My summer job: Latrobe tour guide

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 “Help! My daughters cast a spell that turned me smaller than an Arnold Palmer golf ball and there’s a grasshopper coming to eat me!”

I wish I could have shared that line with you earlier this week, but I’ve been busy playing tour guide.

That’s what happens when you live in Latrobe when the Pittsburgh Steelers are in town for training camp.

The picture was taken behind the front desk of the Marriott SpringHill Suites hotel, a place I’ve spent so much time the staff is starting to ask me when it’s my turn to bring donuts.

It happens every summer. Out-of-town buddies plan a Latrobe pilgrimage to see the Steelers, play golf and meet Arnold Palmer.

They expect me to arrange all this.

I try my best.

The Steeler camp, man, that’s a cinch. They let anybody in.

It gets tricky when they want me to arrange golf at Latrobe Country Club and introduce them to Arnold Palmer. They think we’re so buddy-buddy I can invite myself over to Palmer’s house for drinks after a freebie round of golf.

They are mistaken.

If I were that close to Palmer I’d devote my entire existence to conniving a way to get him to alter his will so I’d get a healthy cut of it for my greedy little self.

But sometimes that’s the way it works out. Just this week I had a friend from Florida visit. We’d met a couple years ago on a Mississippi golf trip. We hit it off and made plans to stay in touch.

He’s Andy Reinstetter and has what most consider a dream job. He travels the globe golfing for free. 

His AndyGolfTravelDiary blog does well enough that he can usually secure free golf from top clubs and lodging from sympathetic hotel GMs.

He once had a traditional corporate job and one day woke up and said, “Screw this, I’d rather golf.”

He doesn’t earn much loot, but he’s one of the most cheerful and self-fulfilled gentlemen I’ve ever met. And he’s the biggest golf nut I know.

How big? During the day when I toured him around Latrobe he wore knickers and carried a hickory shafted golf club everywhere we went.

Needless to say, I didn’t take him to The Pond.

We spent Wednesday night at the Marriott and met Jimmy Robinson, a former NFL wide receiver who showed us the knuckle-busting Super Bowl ring he won coaching the ’11 Green Bay Packers.

He was so friendly I barely begrudged him for beating the Steelers that year to win the ring.

We couldn’t golf the next day because the club was hosting a political fundraiser U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, but I was able to get Andy a full tour of the Palmer offices, the warehouse and clubhouse.

And, yes, he got to meet Arnold Palmer.

And U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy!

I was personally thrilled to meet Murphy because how often do any of us get to in person berate a House Republican? He was all by himself on the putting green (the other golfers had already started their rounds).

And I did, indeed, give him hell.

He started right in with the friendly chat and cut him off and said, “What are you, a moderately conservative Republican, doing to earn the support of someone like me, a moderately liberal voter, who thinks Tea Party conservatives are the biggest obstacle to sensible governing?”

He told me he’s concentrating on issues important to our district and that he, a practicing psychologist, is on the forefront of improving America’s mental health.

I told him that’s what I do, too!

I told him about my book. We exchanged cards. I’m going to send him a copy of “Use All The Crayons!” and a request that he put me in touch with mental health groups that need lively speakers.

I told him helping me would be a practical two-fer: He’d be improving America’s mental health while simultaneously boosting the humble fortunes of one of his district’s most beleaguered taxpayers.

Andy was taking the notes the whole time. He does a lot of that. That and taking pictures. He’s going to do a segment about me and his visit to Latrobe.

I’m very flattered.

He left Wednesday, about six hours before the arrival of my nephew and his girlfriend. Their three-day tour concludes Saturday.

That should be it until next summer when it’ll start up all over again.

I’m, for now, glad it’s about to end. I didn’t earn any money the last two weeks spending so much time pretending I’m a Latrobe tour guide.

I’m eager to get back to again not earning any money pretending I’m a Latrobe writer.

Related . . .

Welcome Steelers & fans back to Latrobe

My hands are beautiful to behold

Arnold Palmer gave me noogies on Monday

Can’t hate the Packers, but . . .

Our 2.9 mile vacation

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The car was packed. We’d done security recon around the house. The light timers were all set.

Just one thing missing from the standard we’re-off-to-vacation checklist: gas up the car.

Heck with it, I thought. I had about a quarter tank left. And if I ran empty on some desolate stretch, I could just stroll home.

We were only going 2.9 miles.

Most of you know I’m a bona fide travel writer. I have a self-interest in encouraging readers to travel to as many far-flung destinations as they can manage. So I’m kind of breaking the industry rules when I share we had one of our best vacations by staying at a hotel so near Val and I took turns returning home to let the dog out to pee.

Arnold Palmer and Marriott partnered to build a new SpringHill Suites hotel that opened in June. 

Palmer wanted a lodging amenity that would allow area guests to enjoy historic Latrobe Country Club. The club is a destination for Palmer pilgrims who want to immerse themselves in the history of man many of them revere. 

Guys like my old man.

He’d have loved the new hotel.

We watched them build it, me from the inside out, as well.

I did a story about the hotel’s construction for Palmer’s Kingdom Magazine. Three months before it was due to open I was on the roof of the place with the construction foreman sharing Palmer stories.

“Man, wait ‘til you see this place when we’re finished,” he said. “You’re going to love it.”

He later showed me one of Palmer’s most unusual autographs. It’s back in the boiler room where Palmer, then 82, clambered down into a muddy ditch to scratch his name with a nail in a three-foot spread of wet cement.

The hotel surpassed my expectations. I do think of my late father when I walk into the lobby. The decor is too tasteful to say it looks like a Palmer museum, but there are enough flourishes to get a real sense of the man and what he means to golf and Latrobe.

Rates vary, but the one that sticks out in my mind is $175 per night. That’s reasonable for a Marriott, outlandish when you realize that includes a free round of golf at L.C.C. 

Of course, my daughters don’t give a crap about any of that. They just thought it would be cool to stay in a new hotel.

But spending an overnighter at a hotel within view of our home seemed an extravagance. 

Not to the 12-year-old. “You’re friends with him, aren’t you?” she asked. “Can’t you just say you’d like to spend the night there? It’s not like you’re asking to stay in his spare bedroom.”

Her audacity convinces me she’ll someday be a really fine travel writer or perhaps a shakedown congresswoman.

No, I can’t ask Arnold Palmer that. Happily, I know people who work for him, one of whom oversaw the hotel’s construction.

I can’t ask him for that either. But he was gracious enough to offer a deal too sweet to refuse.

So Friday afternoon we got the kids off the bus and told them we were taking them to Nana’s where we’d planned to abandon them for the weekend. I believe things are more fun if at first you’re tricked into thinking they’re going to really suck (my wife keeps waiting for the matrimonial payoff in this).

We had about four minutes of surly complaints when I pulled into the hotel and told them it was April Fool’s in October. We filmed it as they pulled open the door to room 404 to find we’d checked in early and decorated the beds with all their favorite stuffed animals.

We could see home from our room.

We ordered a pizza, watched a movie and spent hours in the pool where I had a friendly chat with a guy from out of town. He and his family were from Greensburg, about eight miles away.

“I know a guy involved in a time share,” he told me. “He’s right now running to Wildwood, New Jersey, and they’re driving five hours to do about what we’re doing here.”

We talked about how we’d both overstressed trying to conceive whopper vacations when there are appealing options right under our noses.

Kids just want novelty. Parents just want peace.

Sometimes novelty’s right down the street.

Peace.

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