Itâs raining, so I canât go over and paint the front door of the Southside
Pride office.
The planned movie is a farce. Two lawyers, Quibblesome and Quarelsome, explain
the plot. A troll in a pirate costume, under a bridge, throws rocks at people.
A young boy fresh from church asks him, âWhy?â And the troll answers, âThis
was all my land. You people moved in, and, now, thereâs no room for me.â And
the young boy says, âBut, canât we share?â And the Pirate talks about how
pirates came about: The Enclosure Act of 1789 that drove peasants and shepherds
off the land in Scotland and into the cities to work in factories, and how
Samis threw rocks at the Nordic invaders in Finland, and how the Indians fought
the settlers, and how all the time the invaders always thought their way was
superior to our way.
And thereâs a policeman who marches up and down across the bridge honking a
horn at people.
And a woman with a long sheet of paper reads off all the people in government
who should be indicted and sent to prison.
Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Itâs a
tedious idea but the characters are interesting.
But thatâs not the answer to Bill Kahn that will be published in Southside
Pride in the September editions:
Requiem for a Heavyweight
By Ed Felien
Someone criticized me in a public forum saying, "Ed and the rest of the
Hiawatha duffers are purposefully ignoring the facts because they want to
continue to do what they have always done, where they have done it, whenever
they want to do it; weâve wasted enough time and money on them and their damned
mindless activities.â
By all means, letâs look at the facts.
The Park Board wants to close Hiawatha Golf Course. Their resolution says:
âRESOLVED, That the Board of Commissioners direct staff to apply for a
Groundwater Appropriations Permit from the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources conforming to a reduced groundwater pumping scenario.â
The staff, led by a coalition of lame-duck Commissioners headed by Steffanie
Musich, wants to close the golf course, and the excuse they are giving is that
the pumping necessary to keep the course dry enough to play exceeds the amount
of water in the DNR permit. The DNR hadnât complained. But the Park Board
went to them and confessed to the crime and promised to reduce the pumping.
Earlier (in the Whereas part of the Resolution) the staff cite the engineering
authority they say justified closing the course. The resolution said,
"Whereas, The MPRB engaged Barr Engineering Company (Barr) to investigate
conditions related to groundwater pumping and its effects on Hiawatha Golf
Course and surrounding properties, and the City of Minneapolis (City) engaged
Barr to investigate storm water conditions in the areas surrounding and
including Hiawatha Golf Course, and both agencies engaged Barr to develop
alternatives for water management that would consider a range of groundwater
pumping scenarios; Whereas, Barr prepared a series of water management
alternatives and in concert with MPRB and City staff performed an initial
screening of alternatives that identified two alternatives for more thorough
assessments of property impacts, regulatory approval potential, water quality.â
In addition to describing what would happen if you reduced pumping at
Hiawathas, Barr Study also said you could lower the level of Lake Hiawatha
(and, thereby, reduce the threat of flooding and the need for pumping) by
removing the dam at 27th Avenue. Â But thatâs an Inconvenient Fact that the Park
Board chose to ignore.
Remove the dam and you lower the water level of Lake Hiawatha. Thatâs pretty
elementary physics.
But the critic says, âweâve wasted enough time and money on them and their
damned mindless activities.â
As Iâve said before: âGolf revenues for all the courses in 2015 were
$4,786,526. Expenses were $5,081,284. Golf lost $294,758, about 6% of its
budget, and that had to be made up from the General Fund. Skiing had revenues
of $118,448 and expenses of $823,682. Skiing lost $705,234, about 85% of its
budget, and that had to be made up from the General Fund. Nobodyâs talking
about doing away with skiing because they lost moneyâor baseball, tennis or
soccer, for that matter.â
The 2014 Golf Convergence Study of Minneapolis municipal courses (commissioned
by the Park Board) said Hiawatha was the course most likely to make money
because of its location, and within a five mile radius there are more than 8000
active golfers.
And âmindlessâ??? Golf is a form of meditation. You focus on everything and
nothing. More than any other sport it requires mental concentration. It is
frustrating and enlightening, but it is not âmindless,â much more like
âmindfulness.â
You say, âEd and the rest of the Hiawatha duffers.â Did you ever wonder where
the term duffer comes from? Duff was a common Gaelic name dating back to the
13th century. Mulligan? obviously a slur against the Irish. A Mulligan is a
name for playing a second ball instead of playing the ball you just shot. The
prejudice of the English against the Irish and the Scots was made clear to me
when I heard one of the starters say, âIf you canât keep up, play Paddy Golf:
pick up your ball and place if farther down the hole.â
Prevailing prejudices meant restricted membership in private courses. Golf
courses were private until the end of the 19th century, and âNo Irish Need
Apply.â Publicly owned municipal courses ended this prejudice, and golf became
accessible to everyone by the early 20th century.
Hiawatha opened in 1934 and from its beginning it was open to everyone in South
Minneapolis. Blacks, Latins, Asians, South Asians, Somalis, all play at
Hiawatha. In 1939 Hiawatha hosted the first African-American golf tournament
in the country, the Upper Midwest Bronze Amateur Tournament. Blacks were not
admitted as members to Augusta National, the home of The Masters, until 1990.
Women werenât allowed as members at Augusta until 2012.
One of the legends I grew up with, living a couple of blocks from Hiawatha, was
that Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis, The Brown Bomber, at one of the early
Bronze Tournaments, hit a five iron on the third hole and put it through a
picture window across 43rd Street.
It will be a shame to lose this community and cultural resource.
Itâs not closing because of the money. Of all the City courses it could be the
most profitable, and it has contributed money to the general fund to finance
other sports activities for most of its existence.
Itâs not closing because itâs not natural. Whatâs natural about damming up
Lake Hiawatha and raising the water table by four feet? If people really want
Lake Hiawatha to return to its natural state, then they should ask the Park
Board and the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District to take down the dam at 27th
Avenue. If they did that, they would lower the water level of Lake Hiawatha
and the water table in the surrounding neighborhood. They could probably
eliminate the need for pumping altogether, and the natural wetland of Lake
Hiawatha would probably stay pretty much the way it is right now.
One of the newer legends at Hiawatha Golf Course is that before the great flood
of 2014, Park Board Commissioner Steffanie Musich brought her family out to
play golf on a Sunday afternoon at Hiawatha. They had clearly never played
before and they were holding up play. Tee times for foursomes start every 8
minutes. A Ranger went down and threw them off the course and refunded their
money with tokens for the driving range. So, when the flood came and the
course flooded, many people at the golf course believe, Musich must have
thought, âThis is a great time to get even.â