I have always loved throwing and playing catch with a Frisbee. I still love to watch them fly, whether I’m throwing it or somebody else is. I know I will be throwing a Frisbee or a disc until I am a very old man, possibly, hopefully till the day I die. A little story about how the Frisbee has been a life saver, kind of. One Summer day, late June in 1976 a buddy and me were playing catch in Ritter Park and this girl was walking her and her roommate’s dogs and like a normal 24 year old guy I was flirting with her, throwing close and stuff. I guess I was showing off a little. I really thought I could throw a Frisbee back then. Ha. Anyway, I finally started talking to her. She was real nice and had a pretty nice butt too. We talked for a while and she left. I couldn’t get her out of my head. A couple days later I was back in the park and ran into her again and since then we haven’t been apart for more than two weeks total, and one of those was when her dad had hip surgery last summer. I guess you could say that the Frisbee brought us together. She has been the love of my life. We got married on July 8, 1978. Adele has been a great wife and means the world to me. She has never, ever told me that I couldn't play golf or practice putting. And I'm talking thousands of rounds and over 1,000,000 putts. When I hear guys say that their wife's or girlfriend won't let them play it just blows my mind. She has put up with a lot. I love her dearly.    

My First Tournament;

    One day in the fall 1978 I was listening to the radio and heard the DJ say something about the State Frisbee tournament in Charleston coming up the following Saturday. I told Adele I thought I would like to go up and watch some good throwers and learn a few things. Well we went up and when I got there I saw three or four groups of people walking around and throwing Frisbees at bushel baskets setting on the ground with red flags sticking up in the air. I ask one of the guys there what they were doing and he told me that they were playing a new sport called Frisbee golf. It was a little 9 Hole course. I played a round and really liked it so I decided I would enter in the tournament. I won the golf event and placed 6th in distance. I have been hooked ever since. That next summer we bought our property and started working on our house. Clearing the land laying the blocks, nailing, shingling, plumbing, electrical, we did it all. Because of Frisbee/disc golf it still isn’t finished. What you see here Adele and I have done it all. From 79 to the fall of 81 I didn't play in a tournament. I would throw back and forth in front of the house, when Adele would talk me into taking a break. Every once in a while I would go to the park. In the fall of 81 one of my friends told me that he heard about a disc golf tournament that was going to be in Louisville. It was called the Fall Classic. It was the first time I had ever seen a pole hole. I wasn't very good putting at those things, since I had been putting in bushel baskets that were on the ground. Adele kept track of the putts that I missed that weekend that was inside of 20 feet and that amount was the same as what I was out of first place. Right then and there I knew that putting was a big big part of this game. Three weeks later I ordered a basket from DGA. It cost $75 and I still practice on it to this day. I putted at least 250 every day all winter. I could putt 40 feet inside. The next summer when I started going to tournaments, people were saying, this guy can putt. I couldn't throw very far and still can’t, but I was a pretty good putter and my approach game was pretty good. I have always been called a weenie arm. I started winning some tournaments that year. There was no such thing as Novice, Am or Advanced. Everyone played pro. My accuracy has always been better than average. I guess partly because of throwing through the tight fairways on my course. Partly because after I got rid of the bushel baskets I made all the goals on my course out of 2 foot hoops, they were nailed to trees. The hoops lasted about a year and a half. In 1982 I went to Huntsville Alabama for the Southeast regional and they had a course set up that was made up of culverts turned on their side with 4” post in the middle of them. It was a lot like putting at a pole hole, you just hit the post and it fell to the ground. When I came back I redid my course. I took 3 to 4 inch logs and drove them in the ground like a Fort and put a post in the ground in the middle. It was almost like the culverts. Oh! That trip was my first experience with Golf Disc. I was still throwing a 141 gram Frisbee from K-Mart for my main driver. There were over 100 entered in the tournament that weekend and almost everyone was throwing pink 70 molds, except for yours truly. I bought 100 of them. I couldn’t believe how far they would go. Also they broke real easy. The first couple of months I broke between 50 and 60. By the way I finished 4^th behind Jeff Homburg, Jeff Watson and Tom Monroe respectively. Probably in the top 5 of my most satisfying finishes, considering I was throwing a 141 gram regular Frisbee and everybody else was throwing golf disc.      

    I kept the Fort-like goals for 2 or 3 years. They started rotting and I redid   them again and made them 8 sided goals.  My course was already named the Lucky 8, so it made sense to me. This was about the time I started making the chain assembly’s. The octagon shape goals served two purposes. They were goals and trash cans. I would go around a couple times a year and empty them. Those goals lasted for about 8 years, and then I started making baskets to go with the chain assembly. That’s the goals that are on the course today.