Raymond Fox describes his experiments in Junkyard Golf

Junkyard Golf

Ray Fox

My daughter attends Quakertown Elementary School. The school holds a "thank you" day at the end of every year. I chose to volunteer to be on the planning committee. One of the things they normally do is a speed gun measurement of kids throwing a ball. They were unable to find a speed gun to do this. Lee Rush had given me a copy of Junkyard Golf information more than a year ago. I put it away thinking that there might someday be a way for me to use it as an asset building activity with kids.

The time schedule of "thank you" day did not permit me to do junk yard golf the way the article was written. So I decided to use the name and to develop 3 miniature golf holes using junk. Well, the junk became old aluminum cans from soda, old plastic water bottles, some rolled up newspapers and three practice putting cups I got at a golf store. For about a month, I saved cans and bottles. Then I bought some rolls of duct tape and started taping them together. I had about 190 feet of this "junk" in my garage (separated in 10 foot sections, so that I could transport them). I also had some old rolls of carpet for remodeling jobs in my house. This became more important once I found out that my location was on the paved school playground. The golf balls came from my supply of practice balls and were colored with markers. The golf clubs were borrowed from a local miniature golf course.

The morning of the event, my wife and I loaded the "junk" into my van and transported it to school. There was enough stuff to make three golf holes which I had previously designed based on the amount of junk I had. It took about an hour to set this up on the playground. This was done by taping the ten foot sections together and laying out each hole based on the carpet I had available. The first hole was the easiest and was all carpet. There were about 4 hole in ones during the day. The second hole was harder because it started on blacktop and had a dog leg to it. Scores ranged from 2 on up. The third hole was very hard because it had several turns and ended up on carpet. Again the best score was a 2 but many scores were much higher. I was surprised by the large number of students who had never played miniature golf before.

Based on feedback from the students, staff and principal, I would say it was a big hit. Many of them were very excited about this opportunity to do something new and exciting. Some of their comments included:
" Wow, we never had this at "thank you" day before."
" Thanks for making this, it's really fun."
" I play golf with my dad and can't wait to tell him about this."
" I'm really good at this."
" This was real fun. Who made this?"
" When my family goes on vacation, we always play this."

Almost every student in the school stopped by to play each hole. There were a few who played only one hole and left. On the other hand, there were some who either stayed for a long time or came back after doing other activities. I had 2 boys who were not happy until they got a hole in one on the first hole and just kept playing it over and over again

I have saved everything and will get to use it again on July 4 at our community day. It will be used a third time at my church peach festival in August.