Stuff You Should Know - How Miniature Golf Works

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Playing miniature golf is a very fun thing to do and, you’re about to find, learning about its origin and history is very fun as well. Join Josh and Chuck as they tee off on the mini golf story! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the Backyard Guest House over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we have a book coming out. Finally, finally, after all these years, it's great. It's fun. You're going to love it. It's called Stuff You Should Know, colon and incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Yep. And it's 26 jam packed chapters that we wrote with another guy named Nils Parker, who's amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator, Carly Monardo. And it's just an all around joy to pick up and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our hands yet, it's like we

have Chuck in our dreams so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold this thing and smell it. And so should you. So pre-order now. It means a lot to us. The support is a very big deal. So pre-order anywhere books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And there's Jerry there, figuring out all the new contrivances of modern life. Yeah. I mean, we should tell people what's going on. I think it's interesting, right? No. Well, I'm going to tell them. Fine. So Jerry has figured out now how to operate the studio Macintosh recording system and not be in the office.

It's pretty great. It's COVID-rific, actually. And so she was just up on our Skype on video, and she's still there. But when she switched it to mute, it went to the distressing picture. Do you see that thing? No, I just see JR, like the letter J and the letter R. Oh, see, there she is. She's back. Okay. When she turned it off, though, was I get a photograph of Jerry that looks like she's like sick in bed or something. It's weird. This is, well, that's just Jerry's look. Maybe so. I don't know. That's a diet of nothing but me so for 15, 20 years we'll do for you. The weirdest thing is this is as close as we've come to normal in four months. I know. Not only is it like normal, it's almost like a throwback. Remember

when we had the studio where we would look out the window when she was there? Yeah. Yeah, that was great. That's kind of like this again. She was a window creeper. Yep. Professionally and in her personal life too. That's right. So this is stuff you should know, everybody. I don't know if I said it. There are probably a few people who are confused and aren't anymore, but we haven't gotten started yet. So prepare to be confused again when we explain something. In particular, Chuck, miniature golf. I got to ask, are you a fan? This made me want to play again. I grew up playing putt-putt and have very fond memories of all the different colored golf balls and the water trap that was really just a stagnant little puddle of concrete.

Putt-putt was wonderful and great. There were arcades and birthday parties there that featured heavily with G.I. Joe action figures and stuff like that, the good kind, the three and three-quarter inch ones. And yeah, I am a fan, if not just installgically in general, yes. And which style and as you as a listener will see soon, there are a couple of different things, but did you grow up playing just sort of the bare bones putt-putt or the more miniature golf clown's mouth windmill volcano? Well, Chuck, if you ask me if I had a rich childhood, I will always tell you yes, sir. Yes, I did. And the reason why is because I grew up having putt-putt close by in Toledo and we played that a lot. And then when my family would vacation in the summers on Catawba Island on Lake Erie,

and this was like pre-cleaned up Lake Erie, there was a like a rundown little like mini golf with like clown's mouths and windmills and all that stuff right by the place where we used to stay, like walking distance. And so we'd play there a lot too. So I had the best of both worlds, a really great just top-notch childhood. So I grew up playing putt-putt at Stone Mountain Park, which we went to a lot because it was near our church and the youth group would go and do putt-putt nights and stuff. So that was a lot of fun. And I was sort of partial to those that were like, you know, the real putt-putt where it requires a little bit of skill. But I am also a sucker for the beach town, volcano, waterfall, go-kart, bumper boat, arcade scene.

Yeah. Don't forget laser tag. I never really did laser tag. I think that came around a little after I was, you know, in my prime years for this kind of thing. Gotcha. Yeah, it wasn't, same here, but I was looking up now they have laser tag at putt-putt places. But I still love those go-karts, man. When we go to Isle of Palms last year, I found a place nearby and I was like, we got to go. And everyone was kind of like, oh, I don't know. And the kids are sort of like, yeah, I guess I'll do it. And I was like, guys, we got to go. Right. Like, what is wrong with all of you? Who are you vacationing with, Chuck? Oh man, it was so much fun. Is there a carbon monoxide leak at the house you rent? No,

those go-karts, I could do that all day long. Yeah, for sure. And of course, I got the guy, you know, the teenager, squeaky voice teenager. And I said, hey man, which one, which is the fast one? And he was like, number eight. Really? Oh yeah. And sure enough, it was really fast. You just ran circles around everybody? I did, such that I even laid off on the gas a little bit just to catch up and let people, you know, act like they did outrace me. What a sportsman. Oh my goodness. Well, we'll talk about go-karts one day more in depth. But today, we're just going to focus on the miniature golf, okay? Yeah, this is a pretty interesting history, I think. Yeah, I had no idea how far back it went until we started researching this. And actually,

