A Good Man
Some folks are just plain nice.
Take L.F. Wood, the man who puts the putt in Putt-Putt. He’s sitting on a nice piece of property behind a bank, across from a sports bar, next to a slew of offices, across from Fashion Square Money Magnet and down the road from several hundred apartments housing the both the Golden Years and Tin Cup generations. So what’s he doing with it?
He’s not building a grocery. He’s not building a strip mall. He’s not auctioning it off to the highest developmental bidder. He’s running Putt-Putt, the originial miniature golf game.
That’s not all L.F. Wood is about. He’s a regular kind of guy who, during Hurricane Isabel, turned his Lincoln Town Car into an impromptu four-wheel-drive vehicle to get around a series of large trees that fell from a neighbor’s yard and blocked the small, private road that leads to the older subdivision in which he lives. He then pulled from the Lincoln’s trunk a chain saw and set about clearing the elderly woman’s driveway, yard and the road.
He’s helps out other neighbors on a regular basis, plowing snow and shoveling or felling trees or sawing. He’s lended his battered work pickup trucks to folks in need of moving vehicles. He’s basically a damn good guy living in an era when Money Changes Everyone.
So why does he run a measly little miniature golf business on land that is worth probably a decade of income from the business?
“My bankers ask me that all the time,” he told Jeremy Borden of the Daily Progress. “[Customers] leave and they’ve got a smile on their face. That’s my passion.”
Coming from anyone else, that comment would require a decaf spit-take. Coming from L.F. Wood, it’s gospel.
Posted by Bryan McKenzie at 01:24 PM. Filed under: We, The People •
