The Perfect Picture

Steven R. Lundin

I found the perfect picture on the Internet. The black and white photograph showed a golf course scene from 1943 -- the only year in history the PGA cancelled the season of professional golf -- and the picture showed a golfer standing in the middle of a tee box, his body coiled after driving his golf ball, his club held high above one shoulder, eyes staring down the fairway in front of him, and his lips lifted in a curious grin. He wore the slacks, collared shirt, and knit sweater of an earlier time, and he was surrounded by a crowd whose three hundred eyes stared in the same direction as the golfer’s. For the most part, the men in the crowd wore jackets and ties. Many wore hats. The women wore either pleated skirts with blouses or long dresses buttoned at the throat. The horns of two tubas were visible above the crowd, and these were turned as though looking down the fairway like everyone else. What was really special about the photograph was not the emotion captured in the scene, not the men and women packed about the tee, some sitting, several kneeling, and all turned and looking as though a bride had just appeared beside her father, but it was the large number of military men who were interspersed in the crowd. I studied the picture long enough to see white sailor caps, uniforms with bars and stripes, and a large number of men of significant rank.

Not only was 1943 the year without professional golf, it was also the year that a unit of the U.S. Army took over the El Rancho Golf Course in Los Angeles, California. The 170^th Field Artillery Battalion occupied the El Rancho from July 26, 1943 until they left on September 3^rd that same year. The ninety-four year old man who showed me his documentation confirming the event is John Todd, or “Slick,” as he is called, and it was Slick who spent several days answering all of my questions. You took over the golf course? Really? Then what happened?

Slick had been twenty-six back in 1943, and he had been an officer in the 170^th. He told me everything he could remember. The 170^th had been sent to Los Angeles to protect the southern U.S. coast against a Japanese invasion that never came. He said the 170^th practiced firing their guns at several costal positions and described parking artillery equipment all over the golf course. I will never forget the way Slick laughed and shook his head while telling me about a senior officer in the Army who visited Camp El Rancho. The officer had gotten “spitting mad” after discovering that men under his command had rutted the hard summer ground of the golf course. Slick said the officer was a golfer.

What a set-up! I always claimed I would someday write a book, but it was not until interviewing Slick that I started writing. I wrote seven days a week, beginning at four in the morning, on week days, weekends, sick days, holidays, and vacation days, and I tried to do so without taking time away from my family and job. Of course I set my story in that year without professional golf, on that occupied El Rancho Golf Course in L.A., and I made my protagonist a private in the 170^th Field Artillery Battalion. I struggled with the title until I discovered one morning that an albatross, in addition to being a sea bird or a person or thing that hinders someone’s achievement, is also a golf term. To shoot an albatross on a golf course is to hit something as rare as it is beautiful: a double-eagle. I remember wanting to title my book To Kill an Albatross, but I thought better out of respect for Harper Lee. Instead, I titled my work Shooting an Albatross.

I said the black-and-white photograph of a golfer surrounded by a crowd was perfect because it is a perfect representation of a scene in my book. The first time I saw the picture, I knew I had to have it. I found it incredible that the picture was from 1943, taken on a golf course, and had a golfer surrounded by a crowd of civilians and military men. I needed it for a sixty-second video trailer I am having made to put on Amazon, YouTube, ShootingAnAlbatross.com, and several other Internet sites where readers look to find books.

I printed the screen shot and discovered that UCLA owns the rights to the picture. I next called, got transferred, left a message, and sent a follow-up email identifying the photograph, explaining the year, my book, the army, and the El Rancho golf course, and I asked what I had to do to obtain permission to use it. I just had to have the picture! I said was willing to pay.

After two days of waiting like a little boy getting his first puppy, I received the call. Between a legal department, an issue with image resolution, and an uncertain number of weeks of waiting to find out if I could pay $2,000 or more for the picture, I let go of the dream of getting the perfect picture for the video trailer of my first novel. My mistake was thinking the library archive of a large university could move at speed of business. They could not. The perfect picture, it turns out, will not be in my video trailer.

I returned to the Internet and burned more time searching for a less than perfect picture. The image search criteria were easy: 1943, golf, Army, Los Angeles, Hollywood, and crowd. On the fourth page of search results, I found a black-and-white picture of a tee-box that showed three men dressed in casual Army uniforms, all looking at a fourth serviceman who had just hit his drive, and there was a wooden bench visible on which leaned their leather golf bags. That’s it. There was no crowd. The men were playing alone, but their photograph reminded me of yet another scene I recalled seeing in my mind when I wrote the book. While the perfect picture had captured a moment of great emotion, the less-than-perfect picture captured a simple scene of the Army playing 1943 golf. It would do. I could see my protagonist standing tight there at the tee but, alas, for identical reasons, neither the less-than-perfect nor the perfect picture will be in my book’s video trailer.

After I gave up the perfect and the less-than-perfect pictures, I did what authors do who self-publish their books. Instead of getting what they want, they take what they can get. I wrote Shooting an Albatross for readers to see the story play in their minds – just like a movie. After you read the story, please spend sixty seconds watching the video trailer. Who knows? By then, I may have gotten the perfect picture.