it goes all the way back to the 19th century. And this is one of those rare things that's been around a while, but you can actually pinpoint like the first one. And the first miniature golf course in the world, as far as anybody knows, is at St. Andrews. It's the ladies' putting club of St. Andrews. And it was built in 1867, strictly for the women members of the ladies' putting club. Yeah, there's a couple of things at play here, actually really just one thing, which is not letting women do things. Yeah. Because there was a decree basically that women shall not take the club back past their shoulder. In the 11th commandment. Yeah, like a real golf swing, in other words, was, I guess, improper for a lady to do. The Victorian era was just so stupid when

it came to social constraints. I'm trying to figure out why. Does that, I don't know. Patriarchy, I would guess. Well, I just wonder why a full golf swing, would it make their dress rate rise a little above the ankle? Or like, I just wonder why. I think also women were expected to not overexert themselves physically, especially in public too. So we could kind of construe that as overexertion. Well, and then there's this, which is from an 1890 book by Scottish Baron Lord Wellwood, talking about women and when they should golf and when they shouldn't golf. If they choose, I was going to do a Scottish accent, but I'm just not feeling it. If they choose to play at times when male golfers are feeding or resting, no one can object, but

at other times, must we say it, they're in the way. It's kind of snarky to add even the must we say it. Like, do I even need to write this next sentence? It's so just drippingly obvious. But the long, the upshot of this is that's why they created the ladies' putting club is just to sort of get rid of them. Yeah, to get them out of the way of the men. But the joke was on the men because this putting green, this first miniature golf course in the world is still around and it's still considered one of the finest. It's actually nicknamed the Himalayas because it has all these kinds of mountains and hills and hillocks all built into it. And they really kind of stand out from what I understand against like the Scottish seascape. And it's a really revered miniature

golf course, but it is exactly what it sounds like. It is a golf course in miniature, like you take a classic golf course of the variety that was born in Scotland and you just kind of hit it with a shrink ray and then you have a genuine bonafide miniature golf course. And that's how the whole thing started out. Yeah. I mean, it's what we would call like a par three today, right? Right. Kind of. It seems like par three courses are a little different. So this is like, yes, I think it does require more than just a putter. Right. And a par three would require more than a putter. But there seems to be a few different other kinds of golf courses aside from the miniature golf course. There's the par three, the pitch and putt and executive courses all kind of qualify

technically as miniature golf courses in different ways. Yeah. The executive course, they got the name because evidently an executive could go player quick ground during lunch. A lot of par threes, you might have a like one par five and a couple of par fours. Is that right? On a par three? On an executive course. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's what that's really the only thing from what I can tell that differentiates it from a par three course. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a golf course. It's just shorter and therefore doesn't take as long. Yeah. And it's not like the hole is smaller and the ball is smaller and the clubs are smaller. Like just, just get out of your fantasy land there. Instead, it's just the, the distance from the T to the hole is shorter. There's fewer

bends and stuff like that. So the actual experience takes less time and less energy and you can just kind of fit it in in a shorter amount of time. And I think that's the popularity of those things generally. Although pitch and putt courses, I also saw there, they usually consist of a wedge and iron and a putter or what you need to play on those. And they're all about the focus on the short game. And as a result, men and women, just average men and women who play golf can kind of compete pretty evenly because it's all about the short game. It's all about finesse rather than, you know, just sheer power of driving as far as you can on like a traditional golf course. Yeah. I mean, I'd love golf. I just don't play anymore. Like I grew up playing golf and

was not good, but I wasn't terrible for as much as I played. And I still like it. I just don't, you know, have the time or the inclination anymore. But I like the big boy courses with the big par fives, but I also love a fun little par three. Like Florida has a lot of these beautiful par threes, including some you can play at night that are all lit up. And that's always a lot of fun too. Yeah. I tried to get acquainted with golf as a youngster. My family had weirdly enough, because this is not like my family at all, had a membership at Heatherdowns country club. Well, yeah. And I love the pool because they had like, you know, tons of slush puppies and the best like nasty hot dogs you can imagine. And there was a pool and all that. I think I told

