Sometimes, all it takes is a good tip to find a lost golf course.
Some tips are better than others.
And some are not.
A fellow with a mutual interest in the history of Minnesota golf courses recently shared this find, pictured above, with me. And my eyes perked up. (Do eyes do that? I suppose not. Well, you get my drift.)
The photo is the front of an old postcard that is up for purchase on eBay. Title: “Greetings • Brownsville, Minn.” The tipster suspected, correctly, that I might have a particular interest.
Well, yes, I did. I had heard of Brownsville. It’s a little town of 466 wedged into a Mississippi River bluffside in extreme southeastern Minnesota. Iowa lies 15 miles to the south and the Wisconsin border a half-mile to the east, the water in the main channel of the Mississippi floating around it.
Brownsville also is 12 miles from Caledonia, the seat of Houston County, where I grew up. It is where my late father, Warren, was born and raised. Brownsville, or more likely in one of the small channels on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi, is where I caught the biggest fish I ever caught — a carp. Hooked it as a kid, on the river with my dad. (We tried baking it. It smelled bad and tasted worse. Haven’t tried to catch a fish larger than a bluegill or sunny since.) Brownsville is where, as a kid of about 11, I played Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” on the jukebox at Bissen’s Tavern and developed an appreciation for country music that lasted until I was … 12. (I do still like that song, though.) Brownsville also is where I once waited, alone, in a friend’s car for about three hours after midnight in the root beer stand parking lot while he made out with his girlfriend in her car. Gosh, that was fun.
So I know Brownsville. Nice town, unusual memories notwithstanding. But that postcard? That had me baffled.
For one, I knew there was no current golf course in Brownsville. For two, I had never heard of one existing there. For three, it’s hard to imagine such a small town in such a relatively remote location could ever have sustained a golf course. For four, I couldn’t think of more than one or two spots alongside the Brownsville bluffs that would have been large enough for even a pint-sized golf course.
For five, though the distinctive facing on the bluff looked familiar, it didn’t look like any bluffside facing I remembered in or near Brownsville.
So it’s off to Google maps. …
I began a virtual drive up Minnesota Highway 26, starting about five miles south of Brownsville, looking for a coulee alongside the river that might somehow have been big enough to hold even five or six modest-sized golf holes. Made it nearly to the Highway 26 junction with Highway 16, just south of La Crescent.
Nope. Nothing big enough or wide enough for golf, unless the golfers were skinny and walking sideways.
Puzzling. Until the light went on. Actually, it was more like somebody inside my head had put his hand on the light switch, flipped it on and off 75 times and said, “Knock knock, puddinhead, you know what golf course that is.”
And now, to Google images:
Another postcard from an eBay auction. Compare the rock facings on the bluff in the two postcards. They are identical.
I figgered it out. Took long enough, but I did it.
The second postcard is titled in part, “Grandad Bluff, La Crosse WI.”
Of course. The scene on the “Brownsville, Minn.” postcard was not from Brownsville at all. Not even from the same state, though a case can be made for saying it’s close by.
The “Brownsville” postcard in fact shows Grandad Bluff, a noted geographical landmark in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a dozen miles up the Mississippi River. And indeed, there was — and is — a golf course there.
At the time the photo was taken, the golf course was named La Crosse Country Club, a historic golf course with roots that dated to the 1890s. Today, the course is the city-owned Forest Hills Golf Course. My best guess is that the green shown on the scorecard is from a hole on the course’s front nine (La Crosse-area friends, help me out).
Of course, all of this — the search for the golf course, the silly stories about Brownsville, the entire post — would have been rendered moot if I had scrolled down on the eBay listing and noticed the scan of the back of the postcard:
Knock knock, puddinhead.
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