Well, Dr. Clyde Young didn’t know what a writer he was until he wrote that column about his beloved putter.
On May 14, a Monday, between 6:30 and 7 p.m., his golf putter disappeared. He was devastated.
That might have been the only thing that would prompt him to write a newspaper column.
“Stolen,” he wrote in the May 26 Salisbury Post. It was “picked up” near the bushes at the upper portion of the Country Club’s golf course.
When Harold Morris and David Hines opened the shop the next day, Sunday morning about 7:30, they found the putter leaning against the door.
And Clyde’s reaction was instant.
“I said, ‘Well, don’t take any fingerprints since it came back. We wouldn’t proceed any further.’ ”
He figured the Salisbury Post has some power to get things back, considering that it published his column about the devastating loss of that beloved putter, and it re-appeared.
“I had two calls. Merle Harrington called and left a message. He said, ‘I don’t want you to stop playing golf. I’ve got an old putter I’ll give you.’
“Then another man called and asked me, ‘Did you get it back?’ I don’t know who it was. And then we had a cook-out, and everybody was concerned about the putter. About 10, 15 people came up to me.
“I took the Fifth Amendment,” he says. He had laid the putter down because “I was chipping, and when I went back, it was gone.
“I think a young boy took it, but it came back. That column in the Post made him realize he had a conscience.”
It was Sunday, and Harold Morris is one of the part-time workers at the pro shop.
“And he found it at the door when he came in to work Sunday,” Clyde says. “He called me early in the morning, and after he told me he’d found it, he asked me, ‘Did I wake you up?’
“I told him I’d wake up for that news. I haven’t played a round with it yet. I’ve been too busy to play. I’ll get it in use sometime this week, and I won’t ever lay it dow again.
“It was good Salisbury Post community service. If I’d put it in an ad, it would have cost me money.
“I’m not mad any more. I’m not sad any more. Now I’m glad,” and he laughed, “I’m a poet. We called him a thief, but he’s redeemed himself, and I’ve got my putter back.”
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Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com.