you the story about swim league, the swim team where I was the worst swimmer on it. But I also tried to golf for a couple of summers and it just didn't, didn't take it up. But I was back in Toledo like a couple of years ago, I think right before our Cleveland show and I visited the country club. Well, I just drove by and I looked and the pool is now just like a green field. It's been filled in like the little, the little snack shop has been torn down. I'm like, something really bad must have happened there for them to do that to the pool, you know. Yeah. There's the, and I didn't get to go here much because it was private, but Hidden Hills was a big neighborhood near my house that had a country club. That's still around, isn't it? Well, the neighborhood's there,

but you know, the neighborhood has seen its better days and the country club and golf courses completely just shut down and grown over. It's really, it looks, well, it is an abandoned place. That's so cool. It is kind of cool. And then I had the idea of a movie, like a old school type thing where a bunch of old, a bunch of like middle-aged men that grew up there go back and raise some money and try and like clean the place up and get it going again. Yeah. To hilarity. There has to be like a greedy developer that they're battling, right? Oh yeah. So is that the neighborhood that we got kicked out of when we tried to go shoot like without a license once around that area? Remember the security guard came up and was like,

stop what you're doing. I don't remember that. Yeah, that happened one day. Was it on the TV show or a short? Some gorilla. No, it was like when we were shooting shorts, I think. I don't remember that. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that was the one. Should we take a break already? Sure. Okay. All right, we'll get back and we'll talk about where many golf went from here right after this. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it,

but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember

AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends vapor because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're back. Nothing we've talked about right now constitutes miniature golf in the mind of anybody who hears the words miniature golf, right? True. Like what comes to mind are things like putt-putt or goofy golf or windmills or clowns or happy Gilmore or something like that, right? Yeah. So that all started actually that

didn't quite start yet. I was really leading up to that and then I realized we had to keep going with a regular miniature golf one more time because it has to spread to America and it did and we can actually trace that too to the house of a guy named James Barber who is an immigrant from England who was familiar with the course, the ladies putting club at St. Andrews and he was rich enough that he said, you know, I want a miniature golf course built on my estate at Pinehurst, North Carolina and he did. He had like an 18-hole miniature course built right there in his formal gardens and it's just absolutely beautiful. It is nice and this was the first one in the United States and as it's called Thistle Dew, T-H-I-S-T-L-E-D-H-U and supposedly as legend

goes, when he first saw it he said, this will do. I guess he was not blown away maybe. I don't know, sounds a little underwhelmed. I'm hoping he wasn't one of those spoiled brat, you know, robber barons and instead was like, this will do. This will do quite nicely and they just left off the second part, you know. Yeah, but it's called Thistle Dew and they started hosting competitions a couple years later and I think this is the first time miniature golf was ever used like those words were ever used to describe the Pinehurst outlook. Was that the newspaper, I guess? Yeah, it's their one claim to fame. You know it's true though. It's probably true. Yeah, but they were in that account of the competition. They coined the term

miniature golf. Up to that point a lot of people had called it Liliputian golf. Sure. After the little people in Gulliver's Travels and that name actually stuck for quite a while. So we've got James Barber who hosted or built the first miniature golf course in America. But still this thing is like directly connected to the ladies putting Club of St. Andrews. It's a golf course in miniature. We still haven't quite reached what we would consider miniature golf and that wouldn't happen until 1926 which turned out to be a really big year for miniature golf in America. It was like there was something in the air and a few different people kind of tapped into it around the same time and it suddenly just took off like a rocket.

Yeah, two of the guys were some entrepreneurs named Drake Delanoi, I guess. Great name. John Ledbetter, another good name. It's okay. He sounds like he'll shoot you. He'll Ledbetter. Yeah. I can see that. They did a pretty cool thing which is they opened up a course on top of a rooftop in the financial district in New York and that kicked off a trend. There were I think about a hundred of those on top of roofs. I guess this is before the big rooftop bar hotel scene. They had golf courses up there. Yeah, miniature golf courses. Again though, those were like miniature golf courses.

So I mean that was a big deal. In New York just a hundred rooftop golf miniature golf courses alone in the 20s. That's a tremendous amount and I don't think there's a single one left actually. There should be. So that kind of makes the whole, there's one on top of Pond City Market where the House of Works office is. Is there golf up there? There's a miniature golf course up there and it makes a lot more sense now. Yeah, it's kind of like a whole mini Coney Island up there. Yeah. I think I've only been up there when we had work events and the only thing I did was

the slide. I didn't know there was a slide. Yeah, there's like a, you know, you sit in a potato sack and go down this big slide. Yeah, I did that. That was fun. Yeah, there's a miniature golf course up there. We'll have to play sometime when the whole pandemic passes. Totally. And then later that same year, you said it was kind of a boom year for mini golf. Lookout Mountain, Tennessee in Chattanooga, which is a place where I think everybody should go to see Ruby Falls in Rock City. Oh, yes. It is a tourist trap, but it's actually kind of neat. I mean, the greatest of the great tourist traps and it still holds up too. Yeah. Get a pecan log. Oh my God, they're so good.

