Maginnes: Meeting the boys for a down-home Carolina party

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Everyone made it home alive.

John Maginnes (WireImage)

I haven't actually confirmed that, but I feel certain I would have heard otherwise. I probably would have heard if the locks were changed when they got there, too -- but the telegraph was quiet on Sunday.

As I sit here in front of my computer trying not to smile because my cheeks hurt from laughing for 48 straight hours, it occurs to me that this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

You may recall last Wednesday I explained that I had the week off and was going to Pinehurst for the weekend to celebrate my buddy Dong's upcoming nuptials.

The group that assembled in Pinehurst was a collection of friends who go back to Little League, dares and double dares and backyard football games, then progressed to front-yard parties, first kisses and all the other milestones of growing up.

Nearly everyone made an appearance.

We rented a big house on the other side of the railroad tracks from the Village of Pinehurst. No, the irony of being on the other side of the tracks did not escape us. The sprawling house had the expected golf motif.

Old and Young Tom Morris looked down from atop the 51-inch TV screen that would play a prominent role in the festivities Saturday night. On their left was Ben Hogan hitting his 1-iron to the 18th green at Merion. On their right was Bobby Jones looking regal and stately with the trophies from his Grand Slam.

Near the back door, Arnold Palmer and Hogan were smoking on the second tee at Augusta National -- looking young and powerful like we all once were. I can only wonder what they would have thought of the activities last weekend.

What I am sure of is that when a round of golf -- particularly the first round of a guy's weekend -- gets rained out, what happens next is no small thing. It was obvious by 9 a.m. Friday that golf was not going to be a possibility.

It had been raining all night and according the radar at Pine Needles, the rain would continue all day. Consequently, a heavy beer front moved in from the north and settled in over the Caddy Shack on Burning Tree Road.

Pine Needles and AME Golf agreed to refund the greens fees, so there was no hassle. But there was a void, a big hole in the day.

A half a dozen of us stood around the kitchen trying to formulate a plan. Someone was singing the b-double e-double r-un song while someone else was looking for shoes and the car keys.

The rest of us cracked a breakfast beverage and laughed. Unlike most groups that I have become familiar with in my adult life, this group doesn't have a problem making a decision.

Quite the contrary is true. We have known each other long enough and well enough that if anyone is opposed to a certain activity then that idea is tabled.

The problem with this group making a decision is that our favorite sport has always been trying to see who can kick the conversational ball the farthest. Any topic has a comedic undertone that can be unearthed at any given time.

Pat usually wins, for two reasons. First, he has his own language. I won't try to explain but it has woven its way into the fabric of our collective conversations. Second, his ability to come up with obscure and amusing references that rivals Dennis Miller's team of writers -- however, Pat's are not nearly as cerebral.

Everyone from Mr. McBeevee -- a friend of Opie's on the Andy Griffith Show -- to a third grade teacher could be referenced in a conversation about the Iowa Caucus.

So we laughed the day away and tried to rip $20 bills from each other's pockets at the card table. Mercifully, the skies cleared for our afternoon tee times at Pinewild on Saturday.

It wasn't raining, but turns out, it was hardly a perfect day for golf, either.

Corey summed it up best as we walked bleary eyed from the car to the clubhouse -- "a three-club wind and a four-club hangover. This should be fun."

In the end, though, it was fun, not for the golf but for the company and the put-downs. Pat's sunglasses were clasped to the back of his head by fishing line. We wondered as a group what the proper test weight for keeping sun glasses on your head was.

Pat is now known as Bill Dance.

That evening, as everyone warmed up and licked their wounds, you would expect there to be a bit of a lull in the action. Not with this crowd, though. The grill was fired up and the steaks were cooking as ESPN's College Game Day came on at 8 p.m. -- live from just outside Cameron Indoor Stadium.

We all agreed that Jay Bilas and Hubert Davis, a former Blue Devil and Tar Heel, respectively, do great jobs as analysts for ESPN. We all agreed that we had never heard of the Speedo guy even though there were a dozen of us who had not missed a Duke-Carolina game in more than 30 years.

The fact that ESPN produced a feature on him indicated to us that some producer somewhere didn't have any idea what the heck he was doing. And we congratulated ourselves for being better fans than that.

There were a couple of people in attendance who had never watched a Duke-Carolina game with this crowd. Considering that the high-5s started during the pre-game warm-up and the yells and jeers could be heard over in Southern Pines, they probably didn't know what hit them.

The bachelor party raged into the night long after the game was over -- mostly because I was the only one in the group whose preferred shade of blue is slightly darker than the other. In case you missed it, Carolina pounded my Duke boys. For the health of the bachelor party, it was probably a good thing.

We will all meet again next month on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi for Dong's wedding. It is the last wedding, of sorts, for this group -- at least it is the last first wedding; we have given everyone else away.

There will probably be more lasts than firsts on our collective horizons, but I can promise you this won't be our last trip together.