Originally published Saturday, February 21, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

There's a guy in Tukwila with mole problems that make yours just . . . molehills.

Chuck Morris has, by the looks of it, hundreds of moles doing to his 70-odd acres of Duwamish bottom land what moles do on a smaller scale in most local lawns.

But Morris is head greenskeeper at the Foster Golf Course (does this all sound like an old Rodney Dangerfield movie?!) and he concedes: "You never get rid of 'em; best you can do is to stay even."

Which on the Tukwila plain means making a par of about 100 moles trapped each year on that green space between the Duwamish River and Interurban Avenue. And this is the time of year when Morris and his maintenance crew are trying to stay ahead of the moles and the growing number of golfers.

When he became head greenskeeper about 26 years ago, "there was just me and another worker," said Morris, who said he's "just turning 50." That's not his handicap, unless you figure it's a whole lot harder bending down to set a mole trap now than it was when he started.

With an average 80,000 golfers teeing off every year, Morris and his crew have to work year-round, even cutting grass in the winter. "We do a lot of pruning now, but the greens, if they're accessible, still get cut once or twice a week."

Because of this crazy weather, most of the sprawling course was cut on New Year's Eve and then not again until the end of January. "And grass doesn't stop growing here just because it's raining," Morris said, rolling his eyes a bit. Winter and early spring also are when his crews must treat the greens with fungicides and repair rutting and soil-compaction that comes with traffic over spongy wet turf.

Add to that the repair or cutting of trees damaged in winter storms, or the thankfully rare repair of deep tire or snowmobile tracks from misguided miscreants who decide to play through during off-hours and deep snowfalls. But every year about this time, it all returns to a lush green with hints of color in the trees and shrubs lining each hole, tee and green.

Alas, there are no hazelnut trees on Foster Golf Course to mark the link with Tukwila, the borrowed Indian word Tuck-wil-la, meaning "land of hazelnuts." This area was all called Garden Station until Joel Shoemaker, postmaster and later mayor, suggested the Indian name be used to christen the first local post office.

The greening of this current-day greenskeeper began at (Elks-)Allenmore Golf Course in his native Tacoma, where Morris had a part-time maintenance (read that, grass-cutting) job while at Stadium High. "My dad always played golf, and I tagged along and learned the game. I was playing pretty regular and on the team at Tacoma Community College when a U-Dub coach saw me and recruited me," Morris said.

"Unfortunately, Vietnam was happening then and I joined the Navy Reserves." That pretty much scrapped his golf game for several years, but he returned to civilian life and was able to grab the greenskeeping job when the course was still privately owned.

He's still able to play golf occasionally, like on early-spring days when morning rains discourage some golfers and the sun comes out just long enough for Morris to work on his 3 handicap "It used to be 1," he lamented.

"I learned a lot (about greenskeeping, not golfing) by trial and error," he said. "But I also took a two-year degree in horticulture from South Seattle Community College. And I've always learned a whole lot by asking questions of other course greenskeepers."

Greenskeepers seem always to have been plagued by moles, but nowadays Morris says his biggest problem is Canada geese. Particularly those who winter-over on or near the small lake built as a reservoir for golf course watering. "We've tried everything, of course, but the only thing that seemed to work well was a dog to shag 'em," Morris said. So, like many other Seattle communities similarly plagued with goose poop, the golf course is considering getting a full-time herding dog added to Morris' crew.

"That rendering plant that opened just across the river is another problem here," noted a regular golfer out on the course. "You wouldn't believe the smell on some summer days!"

"Or the sea gulls that hang out there and come here," added his golfing partner.

All of this figures into Chuck Morris' work schedule, which soon will shift into an ersatz daylight-saving long before the official time shift. "First tee-offs now are about 7:30 a.m.," Morris said. "But it shifts with daylight, and it will be 6 a.m. not long from now. Which means we'll have to be out doing our work beginning about 4 a.m."

That makes for a long, long work day on the par-69 course, so I just had to ask: "So, Chuck, do you have to cut your own grass when you get home?"

And he smiled broadly: "I did for years, but not anymore. No, we just got a townhouse. Now I can go home and watch someone else cut the grass!"

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.