They are so good. That's what, that also supports my theory that candy was perfected in the 19th century. Remember Nugget, Honeycomb, pecan logs? Was that, I didn't know pecan logs were from way back then, but I believe it. Yeah, for sure. They're definitely old-timey. So these people, Garnett and Frida Carter, they built a resort called Fairyland Club and it was part of that whole sort of interconnected scene there with Rock City and Ruby Falls and they built a miniature golf course and they said, you know what, if you like golf, maybe you should try mini golf because it doesn't take very long. It'll kind of scratch that itch if you're not able to play a real round and that's sort of how they marketed it at first.

And they were the first people, I think, to start adding the obstacles, right? They did, yeah. And they used, as they were building like the inn and the resort complex, they used some of the construction materials like drain pipes and barrels and things like that and built them as hazards. And then because they had this whole fairy tale theme going up there, they also built Rock City. They were the ones who built Rock City and that has a cool little weird, but also very neat fairy tale theme hidden throughout. They added that to their miniature golf course. So they had these stationary obstacles and hazards that they added. And then they also added this statuary of cute little, you know, mother goose type stuff.

And they actually called the whole thing Tom Thumb Golf. And Tom Thumb, from what I understand, is the earliest recorded English fairy tale character from back in 1621. And he was a little tiny guy the size of his father's thumb, which is where he got his name. So it was a pretty appropriate name. They must have really like been pretty pleased with themselves when they decided to call it Tom Thumb Golf because it really, it checked all the boxes. Yeah. And we should mention too, we keep saying Rock City. And if you're not from the southeast, you might think it's just some like Redneck area with a bunch of rocks. It's actually a very sweet natural wonder. It's caves that you walk through.

Caves, it's huge boulders being held up by much, much smaller boulders. Yeah, it's really neat. That have been that way for probably tens of thousands of years that you walk under. There's like, yeah, there's little cave areas that you kind of duck into and they have little fairy tale scenes with fluorescent, or fluorescent, yeah, I guess kind of day glow. It's like glow in the dark. Weird like gnomes and fairy tale scenes. Like that's the weird part. It's like if Carl's Bad Caverns had, you know, some corny fairy theme. And then Ruby Falls is really neat too. Yeah. It's a very cool, like natural attraction that they've done a good job of like underground waterfalls. Making it easy to make

your way to, but yeah, it's a, the whole thing is definitely worth going to. And then of course, they have this, the very famous like Sea Rock City barn sides that everybody's heard of. And that was, that was Garnet Carter who painted one man, or paid one man to go around and offer to give a fresh coat of paint to barns all throughout the Southeast in exchange for letting them paint Sea Rock City on the side. Yeah. It's, if you've ever driven around the North Carolina, South Carolina area and South of the border, you know what I'm talking about? South of the Mason-Dixon line? No, South of the border is the name of this sort of highway tourist trap. Oh no, I've never heard of that. Yeah. It's the same deal. I think it's, I want to

say it's North Carolina, but it's basically like a glorified rest stop with, that has a Mexican theme where you can go like, I don't know, see a Mariachi band and eat good food and buy cheap Jockeys. The only Mariachi band in all of North Carolina. But what made me think about it, it might be, was that they have the same thing for like hundreds of miles in any direction for South of the border and Rock City. They're very famous for these billboards that tell you like, oh, it's coming. You're getting closer. You're getting closer. That's really strange that I've never heard of that then. Yeah, South of the border. Check it out. That's not have been paying attention. So, the car is built like this Tom Thumb golf course. And again, originally,

they just did this as kind of an amenity at their fairy land in and fairy land club. But it was such a smash hit and Garnett Carter was such a like born businessman that they were like, I think there might be something to this. And they saw either they saw it out or he sought them out. I'm not quite sure how it happened. But there was another guy who really factors bigly into this whole story. But he's very frequently overlooked and his name is Thomas McCulloch Fairburn. McCulloch Fairburn. Yeah. And he invented a really cheap and easy technique for creating artificial putting greens that could be used for miniature golf courses. Yeah, there was a crushed cotton seed holes, oil, you would dye it green. And they would come in

