Last Dance at the Ranch, Part II

We continued to drink at the bar until we were among the last five people there. It was only about 1:00 A.M. but we could tell that Debbie and Kelly were spent. So we cashed out and headed back to our cabin.

The road from the clubhouse to the cabin complex is a long, dark one. It’s well covered by a canopy of old-growth trees and guarded on each side by a pair of grassy ditches. I was driving and thought it might be fun to drive in the ditch on the right side of the road than on the road itself. But it didn’t work out so well. We quickly discovered that the grass covering was deceptive; the surface below was soft and muddy. We were stuck.

Luckily, my car has four-wheel-drive. But I was too drunk to remember how to engage that wonderful option. It took several minutes to figure out how to operate my own car. Which, by the way, I’ve had for six years.

When we arrived at the gate to the cabin complex, we found that it was locked. No big deal, when we checked in, they gave us a code to punch into a little key pad thingy that would open the gate.

“Steve, do you have the piece of paper with the gate code on it?”

“No, I gave it to you. Wait, let me check my pockets, No, I think I gave it to you.”

I checked my pockets too. “It’s written on the paper folder that the room keys are in. Do you have the room keys?”

“Let me check my pockets, No, I think I gave them to you.”

Shit.

We got out of the car and found that it was pretty easy to just push the gate open. Fuck their security system. The electric gate is nothing more than a device that says “Hey, don’t go in there,” and just as effective.

Now, without the paper folder that the room keys are in, we have no room keys and no way to get into our room.

Fuck.

But we decided to drunkenly move ahead. There was no turning back. We went through too much already. We would figure out something.

Turns out that the windows on our cabin were just as secure as the front gate; I slid one open and climbed though. Easy.

Although we had already checked in, and dropped our bags in the room, we hadn’t yet unloaded the
giant ice chest from my car. It’s pretty heavy and takes two people to carry it. As we slid it out of the back of my FJ, we discovered the little paper folder that the room keys are in. There it was, right next to the ice chest, where we would remember to find it.

We spent the next couple of hours sitting on the front deck of our cabin drinking cocktails and smoking and getting more and more insanely drunk. Apparently, we were getting louder and louder too because a security guard came by and paid us a visit.

“It’s a little late,” he said politely. “You gentlemen are going to have to go inside your cabin. Other guests are trying to sleep,”

“But we aren’t allowed to smoke in there,” answered Steve.

“Well, you can’t stay out here,” countered the security guard.

That’s when I let him know how shitty the gate was as a security measure and how easy it was to break into our own room. For some reason, I thought that by telling him this it would somehow demonstrate that we were not a couple of drunken fools and that we should be allowed to remain on the front deck while we finished our drinks and a few more cigarettes. But it didn’t work.

“Go inside or we’ll have to ask you to leave the property.”


JUMP TO PART III

Last Dance at the Ranch, Part I

A few weeks ago, I found out that Stevinson Ranch Golf Club would be closing for good on July 18, 2015. What a shame. The place has been a source of numerous drunken adventures and great times for many years.

In the early 1990's, a former professional golfer named George Kelly took a piece of land that had been in his family for over a hundred years and transformed it into a beautifully laid-out golf course. It’s a clear nod to the early days of golf architecture in America, importing the character and traditions of the great Scottish Links courses.

By September of 1995, the course was ready for action. It immediately gained notoriety as Best New Upscale Public Course in California and became the site of the 1996 and 1997 U. S. Open Qualifying matches. It also consistently ranked in the top 25 courses in California and even made the list of top-five public courses in the United States. Most recently the readers of Golf Digest awarded it 4 1/2 Stars out of a possible five for the overall golf experience. As far as California goes, only Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill are rated higher.

But this isn’t a story about golf. It’s a tale of drinking.

A few years ago, my friend Steve did a little research and found that Stevinson Ranch is located about 30 minutes east of Merced, California, and about an hour-and-a-half from where we live in Fresno. He also learned that it’s extremely affordable to play. Amazingly, it’s not a place where you aren’t allowed to wear a ball cap indoors and where you are required to keep your shirt tucked in at all times. It maintains a laid-back atmosphere. And, it has private cottages and a spa and a pool and a restaurant and a full-service bar. We decided to give it a try.

When we arrived for the first time, we were surprised at how rustic the buildings are. The “private cottages” are really just a group of pretty nice single-wide mobile homes that resemble cabins and that are arranged around a small community area that has a barbeque, pool, Jacuzzi, and a bunch of round tables with umbrellas. Nothing more than something you would see at a standard apartment complex anywhere in California. The Restaurant, bar, and pro shop were also housed in a few modular buildings that were arranged around a huge and beautiful wooden deck with plenty of outdoor seating, a fire pit, and an outdoor stage for entertainment.

We usually rent one of the cottages for a couple of nights and drink and golf as much as we can for the weekend. This trip - our final trip – would be no different.

We left Fresno at 5:30 PM on Thursday with our clubs, a change of clothes, a carton of Marlboro Lights, and a big ice chest full of Guinness, a handle of Kraken, two 750 ml bottles of Beefeater, and a collection of mixers.

After checking in, we headed directly to the bar and started with cocktails. It didn’t surprise us that the bartenders, Debbie and Kelly, were already shit-faced. Regulars had been buying them shots all day and they all had the terrific what-are-they-going-to-do…fire-me? attitude. It was a great time.

As the sun began to set, the place filled up with more and more people. And we learned quickly that most of the customers were people just like us; they were all there for one last dance at the ranch.

Well, there was no fucking around in the bar that night. Everyone was there to drink. And everyone was drinking hard. The mood was both somber and upbeat at the same time and the spirit escalated quickly. There were older men playing dice games, even-older women dancing, a handful of young guys playing some sort of drinking game that involved each person mimicking a complex set of gestures and movements of the player before him, and many other people telling stories of great times at this wonderful place. And I was proud to be a part of this collection of assholes.

At about 10:00 P.M., someone decided to buy a round of drinks for the entire bar. I wasn’t sure who sponsored the round, so I simply yelled “THANK YOU FOR THE DRINK!” into the crowd. A cheer broke out from the masses.

Soon, someone else bought a round for the entire bar. And then someone else, and another after that. Steve looked at me and laughed. “Hey Debbie,” he called out to the bartender, “the next round is on me.”

“I’ll get the one after that,” I added. We were all caught up in the madness of the strange and wonderful party.

Pretty soon, Debbie and Kelly were unable to make cocktails and simply resorted to making huge batches of whatever they thought people might drink. It was working out fine because everyone was happy with whatever was served to them.UMP TO PART II