Amish Country finds

“Protection from Winterkill” article from the September 1957 Golfdom.

Summer is a great time to hop in the car and go exploring. Recently I found myself in a car headed a few hours south of Cleveland to Amish Country, located in Holmes County.
It even has a spot on the state’s tourism commercial that features people yelling “hello” from different tourist destinations in “the state you’ll take to heart.”

If you’ve never experienced Amish Country, it’s definitely an interesting experience. You eat big home-cooked meals, browse homemade quilts, sample cheese and jump over a lot of horse poo. However, the best part for me are the antique malls. My fiancé and I are collectors of old books, depression glass (just me on that one) and furniture with character. And now Golfdoms. While wandering the second floor of one antique store, we pulled out a box full of old magazines, and there they were: September 1957 and June 1963.

Grabbing my only purchases of the day, my fiancé and I started leafing through them on the way home. Familiar advertisers and topics jumped out at me. Both Jacobsen and Toro mowers look very different from the ones I saw at the 2014 Golf Industry Show. Other than products, the articles were great to read through. Winterkill, snow mold and getting more people on the course were three topics that seem to be evergreen.

I’ve always loved history and I’ve enjoyed studying it for years now. Magazines allow us to travel through time without the butterfly effect or grandfather paradox or any of that jazz. The only major threat here are paper cuts. It’s too cool that Golfdom has such a rich history and has spanned so many years.

If you are a bit of a history buff, you can take a look at issues of Golfdom dated back to 1927 in Michigan State University’s digital archive. Check out digital issues for both the June 1963 and September 1957 here.

The June 1963 issue of Golfdom features a few “curious youngsters from the Dallas Salesmanship Club Camp for Boys” with Gary Player.

 The September 1957 issue of Golfdom features a group of caddies gathered around “Ex-caddie Sam Snead.”