One of the popular features of our summer Music Vespers programs here each summer Sunday is the five minute welcome toward the beginning that has come to be called the ‘Oysterville Moment.’  It was begun by my mother when she and dad started the first vespers series back in 1978 and, at first, it was just a time to introduce the minister and other participants.

Gradually, the introduction seguéd into an opportunity to share a fact or two about the historic church, or the community, or an amusing story from the past.  When I stepped into my mother’s shoes – by rights it should have been into one of her trademark hats! – I continued the tradition.  I am now intent on involving other Oystervillians and yesterday it was Tucker Wachsmuth’s turn.

He talked about golf – golf then and golf now. Currently, the golf rage in Oysterville (at least among Tucker’s family and friends) is Whiffle Golf, sometimes called “Oysterville Golf.”  It’s a game that Tucker invented years ago and involves hand-fashioned clubs (which he had for show-and-tell)  and, of course, a whiffle ball.

The historic part of Tucker’s golf talk involved the story of my Uncle Willard and “The Only Golf Links on the North Beach Peninsula,” or so Willard’s 1922 sign claimed.  At that time Willard was eleven and he involved all the boys in Oysterville in his new-found passion.  They fashioned their golf balls from tin cans, hammering them into some semblance of proper shape and size, and they whittled their clubs from alder branches that had just the right shape at the crotch.

Tucker missed his calling!  He’d have made a great teacher.  Not only did he have samples of the Whiffle Golf equipment, but he had actually brought a facsimile of Willard’s old golf ball, hammered to size (“not so easy”) from a tin can.  And, for those who might be interested, he offered to teach them the rudiments of Whiffle Golf at the conclusion of vespers.

I don’t know if anyone took him up on that offer.  If so, they experienced a for-sure, in-real-time Oysterville Moment!