Putt Up or Shut Up

Just downbeach of Atlantic City, where I grew up, summers meant trips to the Boardwalk. A fistful of dollar bills bought you an entire evening of rides, games of chance and, above all, some of the best miniature golf in the world. Ocean City, Wildwood, Asbury Park . . . crack all the jokes you want about New Jersey, no one outdoes the Garden State when it comes to miniature golf.

Which is why, although I’ve lived in L.A. 10 years, if I felt the urge to putt a green ball through a battery of revolving chess pieces or into a clown’s mouth, it seemed to require a trip back East. Then I was turned on to Castle Park in Sherman Oaks. Castle Park is a dying beed; only one listing exists in the San Fernando Valley Yellow Pages under “Golf Courses--Miniature.” Step through the faux portcullis at the end of the wooden drawbridge and you enter a bygone world of innocence, plus batting cages and an arcade brimming with video games. (Wander through a family amusement park’s video arcade and you’ll amaze yourself at the number of times you utter, “In my day. . .”--as in: “In my day, we got three games for a quarter.”)

My cohort and I selected the second of Castle Park’s three courses, none of which features a single moving obstacle. Not a windmill, monkey tail or swinging boot to be found. At $5.50 per adult for a round of miniature golf--don’t get me started on what a round of Boardwalk golf cost in my day--a person expects a little challenge. Although the course paled by Jersey standards, there was the excitement of climbing the chain-link fence to retrieve my ball after it hopped the wall on the back nine and finding myself yards from the hurtling traffic of the 405 Freeway. Not exactly the sort of moving obstacles I had in mind. I did not take the penalty stroke.

In the arcade, a tiny tot guarded by a deflated teenager blindly flung Skee Balls. My own Skee Ball skills were honed on Atlantic City’s central pier, across from my great-aunt’s schlocky jewelry store, where you could also win prizes playing Pokeno, a game where you rolled balls down a wooden ramp for a dime, trying to score the best poker hand, an invaluable learning tool for any 10-year-old. The kids at Castle Park have to settle for games with insidious titles like “Feed Big Bertha,” whack-a-rodent and other dubious hand-eye coordination exercises, preparing tomorrow’s teenagers for Jenny Craig and careers in pest extermination. In my day, arcade games weren’t nearly so high-tech. We wouldn’t dream of plopping ourselves in front of “House of the Dead” while a series of ax- and chainsaw-wielding zombies, gargoyles and whatnot raced toward us, exploding in graphic green bile. Then again, I’m sure we’d have thought it was pretty cool.

The clientele on the Friday night we visited was, as you might expect, largely adolescent. Castle Park is the kind of place where you’re old at 20; my buddy and I, at 35, went completely unnoticed, a couple of walking corpses escaped from the “House of the Dead” game. In my day, kids had more respect for their elders.