these big rolls and you just roll it over this foundation of sand. And boom, you've got an easy way basically to sort of franchise these things with these prefab kits that they had. And people loved it because it was, you know, when it was, they called it midget golf for a little while, not a term we would use today, but it's what they called it in the 1920s. And this factors in to a lot of stuff we've been talking about the 1920s lately, just these weird fads that would pop up. And Tom Thumb golf was one of them. It was. And part of the reason that it got out from Lookout Mountain is because the carters and Fairburn kind of joined forces and used his technique for making these greens very cheaply and used their kind of like touch of whimsy packaged it together and

started selling it prepackaged sets or prefabricated sets that could be franchised out to anybody who wanted to start their own Tom Thumb golf course. And so they spread really, really quickly. And like you were saying, like the 20s, they were just looking for whatever craze could come along, crossword puzzles, dance marathons, flagpole sitting. Well, apparently miniature golf was the king of them all as far as the 20s crazes went. Yeah, this is a pretty startling statistic. In August of 1930, the Commerce Department said that there were, and apparently this could be low by even as much as half, 25,000, 25,000 mini golf courses in the US, half of which were built in that previous six or eight months of the year. Yeah, it's a boom right there. Can you imagine

like in eight months, like 12 to 15,000 mini golf courses being built in US? That's crazy. I can just imagine Garnet and Frida Carter just rolling around on a bed of money in their suite at the ferry land in. Yeah, and I mean, in a legit like job boosting market. Yeah, no, well, that's another thing too, right? I mean, like there was, like flagpole sitting didn't make the transition to the depression and dance marathons did, but they got kind of grim. Apparently miniature golf, and I've seen both, but miniature golf seems to have made the transition from 20s craze to kind of national pastime that made sense in the depression because you could take your whole family out to play miniature golf for pretty

cheap. It's like a nickel or something. That was a big attraction. And then also, if you were like a golf junkie, but all of a sudden you didn't have the money to afford greens fees any longer, at the very least you could go play some miniature golf somewhere. So it kind of scratched that itch to a certain degree. So there was like a lot of popularity that even after the craze kind of crested and waned a little bit, it still carried on pretty thoroughly through the 1930s. And as a matter of fact, Chuck, some people were like Tom Thumbgolf, the official franchise Tom Thumbgolf. It's a little rich for my blood. What else you got for me? Yeah, like, why can't we just do this? Yeah, exactly. Local entrepreneurs were like, I got exactly the thing, buddy. You want to play

half price miniature golf? Come on in. Like, I've got a bunch of PVC pipeline around. Yeah, or yeah. So just basically whatever found objects you could find, you could come across what were called rinky dink miniature golf courses that were basically knockoff Tom Thumb courses that used whatever found objects, the person who built it had lying around. Yeah, New York had about 150 of them. Washington DC had 30. One of those is still around, the East Potomac Park course. Yeah. And yeah, the whole family could get involved. And I think one of the keys then and now to mini golf being popular and then putt putt, which we'll see here in a minute, is that you don't even have to like golf at all. You can hate golf and still go

do putt putt and probably have a good time. Yeah. As long as you don't take it too seriously, don't take it too seriously. Please don't. Just relax. Don't be that guy. That's what it's for. You want to take a break and then talk putt putt? Yes. Okay, let's do that, everybody. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's vapor, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are we there? Who me? Are we there? Are we at ButtBot? Oh, I thought you said are you there. I'm like, yeah, I'm here. We are there, Chuck, because let me set the table here. You ready? Yes, I'm hungry. America got a little burned out on miniature golf, especially the Tom, Thumb, and Rinky Ding varieties. And so a lot of it died out, but some remained, some hopped along.

Some are still around today, actually. And by the 1950s, there was a guy who was playing at one of these courses in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which, remember, is the home of miniature golf in the United States, North Carolina. And he happened to have just gotten a prescription from his doctor saying, you're about to have a nervous breakdown. I prescribe you a month's rest from work. And this guy, Don Clayton, said, can do. And he started playing miniature golf, but he wasn't quite satisfied with it. Yeah, I imagine if you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, then Tom Thumb golf is a nice saff for that kind of experience. Sure. If you're charmed by all the whimsical stuff and you don't take it too seriously. Right. From what I understand,

