Thursday, July 20, 2006

Even the Wizard of Id can't help Endicott

B.C.: That's a nice doormat, where'd you find it?
Grog: Endicott N.Y.

-JFB, if I wrote this week's B.C. strip-

Growing up in small-town USA, I couldn't wait to get the Sunday paper to read the weeks' comics. Back in the day, comics were printed in larger format, were original material, and as funny as your Uncle Charlie. Now they are recycled, bland, and too commercially-motivated to care about....much less read.

One of my favorites was B.C.. Johnny Hart and his prehistoric clan's dry wit and social satire could make the sun come out for me on the rainiest days. He is truly a master with his B.C. and Wizard of Id comic strips.

So it's sad to see the cartoonists namesake, the BC Open, in Endicott N.Y. (Johnny Hart's hometown) will be put out to pasture after this weekends PGA event.

Wait...did I say Endicott?....I meant Verona.

You see, earlier this year, the Susquehanna river overflowed, and with it, the communities along the river experienced total disrepair. Among those was the little village of Endicott and its golf course En-Joie Golf Club, host of the B.C. Open.

Enter Verona N.Y., site of the Turning Stone casino.

You may remember Turning Stone. It recently hosted the PGA club pro tournament, and has been pressing hard to land an official (read: PGA) tournament ever since building the Atunyote Golf Club on its Oneida Reservation.
The PGA officials, instead of taking a page from Winning Friends and Influencing People, took the angle (instead of postponing the tournament for a later date) to completely extract and remove the event from Endicott (kind of like a dentist removing a molar, in which I'm sure the pain for the Endicottians was very similar).

So the PGA machine will once again eat one of its own, and travel up I-81 to never look back at one of the classic tournaments that never asked for anything in its storied existence. Not once did it have a corporate headliner.

Of course, not having a big sponsor foot your bill doesn't leave much for the players, and with the British Open played the same week as the B.C., it never garnered the headliner talent required to push its prize money to the stratosphere.

No, it was more on a prehistoric level, and for the PGA that ain't funny no more.


Thanks for reading. Keep it in the short-grass,

JFB

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