Decoration Day

Heard a bunch of good jokes on the golf course on Monday, none of which can be repeated in a family column. Enjoyed stories from the “oldest members of the club” (see P.G. Wodehouse). These honorable fellows were gracious enough to permit this hapless duffer to invade their muni preserve and enjoy their company in an aged and hallowed tournament in the county of Kings. I learned much, far more than just how to manage a golf course or wave a wand with conviction. You had to be there.

But, though my group would recoil in horror, I have to admit that putting bores me. Three- and four-putts – among other flubs – doomed me, but I just can’t get interested. I have this superstition that you only have so many good putts or base hits in any one stick, and that you shouldn’t waste them on the practice green or in the batting cage. This is perverse, I know. Other than a lack of the requisite motor skills, it explains why I will never make the senior tour or learn to hit a breaking ball. Therapy is called for and I will seek it immediately.

That confession made, Miss Market seems to have the same malady. She leaps at “green shoots” (a soaring drive to the middle of the nicely cut fairway) then Dutch elm disease (insouciant putting) in the form of a record drop in home prices in the first quarter blights the promising foliage. Yet consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board surged last month and hope springs anew on the next hole. We understand each other, Miss Market and I, which is to say we are goslings who have lost mom and dad to golfers with shotguns in their bags and must waddle about figuring out on our own what to eat and how to find it.

Now, the consumer confidence readings are notorious for inaccurately predicting future spending, but they do, at least, give us an idea of whether animal spirits are stirring. The onus is on Obama and the Democrats to deliver. Americans know stimulus is coming. Whether it does the trick, “only time will tell,” as the TV reporters say in concluding their stand-up recitations of “news.”

For now, I can’t let loose of PALM yet. If consumer confidence is rising and the Pre phone lives up to the hype, the stock could be worth well more than at midday May 26. Ford, which will soon be the only American car company left standing on its own two feet is a keeper, too. AMD still has value, we think. Sticking with Novavax in the biotech sector for no other reason than a New Delhi-native golf partner on Saturday assured me it was a solid Indian company (HQ in Maryland) on the right track. Though I wonder if this is tantamount to Cubs manager Lou Piniella sending in pitcher Carlos Zambrano as a pinch-hitter last night. The ploy failed, much to Kev’s delight since he took the Bucs, but it was original.

Cashing in on SLV and DXO for the bucks they’ve made so far and to keep the wolf from the door, but for the long run, precious metals and oil should pay off when inflation gets going again if you want to stick with them as summer and the driving season begins on what has come to be known as Memorial Day.

In 1866, the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi, are said to have been the first to honor the fallen in the recent War Between the States, decorating graves of the rebel dead and then strewing flowers on the scorned Union graves moldering from the Battle of Shiloh, but Waterloo, New York, is also said to be the site of the first Decoration Day. It matters little, of course, who began the tradition, but it has evolved into a universal nod to the United States and its sons and daughters, whether they be descendants of the Grand Army of the Republic or the United Confederate Veterans, who have covered themselves with glory.

Played golf, took profits, grilled ribs for the family and picked up potato salad and baked beans at the deli last night, got a good night’s sleep. Nobody has it better.