though, Don Clayton was like, this whimsy sucks. We need something better than this. And I think I'm just the person to build it. Yeah. So he had the idea to basically make miniature golf, but without all the garbage, no clown's mouth, no windmills, and have a little skill involved. Like you can go out there and if you're like a good putter, you can actually compete and have a good time. And it's still for fun, but it's just not a silly kids game anymore. Yeah. Like anybody who's been to an actual put put course can tell you that it's, I mean, there's a lot of obstacles and it's interesting and fun and there's some neat stuff, but it just does not have all of the moving bells and whistles that you're going to see on other kinds of miniature golf,

like goofy golf. No, the obstacles are usually just like some blocks in the way and stuff like that. Yeah. Did you have to hit around or bank it around? Elevated rhombuses or things like that or like a labyrinth built into it. It's not like a clown's mouth or anything like that, which is kind of like the go to description for goofy golf, isn't it really? Yeah. And I think like the craziest thing you'll see on a put put course is where you, those that are like two levels and you can hit it into three different holes at the top and you're like, you kind of take a little bit of a gamble as to where it's going to come out on the bottom. Sure. It'll either come out close to the hole. So you can get that par two and I think

they're all par twos on a real put put course or it'll spit you out way far away, but you still have a chance to hit that long putt for the two. Sure. There's always a chance for you a second chance at put putt. I think that was the motto. So yeah, but so this was Don Clayton's vision. He was like, I want to make this a little less goofy. I want to make it a little more interesting and skillful. Less goofy, more golfy. Yeah. Yeah, Chuck. Man, he just sat up from his grave going, I wish I'd thought of that. Is he dead? Yeah, he died in 1996, but he had a good run. I mean, this is 1954 when he was a 28 year old man that he decided to try this. So he went to his dad and said, hey, I've got this idea. Rather than basically, as a New York Times obituary put it,

rather than basically making a human size pinball machine for golf, we're going to make this a little more interesting. How about we cobble together 5,200 bucks and we're going to build our own little miniature golf course. And he did in like a shaded little lot. And with that 5,200 dollars, they opened for business. And within 29 days, he and his father had made 100% of their investment back. And Don Clayton said, I think there might be something to this whole thing. Yeah. So he was initially going to call it, he went to the bank to open a business account and he had to fill out the paperwork and he was going to call it the shady veil golf course. As the story goes, he didn't know how to spell veil, I guess, if it was V-A-I-L or V-A-L-E.

So he just said, putt-putt and wrote down putt-putt. It wasn't something he brainstormed. Apparently it was just sort of on a whim. And it's a name that really, really stuck. It's kind of brilliant in its simplicity, I think. Divine inspiration. It almost feels like that it just kind of happened on a whim. That's just absolutely great. But he started to kind of build the whole thing into like this enormous industry pretty quickly because he was right. I did the math. If they made their 5,200 dollars back in 29 days, that means that over that month, they had 20,800 paying customers. 25 cents a game. Yeah, that's a lot of people. And so when they really got together and started

putt-putt, he was right. He was on to something and it started to take off pretty quickly. Apparently at its peak, when you and I were going to putt-putt, they had something like 256 courses throughout the world, mostly in the US and Canada, but also in Australia and South Africa and New Zealand. And it was definitely a thing. Like you said, all of the holes were par-2s, right? Yeah. And this was just to be clear, 256 doesn't sound like a lot compared to the 50,000 that they had in the 1930s. But this was his own putt-putt golf and games franchise. Right. There was plenty of more putt-putt going on in the United States than that. Right, right, right. Yeah, like knockoff putt-putt, right?

Yeah, like the one at Stone Mountain Park wasn't a putt-putt golf and games. It was just putt-putt, but it was great. It was called tap-tap. They also had trail skate across from the putt-putt, which was a roller skating trail through the woods. What? Yeah, it was like this two mile paved, you know, just basically like a big paved sidewalk through the woods and they rented roller skates and you would just skate through the woods. It was really cool. Man, that's awesome. Country folk just have some of the best ideas for businesses, you know what I mean? I didn't think of us as country folk, but I guess it kind of was. Roller skating through the woods is country. I guess it is.

