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Welcome to Johnny’s Front Nine

THIS IS THE STORY of an obsession that became a career, and then something of a landmark. It is also a well-kept secret of those who are local.

Arland Grover moved onto a small farm near here in the early 50s. He was an experienced farmer of Amish stock who “went modern.” Oh, he and his family attended the Old Brethren Church out near North Manchester, and they still dress plain, though the kids’ clothes have zippers and buttons.

Arland drove a car.

Black.

He drove a tractor on the farm, painted black over the original John Deere green. All of his farm equipment is black.

Arland’s son Johnny was... Well, simpler than his parents. He was smart enough, but it seems his head just didn’t have room for as many things as other people’s. He quit school after eighth grade and went to work full time on the farm with his father. Farm life suited Johnny. He could plow, disc and plant just fine, as long as his dad told him what to do.

But what Johnny loved most was to mow. And three or four times a year, he mowed the clover fields and turned them into neat stacks of baled hay.

It wasn’t just the hay that Johnny mowed. He used his old push mower to keep his family’s lawn pristine at least once a week. He used the hay mower to keep the ditches trimmed for half a mile on either side of their farm, on both sides of the road.

Arland was a little indulgent, because he bought the boy a riding mower (painted it black) back in 1965. That was when things began to change. Arland’s lawn started getting bigger. Every chance Johnny had to reclaim a portion of unused ground around the house or barns, he used his meagre allowance to buy grass seed and fertilizer. Then he would anxiously await the opportunity to mow his new patch of grass.

Neighbors noticed how nice the Grover place looked and a couple of them hired Johnny to take care of their lawns with similar results. He coaxed grass out of every plantable corner of their yards, seeming instinctively to know if it needed a blue grass hybrid, or a local wild grass, and keeping the lawns immaculately trimmed.

It was in the winter of 1978 that Arland got sick. In the spring he told Johnny what he’d have to do for this year’s planting. He carefully designated which field would be corn and which soybeans and wheat. The one ten-acre strip to the west of the barn had always been hay, so Arland did not feel that he needed to give specific instructions for it. That turned out to be his mistake.

Miraculously, Arland made a slow recovery from what had appeared to be a terminal illness, and in July he took his first step out the back door of the house. He could see from there the lush carpet of young soybeans right where he said to plant them. The corn was already waist high, and Arland was bursting with pride in his son. Then he made his slow way around to the west side of the house and blinked in bewilderment. There was the richest, greenest lawn he had ever seen in his life. Ten acres of it.

Johnny figured that since his dad didn’t say anything about hay, he’d turn it into a lawn and mow it. Arland stood and stared as he watched Johnny out there on his newest model garden tractor (painted black) mowing that beautiful expanse down to a beautiful uniform inch-and-a-half in length. Johnny was as happy as he could be.

Arland came face to face with reality. Johnny was never really going to be a farmer. If Arland died, Johnny would turn the whole 275 acres into one big lawn to mow. So, Arland decided to rent out most of the farm and plan for his son’s future. Johnny was 25 years old and all he wanted to do was plant grass and mow.

The place was paid for. The rent would provide a small annual income. He would reserve thirty acres around the house for Johnny to plant and mow. And, by golly, if he was going to mow that much ground, it might as well be put to good use. Arland made a trip to the library that fall and started reading everything he could about golf courses. And he laid out a pretty nice nine holes around the farm. He convinced Johnny of the need to do a little grading on the property to make it more interesting, and to plant a few trees. Johnny balked at sand traps, but Arland insisted, and once Johnny understood how much he was going to get to mow, he began to get enthusiastic. The next year, Johnny’s Front Nine was born.

Folks don’t need a reservation. They pay only $8.00 for a nine-hole round of golf, which they leave in a box at the first tee. And Johnny gets to mow.

The only problem for serious golfers is that there is no rough at Johnny’s Front Nine.

And don’t ask me to tell you where it is. The folks around Willow Mills mean for this to stay a well-kept secret.

The Willow Mills Paper Route

WAYNE THOMPSON delivered papers as a kid. You already know that. But you might not know what this kid had to do to get things going. He was in the spring of his sixth grade year when he got the opportunity to deliver the Wabash Plain Dealer to the Willow Mills route. It looked like a great summer job for the avid reader who was looking for more ways to buy books.

But Wayne lived just outside town south of the tracks when he was growing up and the rural delivery truck came by and shoved a paper in the box on a post at the end of the drive sometime before Wayne went to school. He wasn’t sure quite what time. He assumed everyone had a box at the road. He was about to find out the kind of service he was being asked to perform.

At church the Sunday before he was to start learning the route with the rep from the Plain Dealer, Lester Brown stopped him. “So, you’re going to be delivering the morning paper?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Wayne politely.

“Well,” said Lester, “you have to lift up a little on the storm door to open it when you put the paper between the storm and the front door. I like to keep it dry.”

Wayne was non-plussed. “Don’t you have a box at the street?”

Lester laughed. “Oh no, country boy. This is a town route. We get our paper delivered to the door.” Wayne’s image of himself riding down the street on his bike shoving papers in boxes evaporated. Sure enough, next morning at 5:00 the Plain Dealer rep showed up at Jess & Jim’s Pyramid Gas Station out at South River Road with a load of papers. Wayne’s dad got him up at 4:30 and barely out the door in time to pedal across town to meet the rep.

“Might as well leave your bike here and pick it up when we’re done,” the old man said. “We’re already late getting started and it’s faster to walk.” And walk they did. Wayne found the first day confusing, exhausting, and cold. When they finished walking up and down all the streets on the West Side, they crossed over and delivered on the East Side, ending back north at Jess and Jim’s at a quarter past 6:00.

“Wow, that was a lot of work,” Wayne exclaimed.

“We’re not done yet,” the old man said. “This bag has the papers in it for String Town. Grab your bike and I’ll meet you there. And be quick about it. Contract says all papers will be delivered by 6:30.”

Wayne grabbed his bike, took the bag of papers and pedaled south as fast has he could muster himself. The Plain Dealer rep followed him in his old Ford station wagon and pointed out the dozen houses in String Town that got papers, then told Wayne that he’d see him in the morning and not to be a second past 5:00.

Wayne got home and nearly fell asleep over breakfast, then got back on his bike and rode to school. And so it went. Each day the old guy would meet Wayne at Jess and Jim’s and they would deliver the papers, faster and faster until Wayne could do the whole route in an hour plus change. Then on Friday the old guy told Wayne that he’d drop the papers Saturday morning at 5:00 and be back at 10:00 to do collections. Wayne could do the route solo Saturday.

For the first two weeks, Wayne struggled through the delivery, but gradually it became easier and easier to get up at 4:30 and do the route. It was always light by the time he finished in the summer and he sometimes stopped at Josephine’s for hot chocolate when he was finished. But the newspaper doesn’t go just through the summer and Wayne decided to keep delivering after school started up in the fall. It wasn’t until he was trudging through three-foot snow drifts that Wayne realized that he had a year-round permanent job.

It was a good job. The paper sponsored contests for selling new subscriptions and other services, and Wayne was a frequent “Carrier of the Month” even though his little route in Willow Mills was nothing as big as the ones in Wabash proper. He went with the other carriers to baseball games, to a dude ranch, and once on a week-long trip to the New York World’s Fair. It was a hard decision when he reached the end of his Freshman year in High School to give the route up to a little kid who’d been following him on it for the better part of two months wanting to help.

And in all his time on the route, only once were the papers not all delivered by 6:30. That was a morning that Albert Bailey’s prize bull… Well, that’s another story.

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