Surrealism with Disposable Pencils

[akirlu]

Thanks to supergee, I see that the man who single-handedly invented American-style, windmills-and-dinosaurs miniature golf has shuffled off into the infinite. Ave atque vale, old soldier. As Jon Carroll notes, obituaries are a great source of finding out about people you should already have known about. I had always wondered why miniature golf in Sweden is just a plain course, with no gee gaws, while there's all this fantastical Brobingnagian cruft associated with miniature golf in the U.S. Answer: all miniature golf used to be the way it is still today, in Sweden, and then this fellow Ralph J. Lomma decided that what it needed to become a growth industry was a bit of juicing up. He was, among other things, the inventor of the windmill obstacle, and the two level hole. He made and sold the various widgets associated with sprucing up your own miniature golf course so that entrepreneurs could populate their own courses with various trick obstacles and surreal juxtapositions among the denizens of fairy tale, legend, and paleontology. And so we have another bizarre artifact of the era of American prosperity that brought you the roadside motel in the shape of Indian tipis, donut shops in the shape of giant concrete donuts, and the countless Tiny Towns, and Frontier Villages and Happy Hollows that used to dot the American landscape.

Not that I wasn't already pleased to have gone on the Bentocon expedition to indoor, glow-in-the-dark pirate miniature golf, but now I feel like it was a fitting memorial, if slightly before the fact.

Comments

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I've only played miniature golf a couple of times, but I have fond memories of both of them. Every once in a while I see an elaborate miniature golf course from the freeway in some distant suburb. Maybe I'll stop and photograph the next one I see.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Besides the oldest US mini golf course up in Irondoquoit, there's also an indoor one a bit farther away that's illuminated by black light. It also has some kinetic obstacles, though overall it still doesn't quite seem worth the drive, so we've only been there once.

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

Here's to you, Ralph. May you always hit that clown in the mouth, wherever you are.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I love miniature golf in a nostalgia sort of way. But I wonder what it says about me that I thought the best part of the article was the way the author presented his contact e-mail. (Aside from disembodied shouts of "English Major!")