That's like Dolly Parton level country. So yeah, they're all partos and it is tough. It's challenging. Apparently, in the 65-year history of putt-putt, there have only been three perfect games where you walk away with a score of 18, which is, that's really tough to do. I mean, like of the millions and millions of games of putt-putt that people have played, only three people have ever, ever gotten a perfect game, which kind of shows you how deceptively hard a putt-putt course is, you know? Like each one of those courses is made of, I think they have something like 108 trademarked holes or like lanes, I think is what they're called in miniature golf. So where you can just kind of take them and reconfigure them into different

configurations, but they have 108 total and I guess each one of them is very, very difficult. I don't ever remember getting a perfect game or even imagining that I was going to get a perfect game. No, I mean, you get two or three holes in one and that's a good day. For sure. So 18, there's actually a short, I think seven and a half minute, Grantland documentary on the most recent perfect putt-putt game by a guy named Rick Baird, who had his perfect game in 2011. Can you imagine the tension on hole 18? They capture it really well in this documentary. It's really well done. They've got like a cartoon version of him putting and he's got like cartoon sweat just running down his face. Oh man,

really great. He's so nervous. But yeah, it was very nervous and he did it and he's actually a miniature golf pro in his spare time, which we'll talk about later. So he's from Charlotte, but Don Clayton was from Fayetteville and then Joseph Barber was from Pinehurst. So it seems pretty clear that North Carolina is the ancestral home of miniature golf or at least the spiritual home of miniature golf in the world, frankly. I'm just going to say it in the world. Yeah. And if you're looking for the creators of the kind of mechanized courses, you can go to 1955 and Scranton PA with Ralph and Al Loma. Previous to this, you had the putt-putt, which just had those sort of regular obstacles. You had the Tom Thumb, which had kind of more

outrageous whimsy, but still things weren't moving. And these are the guys that brought in these rotating windmill blades or ramps that move back and forth. And they really kind of kicked that to the next level and they went into business big time. They started mass producing these things like the actual components and sold a ton of them all over the world. Yeah. I think like 5,000 courses, which is pretty impressive. They're the ones who came up with what we think of now as like miniature golf and goofy golf with the moving stuff. Not a fan. The clown mouth. Don't forget the clown mouth that opens and closes or yeah, like you say, a windmill. So it's kind of interesting that Don Clayton brought miniature

golf back to its roots of being a lot more like regular golf. And then very shortly after that, branched off the Lomas who brought it back to that Tom Thumb roots. So that whole thing, the evolution of miniature golf happened twice in just the same way. And then interesting. Yeah. And it also came back full circle in the 90s with a return to sort of that original miniature golf because real golfers, people like Jack Nicholas started to get involved. I'm sure there were dollar signs, you know, in his eyes. But he also probably loved it. I don't want to be cynical, but I'm sure he made some money. But they have competitions. You know, there are actual prize purses. There is a US pro mini golf association. They have their own little

US open. I don't think they call it the little US open. They should. They totally should. There's the World Mini Golf Sports Federation in Germany. And they sort of are the body that standardizes the obstacles and stuff like that on, I guess, what you can have and what you can't have. Yeah. Which is kind of funny when you think about it. It is, but it's a pretty interesting list. You're like, oh, that'd be tough. Oh, that's hard. The slope circle with a V obstacle. Yeah. That's just plain difficult. And I think they should call it the teeny weeny US open. Welcome back to the teeny weeny US open. I was looking at the US pro mini golf association's website and there was a Tennessee state open. And man, the picture that they have

of that course, it looks serious, dude. Yeah. So if you go to pup hut and you always were like, I love this. This is so challenging. I can score like a 16, or I guess not a 16. I just don't play the last two holes when I'm on a streak. You know, like a 20 or a 22 or something like that. You might actually have fun being a miniature golf pro. And there are some serious courses out there for you to play that are a couple of notches above your average pup hut course. I'd like to play one of those. I don't know if I would have fun. I'd make a run club. Should we talk about some of these famous courses?

Yeah. So from what I can tell, the United States is the home of miniature golf. It's the capital of miniature golf. I don't believe there's any country. Like I was looking, I was like, maybe Thailand is like even more into it than the United States. I don't think so. I think the United States is the place that has the most miniature golf courses and has probably the most paying customers for miniature golf courses. I could see Japan. I could too, but I didn't see anything like that. Yeah. I didn't see anything like it. So the United States is the home of miniature golf and the world capital of miniature golf then is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is ironic that it's not North Carolina, but it's not everybody. I'm sorry.

