Two weeks ago, I was at the Toronto airport, in a section reserved for US-bound flights. For the first time in my life, I was the only one in the security line. I was the only one at the Starbucks. At a deserted airport restaurant, I overheard an idle waitress describing how—due to the White House’s relentless fixation on conquering Canada, and the resultant decline in travel to the US—they’d had to lay off half their staff. It wasn’t a tremendous moment to be an American. I felt fairly chagrined.
Just days later, I was emailed a press release for an Americana-themed mini-golf popup at the Wharf entitled “Putt Across America,” whose promotional copy included the phrase “from tee to shining tee.” I laughed, recoiled, and then immediately reserved a spot. Putt Across America was billed as an early celebration of America’s 250th birthday, which I was in too sour a mood to observe. But it seemed like a funny project. Could tapping a pocked ball into 18 America-themed holes while looking out at the Washington Channel make some kind of dent in my despair?
On Friday afternoon, I arrived at a small enclosure behind the Politics and Prose at the Wharf. There, I found an expanse of emerald astroturf dotted with a jumble of sculptural objects recognizable from magnets and postcards and airport tchotchke kiosks: Lady Liberty, that heinous LOVE statue from Philadelphia, a Hawaiian tiki totem carved from fake stone. I’d invited a friend. With exaggerated irony, we grabbed golf balls that came in red, white, and blue.
The course began in Boston. We putted past boxes of tea at the harbor, traveled onward to New York, then voyaged up to Niagara Falls. That one was fun: the plexiglass water feature splashed my legs when I approached the hole. But here arose the question of geography. Why would one go from New York City all the way up to Niagara Falls before returning south to Philadelphia? The course we were charting was absurd.
“Who planned this expedition?” my friend joked, and—based on a story he’d just told—I said, “your parents.” Back in 1976, when he was eight, my friend’s family embarked on a bicentennial road trip to see this vast nation. Apparently, his folks profoundly underestimated just how vast was America’s splendor, so the trip took longer than planned. He described it as the “worst vacation I’ve ever taken.” Hopelessly behind schedule, they celebrated America’s 200th birthday in a motel parking lot full of snakes.
Approaching the White House-themed hole, my friend’s complaints continued. “It’s much better looking than the actual thing,” he groused of Putt Across America’s odd replica of the Resolute Desk, reminding me of his strange and bitter grudge against that historic block of wood. As he grumbled, my golf ball landed in the rough. “Just start over, we won’t count it,” he told me. When I did, he began to softly chant “stop the steal.”
It was at Cape Canaveral, Florida, that Putt Across America really got cooking. A mini-golf course should, in my opinion, be a showcase of outsider art, a tour of strange and unruly sculptures under the pretext of sport. At that hole, we encountered a gator with a gaping maw, a pretty flamingo, an astronaut, a palm. After a couple of strokes, my ball landed beneath a bulbous, Jetsons-looking spacecraft. My enthusiasm for America spiked.
In the next stretch, we meandered from New Orleans to Chicago to Mount Rushmore—a small replica that, blessedly, lacked a stone visage of Trump. After that, we got lost. In search of hole 12, we ambled all across the nation (past Seattle and San Francisco, doubling back to Philly) then finally arrived in San Antonio, which had no Alamo, no River Walk, and no recognizable landmarks of any kind. But there was a fun wagon wheel to spin and a fencepost adorned with a longhorn skull, which people in Texas really do love.
In Los Angeles, I putted a leisurely four strokes atop the gorgeous shadow of a palm. In San Francisco, the ball rolled down a hillside past pastel townhouses into a trolley car. At that point, any pretense of geographic coherence fell apart: We scrambled from the Grand Canyon (red rocks, armadillos) to Mauna Kea (a fiery volcano, pelicans) and then onto the final hole, Las Vegas, where I shot the ball past stacks of poker chips and into a roulette wheel. It slid down on lucky 13.
As my friend’s ball fell into that final Vegas hole, his spirits seemed lifted. “That wasn’t as bad as most of the times I’ve played mini golf,” he said. Then he added, “but maybe that’s because I’m not with my kids.” I agreed. Putt Across America was fun. We told stories, we missed shots. Once, as my ball teetered on the rim of a hole, I told him—dramatically—that America just relentlessly breaks your heart. He and I could leave if we wanted to; we both have family abroad. But when I asked if he was considering it, he said no. And exiting Putt Across America—Bob Marley floating from the staff tent, the weekend rolling in—that seemed like an okay choice.
