Years ago in Lake Havasu City, there was a miniature golf course located in the old Mudshark Pizza building on Swanson Boulevard. This is now the newly remodeled, yet still vacant Foundry building, with the upscale looking structure having a for sale sign on it for a couple of years, that sign just recently disappearing.
My wife and kids visited this defunct Havasu miniature golf course a couple of times on vacation in the 80s. It wasn’t large by any means in comparison to Golfland-Sunsplash in Mesa, but did give us something different to do besides the lake, or hanging out at Holiday Inn swimming pool. I’m referring to the old Holiday Inn that’s now named Hampton Inn.
I can’t recall if any of us ever got a hole-in-one while golfing at this local facility but it’s highly probable. It’s doubtful we ever visited one of these miniature golf courses without getting several.
I’ve played at numerous miniature golf course throughout the country with my favorite being a Putt Putt Miniature Golf course in Manhattan, Kansas. This franchised course sat next to a shopping center in the city, and was owned by an older man and his wife. It was meticulously maintained, which is what counts most to me. There’s nothing worse than putting and having your ball derailed by an acorn or gum wrapper.
At 12:27 PM, on March 30, 1981. I was playing this Kansas course with my wife and her brother, Calvin Freeman. The reason I know the exact time and day was that President Reagan was shot at that precise moment.
The old guy owning the business came running out of his little golf shack and told us the shocking news, quickly piping a live report over his outside speakers. Besides that owner, we were the only three people present at this time. Memory of such sticks in my brain like it was yesterday.
A year or so later I revisited the place on a rather cloudy day. It was just my brother-in-law at this point, with the owner watching us from inside the hut. We’d reminded him beforehand about being there when Reagan was shot, and he remembered things well.
On that second visit, Calvin and I were in a tightly contested game when lightning and thunder came up with a fury. Kansas electrical storms have a way of doing that just like in Arizona. Neither of us wanted to stop even after rain started falling. The owner, evidently afraid that lightning would strike us, handed out a refund including two passes for free games.
A couple of years went by before we drove back to Manhattan solely for the purpose of using those passes, finishing that game, and finally declaring a winner. Pulling into the parking lot, sadly, this golf course was gone with nothing showing that it’d ever been there. That happens a lot to these entertainment facilities as the one in Havasu is testament to.
Something else we often did on our vacations was ride go-carts, especially the Malibu Gran Prix cars in Phoenix and Tucson. Those bigger Malibu cars had 440cc snowmobile engines in them and were quite fast. My daughter was in one of their conventional lawnmower-engine powered rigs. It was her first time behind the wheel.
Most all of these machines have remote kill switches that employees use to stop a cart if something goes wrong. This device didn’t work on Miranda’s when she drove off the track, underneath a chain link fence, ultimately crashing into a big thick hedge. My daughter was unhurt, yet the manager wasn’t where nerves are concerned. This guy was so stressed that he gave us free tickets for additional rides, including drinks. I suppose the fellow had potential lawsuit on his mind although we’re not that type of people.
Havasu at one time had a nice go-cart track located on Lake Havasu Avenue, with it best seen from Highway 95. The cars they used were not on the same caliber of Malibu Gran Prix, but fun to drive, nonetheless. I visited that track a couple of times before it was shutdown, finding things a blast like I generally do with these type of venues.
On another such track in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, sometime in the 1970s, it was extremely hot outside, and the sweltering asphalt was oily and slick. Drivers were told not to leave the course because sand on the outskirts of the raceway would go flying into machines, and they’d have to thoroughly be cleaned before reuse. Doing so was grounds for immediate expulsion.
Thinking there was no way one of these low-horsepower cars could possibly slide off the course, I pushed mine hard into a sharp curve, and it did just that, with me ending up stuck in a sand pit of sorts, something like those sand traps in actual golf courses. They weren’t very happy and I wasn’t allowed to reenter the track for obvious reason.
I’ve scored many hole-in-ones at miniature golf courses over the years, but most likely, I’m one of few people having done so in a go-cart as well. Sometime in the late 1960s, there was a go-cart track in Anchorage, Alaska, three miles from where we lived. I would’ve been around sixteen at the time. This seasonal track was located on Boniface Parkway near a tool rental place. Going there one night with several friends, we raced each other in some doggy, three horsepower, Briggs and Stratton powered carts.
One of the employees suddenly appeared in a cart and blew around us like we were standing still. Observing that he had one hand reaching around back of the engine, I knew exactly what this guy was doing. Having owned gas powered mowers going back to the beginning of time, it’s easy to disable a governor allowing one of these engines to rev beyond its limit.
On our next race, I reached back and opened things up, so to speak, exactly like this attendant had been doing. Whizzing by my friends like my cart was on steroids, a young worker was evidently screaming obscenities at me, although I couldn’t exactly hear what choice words he was using. Just as this employee started to run out on the track and flag me down, my cart backfired with a pop, and then departed this life with a big cloud of blue smoke following. The attendant was extremely angry saying that I’d just put a hole in the piston. Evidently a valve came loose and that’s all she wrote.
When I told this irate fellow I was only copying him, the guy quickly calmed down, probably not wanting such information leaking out to his boss. That’s when my friend, Rod Sanborn, came up from behind and slapped me on the back. Much like golfers do to a fellow player after they’ve hit a hole-in-one, Rod said something like this to me,
“Good job Hankins!”
He didn’t need to tell me. I already knew.
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