Last Saturday I was out playing Disc Golf (also called Frisbee Golf, though that would be misleading to call the disc a frisbee.) I used my front-9 mulligan, and thought to myself, “I wonder how the term mulligan got started?” I figured it must have been a guy’s name, but wondered how it would have spread to common usage. I thought about searching Cecil’s columns, but then got busy this week and it slipped my mind.
Well, sure enough, as soon as you wonder about something it will pop up by coincidence and provide the answer. Paul Harvey’s “…Rest of the Story” today involved just that story, the tale of John “Buddy” Mulligan, locker room supervisor at a Depression-era CC in New York, who accepted a challenge from a member and the assistant pro to play a round, with his special stipulation.
I don’t know where Harvey gets his material, but it’s amazing the stories he can dig up about everything from the mundane to the profound. Paul Harvey, I salute you!
Dang, FCM beat me to it! Suffice to say, a lot of what Paul Harvey proposes as truth is poorly researched bunk. He is entertaining to many, but I wouldn’t put any large money on something he quotes as being verifiable or even true.
A pox upon you, 'Toons for mocking me!! What do you know of crushes?? What do you know of the torment? What do you know of defective keyboards? And when you come down to it, what do you know of me?? HUH?? Answer me, man!!
<FCM breaks down and weeps uncontrollably - the kind of weeping that only fine chocolates can stem>
Well, I see that Harvey has his detractors, I should also have checked Cecil’s columns to double-check what I’d heard. Still, Paul Harvey’s version was more interesting, and I’d almost rather that be the last I’d heard of it so I could remain ignorant and tell the story to friends of mine, spreading ignorance and having a good time doing it. Chalk this one up as the first time I’d prefer not to have heard “The Straight Dope” on an issue.
It’s too bad that “Paul Harvey” has actually been a robot for the past 15 years.
I’ve heard enough Paul Harvey in my day to conclude that he could easily be an automaton that simply has words programmed into him. (Perfect strangers that have heard me advancing this theory tend to agree with me.) Plus, it creeps me out how he’ll be doing “news” one second and then, without any indication whatsoever, slip comfortably into an advertisement.
Actually, he always recites a page number as if he were flipping through the news items before he does an add. He’ll be doing news then say, “and now…page two.” That’s the cue he’s about to do an advertistment, so it isn’t “without any indication whatsoever”.
Many, if not all, those advertisements are pre-recorded. My main gripe concerning Mr. Harvey are that he does so damn many advertisements. Then there’s his irritating habit of implying that he’s going to pack every order personally.
I used to listen to Harvey for the sheer schlock value - his righteous indignation, his bitter disgust at those new-fangled things, his home-spun, golly-gee outlook, and his Norman Rockwell aura…basically, he makes me sick, but it is like spending time at the Thanksgiving table with relatives…you just shake your head in speechless amazement.
I know it’s August, but suddenly I got a hankering for pumpkin pie with lots a whipped cream…
