and pined through the night, and several others besides. I found out who he was and thought of him often through the following weeks. I wondered how on earth he could have had such an effect on me. Lord, was he really an angel? And then there were the questions I hardly dared ask: Did he remember me, too? Did he ever dream of me?

I guess it was inevitable that all that longing would express itself in a song. I wrote it in second person singular, of course. I was like a psalmist extolling the beauty of the earth, only it was something made of much finer stuff that I couldn’t stop dreaming about.

When I lay me down to sleep
And pray the Lord my soul to keep
I often think of you and weep
And wonder what your dreams could be
And if you ever dream of me

I have never forgotten him, even today—many tees and fairways and graceful incidents later. But now I can tell the world.

For lyrics, music channel links, music notes and more backstory, see https://doughowellmusic.com/songs/do-you-ever-dream-of-me/

Note: I inadvertently sent a post to you email subscribers on 19 January about understanding grief written by my friend Jan Schubert. She was visiting, and I was trying to help her publish it, but sent it out under my own account before I realized what was happening. I apologize for that, but hope you enjoyed her article and will check out her Substack.