Yeah. I mean, Myrtle Beach is sort of one of those classic old school beach towns that has all of the go-karts and the bumper boats and the mini golf and they have one called Molten Mountain that's pretty cool. Like you should go check out pictures of some of these places. They're a lot of fun. That has a volcano, a working volcano that erupts every half hour and it's sort of an inside and an out thing. Like I think it's both indoors and outdoors, right? It is. Yeah. It's a pretty, it's a pretty great one. And the whole volcano thing, they're not the only one. That's how Nutso Myrtle Beach is. There's another one called Hawaiian Rumble. That also has a functioning volcano too. And in fact, on Highway 17, there's a 30 mile stretch of it that goes through Myrtle

Beach where there's 50, more than 50 miniature golf courses in a 30 mile stretch through Myrtle Beach. And I'm sure a lot of opinions on which ones are good and which ones stink. Yeah. There's one I want to go to in Palantine, Illinois. I think I saw a couple of these from Travel and Leisure maybe. This one's called Algram Acres, A-L-G-H-R-I-M Acres. It's in Palantine, Illinois. And it's a funeral home for real in real life. Yeah. They take care of dead bodies and you can also play nine holes on their death themed course in the basement. In the basement. First of all, the basement of a funeral home is just creepy on its own. But a death themed miniature golf course in a funeral home that actually functions,

that's just downright interesting. Yeah. There's this one in Las Vegas too, the kiss themed one which I checked out on YouTube. I would play this even though it goes against two things for me which is not into indoor miniature golf. I really would like to be outside and I think kiss sucks. What? I thought you were a kiss fan. No. Oh man, I thought you were a kiss fan. No, not a kiss fan. Never. I mean, you know, I get it and I think it's kind of fun and funny. Sure. But I never really thought kiss was like played good rock and roll songs really. That's very surprising. I know kiss fans are going to be so mad at me for saying their music is not good but I mean there's a reason they dressed up and spit blood and stuff. So there's a,

but it's still, it'd be worth playing. I agree. No, it'd look fun. The one that I would actually travel to go play is called Parking. It's in Lincolnshire, Illinois. So I'd probably go there and then I'd dip down or dip up. I'm not sure. It's a Palantine to play at Algermakers. Okay. But Parking is like exactly what, it's the pinnacle of a miniature golf course if you ask me. It's got it all. It's difficult and it has all of the amazing obstacles and weird traps and functioning problems to figure out that a miniature golf course should have. It looked pretty cool. I mean, I'm a putt-putt guy but I was checking out pictures and stuff. I would go to Parking with you for sure. Okay. We'll go. It's going to be a summer trip in 2022 or three. Fantastic.

And then if you want to play, so I think Chuck, this one would be up your alley. It's called Golf Gardens on Catalina Island in SoCal. Yeah, right up my alley. This one is like considered the hardest miniature golf course in the United States. Not just because it's difficultly laid out, but also because it's been played so much that's got all sorts of weird notches and stuff that's not supposed to be there in the playing surface. So that makes it all the more difficult, which is kind of neat. I love that. And then if you want to go retro, I think that one's been around a while. You can go down to Florida and they have a historic mini golf trail that takes you from a miniature golf course, a miniature golf course, all of

which have been around for at least 50 years. Amazing. And if you like weird old stuff that's not in use anymore, look up abandoned miniature golf courses. That's a fun thing to do. And since I said it's a fun thing to do, everybody, that means it's time for a listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this dad mail. Got this very sweet email. I love it when the family's listening, you know? Sure. Especially when they're not, I mean, I like families with young kids that listen, but I also like it when it's adults and then older parents that are listening. Hey guys, hope you're hanging in there. These are such tricky times. I know you're, I'm not the only listener that turns to your show for a distraction or a soundtrack to washing

dishes or background noise while trying to run or just something that feels normal during these abnormal times. A couple of years ago, my now husband and I took a road trip with my parents to stay with my now in-laws. As we pulled out of the driveway, we put on stuff you should know and spent the entire journey sharing your catalog with them and they were immediately hooked. My parents continue to love your podcast, but every time my dad refers to it, he mixes up the name. I love this stuff. So far, he's called you guys you should know. Sure. Stuff you ought to know. Yeah. Things you need to know and stuff guys. Stuff guys is, that's a good nickname. Lately, he's just been referring to you as the guys podcast, which is close enough for me.

Eventually, we're just going to get to the... Yeah. Thanks for all the amazing work and the thoughtful approach you have to podcasting. So grateful to have multiple episodes to listen to every week. That is from Maribeth and she says, P.S. I should add that the episode on fractals is now infamously nap inducing in my family, but I blame the long stretch of highway on that. Thank you. That was very kind of you. Yeah, nice save. Really pulled it out at the end there. Who is that Maribeth? Yep. Well, if you want to be like Maribeth and get in touch with us, we would appreciate that. Right now, you can send it to us via email. It's the best way to reach us at stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

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