“The golf course is actually right outside of Ezeiza,” he explained.
He went on to say that the membership drive had just closed but the Club had a tradition of extending free membership to ministers and their families who lived in the South Zone. The Bedfords became honorary members, complete with IDs, even for little Nancy, and full access to all benefits, including use of the golf course and swimming pool.
Except for a brief period in Rosario, Ben had not golfed regularly since he had stopped caddying when he was fourteen. He had not been able to practice the sport at all for ten years, until they were in Costa Rica to learn Spanish before going to Argentina. There he played once, with borrowed clubs. His game was somewhat rusty.
“Have you ever seen anyone play worse?” he ruefully asked his caddy.
“Yeah—the guy who owns those clubs,” was the dry response.
Before they left the U.S. in 1953, one of Ben’s speaking engagements took him through Amarillo, Texas. He stopped at the golf course and purchased a partial set of clubs. During their first term, he played once at the Rosario Swift packing plant’s course and once at the country club, but it was expensive.
An interview with a psychiatrist was part of the missionaries’ complete periodic medical exams. During their first furlough, the doctor told Ben that he needed to take up an activity to help him relax. Golf was the most attractive possibility, but he felt that it would eat away even more of the little time he had to spend with his family. La Nell offered to learn so they could play together, and they bought a set of clubs each.
When they returned to Rosario and moved from the apartment to a house, they discovered that there was a nine-hole golf course close to them, near the Belgrano railroad. They found that they could just fit in a quick round about once a week during the siesta when no one else was around. La Nell proved to be a natural and looked forward to their outings just as much as her husband. Ben began to regain and build upon the skills he had acquired as a child and teenager, to the point that one day the caddy asked if he had been a professional player. The only appointment Ben ever missed in his life was when he was playing golf and forgot a meeting with the senior area missionary, Thomas Hawkins.
They also initiated their good friend Bill Ferrell into the game. On his very first round he hit a really beautiful spoon shot. Later that evening as he relaxed in an armchair at the Bedfords’ house, a dreamy look and wistful smile would steal across his face every time he thought about that ball curving gracefully onto the green. He ended up playing more frequently than they did, on the lush fairways of Córdoba.
In Comodoro Rivadavia Ben played only once, on a dry bumpy course where oil pipelines marked the hazards and the “greens” were made of sand, much like a golf course he had once seen in Odessa, Texas, but on their second furlough they played on several occasions. Once they were in Arlington, and the three college students ahead of them waved them through. La Nell was a bit embarrassed and self-conscious at having to make her next shot under their watchful gaze. Her ball was some thirty or forty feet away from the green; she swung and it arced up into the air, landed on the green and rolled gently into the hole.
“Get out of here!” exclaimed the young men.
Ben even played a couple of times with a broken hand at a golf course in Fort Worth which later became the site of the TCU baseball stadium and tennis courts.
La Nell had learned to play with pointers from Ben but now was able to take advantage of the availability of a pro at the Lomas Golf Club for a few lessons.
“¡Brava, Señora! But the follow-through is not so good,” he said as he helped her correct her tendency to slice.
One day they gave him a Bible and when they got back from their eighteen holes he had already gone through much of the New Testament.
As far as possible, they tried to play once a week. When they left the South Zone, they informed the Club because they did not want to abuse its generosity. It responded by making them members as long as they lived in Argentina. When they retired, they received a letter giving them access and reduced rates at private golf courses around the world.
Yet another benefit was that they could take paying visitors, who otherwise would not have been allowed to play at all. They often treated friends and overseas guests. Ben and La Nell got to where they were pretty much par for the course, and their children became well acquainted with the language of bogeys, birdies and even eagles.
AWOL
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft a-gley”16 was a very fitting motto for the Bedfords in 1965.
During the first term of service in Argentina, the Bedfords and their best friends the Ferrells had purchased a lot together with the intention of building a little getaway. Every time one of the couples thought they could manage it, the other was in a particularly tight spot. The two families were now in their third term and had yet to do anything about it.
“At this rate it will never get done.”
“Then let’s just close our eyes and do it!”
“Okay!”
So they had carefully drawn up their budgets to pay for plans and permits, bricks and mortar, wood and labor—tightening their belts to the very last notch. It was the only time in the Bedfords’ forty-year missionary career that the dollar fell and became weaker than the peso, so they were pretty much broke for a good while and had quite a struggle to make ends meet.
But it was worth it—in spite of everything it was definitely worth it, and they were able to use it the very next summer, January of 1966. A local architect by the name of Bonamico drew up the plans for a very serviceable house that made the most of every inch of available space.
The center of the structure was open for the kitchen and dining areas, forming an L to the right at the back with the den. Halfway down on the left the wall opened up onto a small hall with a bathroom in the middle, flanked on either side by a bedroom—to the left Bill and Opal, to the right Ben and La Nell. Across the hall was the bedroom for the four girls (Lynn, Betty, Nelda and Nancy), just large enough for two built-in sets of bunk beds, each with two large drawers underneath. All three bedrooms had a small open closet as well as a triangular slab of marble rescued from the leftovers of grander building projects and shaped to fit into a corner with a mirror hung above to create a “dresser.” Immediately to the right of the front door was another small hall, with a tiny bathroom and a tiny bedroom with bunkbeds for David and Curtis. There was a fireplace in the corner of the living-dining area and a door that opened onto a small porch and stairs leading down into the back yard.
After dismissing the carpenter, whose incompetence literally made La Nell cry, Bill, who was handy with tools, built the cabinets and finished the baseboards. They soon realized that something was wrong with the adhesive that had been used to lay down the vinyl tiles. It began squirting out at the joints whenever weight was applied. They were forced to take up all the tiles, soak them in thinner, scrub them clean, wash and dry them, and then re-lay them with proper adhesive after scraping and cleaning the cement floor to obtain a smooth surface. This involved practically every member of the two families in a veritable assembly line where practice made perfect, although quite a number of rubber gloves were ruined in the process.
The location and the view were fabulous. Not only were they in La Falda, a little jewel of a town in the heart of Córdoba’s Punilla Valley, reputed to have the third healthiest climate in the world, they were perched on a hill looking down toward the east onto the town and across to Cerros Banderita and Cuadrado,17 with turquoise skies by day and velvety black star-studded skies by night. There were charming walks in every direction and the swimming pool at the Baptist campgrounds was only ten minutes away by car.
The