I awoke for Bible Study early Wednesday morning and headed towards the front door. My housemate Daniel, who had stayed up all night studying, said goodbye to me as I opened the door. But as I gazed through the glass door, I beheld what was perhaps the most unusual thing I had ever seen.
“Daniel, why is there a golf cart on our porch steps?” I asked.
“What are you talking about, Sam?” He got up and walked to the door. Sure enough, there was a golf cart perched on the slope of our porch’s steps, front wheels on the porch and back wheels on the ground. We went down to inspect the vehicle. It was a deluxe six-seat golf cart that boasted an impressive twelve feet in length. “Oh my goodness Sam, we have a golf cart!”
We attempted to hide it in clever places in our front yard, but we had to settle for half-cover behind a tree. My first thought was that one of our friends had left it on our steps as a prank, and Daniel’s list of potential culprits was very similar to my own. The next thought that crossed my mind was the question of who it belonged to. We know that the University of Memphis was only a block from our house, but we preferred to believe that whoever it belonged to chose to leave it on our front steps as a gift. We decided to pursue this latter line of thinking.
Daniel cleared out half of the garage to store it, and my housemates scoured the vehicle for identification or proof of ownership. None was found, but that may have partly been because it had been spray-painted over where some insignia had apparently been. We called all of our friends that could have done it, but no one had done the prank.
We instantly began to conjure up grand visions of what this golf cart would do for us. We decided that we should keep it stored in the garage until the spring semester; we would then be able to drive it around without fear of someone actively looking for what may very well be a stolen golf cart.
We had to come up with a story for how we got it, so Daniel agreed that he would tell others that his grandfather, whom we would say was an avid golfer, had given it to Daniel shortly before he died. This story having been agreed upon, I devised the name “Pappy’s Pride” for the vehicle. We had ideas to paint it bright red, install carpet on its floors and rear-view mirrors, and hang curtains around the rear. We set aside Saturday morning for our day of customizing.
By Saturday, however, we had a change of heart and decided to report it to the police. No one had claimed it, but we all felt that it was right thing to do. It turned out that the University of Memphis was looking for a golf cart that matched the same description and was stolen the night before we found it. The University police were called to our house, and an officer mounted it to drive out of our driveway. Unfortunately, it was apparently his first time to drive a golf cart, and he ran it full speed into our closed garage door. Though we now had a large dent in our garage door, which is now also no longer functional, we agreed that it was a very fitting ending to our story.
