Fourth Annual Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Benefit at our House
May 5, 1996


Leslie, in requisite mini-golf garb, poses before the party begins. Note the new venue; we moved in to our house on 24th Street in January 1996.
Catherine and John Burke's "Bicycle Madness" took over the driveway and front sidewalk.
The world-travel-themed "Bicycle Madness" included a spinning bicycle wheel (not shown here) and sundry props and artifacts from destinations around the globe.

Guest Max Barr gets framed inside an oversized National Geographic magazine cover after playing "Bicycle Madness."
Robert and Laurie Kanes, Les Stickles and Judit Muller's "The Birth Canal." The hole creators had threatened to include a frozen placenta in the finished design; mercifully, they relented.
Ann McNamee emerges, apparently unscathed, from "The Birth Canal."
Claire Curtin, John Loose, Jennie McDonald, and Dan Miller constructed the kid-friendly Dinosaurland." Herbivores only, thank you; no carnivores need apply.
TScientists note that we really have no idea what color dinosaurs really were. But this yellow-and-white-polkadot stegasaurus ramp posits an interesting theory.
? Jean Cheng and Melissa Riofrio's "City Driving" -- an exquisitely constructed vehicular challenge. To play, four golfers took different roads to reach the cup.
Speed limit was posted as 55 miles per hour, but enforcement was lax.
This was in the days before cell phones were ubiquitous, so the "city drivers" actually talked to one another, face to face.
"Comet Hai-Karate," by The Tent of Mystery (in reality, Mark Appel), launched golf balls up a ramp and into outer space .. or at least into the cup.
Leslie Crawford and Steve Fox's "Kitty Litter" -- a two-floor effort started upstairs, with a putt into the giant cat's mouth...
... and finshed up downstairs in the hole, inside a box of kitty litter. Not to worry: Those are actually Baby Ruth bars, though Roberta Furger (shown here with Steve) seems unconvinced.
Robert Lauriston's "Golf-o-Mat 2000" was a breakthrough -- the first totally conceptual hole (no actual golf balls were used) in the four-year history of the event.
To play Golf-o-Matt 2000, the golfer enter a curtained off room and hole designer Lauriston projected a painting on a screen. Note the golf ball in the lower left. In this case, your first shot left you on in the rough.
Subsequent putts might send your ball into a water trap (left), out of bounds (right), onto the fairway, or eventually into the cup. Tally your strokes and that's your score.
Maeve Forster (age seven) designed "The Little Mermaid" -- our first kid-built hole. Because it was a surprise entry (Maeve and her father, John, simply showed up with it), it was not on the scorecard. But here it is, in all its glory.
Cary Hammer, Nadine Browning (shown here with her sister, Lorraine, in the back) went big-time with "Miniature Golfer."
To play "Miniature Golfer," you enter the "Enshrinkerator" and then traverse a hallway, where everything gets progressively larger. Once you step out of the hall, you realize you've shrunk. Note the giant windmill.
The putter and golf ball are similarly jumbo. Upon completion of hole, the player exits the installation and is magically restored to regular size.
Bud Peen's "The Big One '89" re-created the Loma Prieta earthquake in our backyard.
Befitting an earthquake-inspired installation, "The Big One '89" shook, rattled, and rolled, but mercifully held together throughout the proceedings.
In the midst of the mad-cow scare, Kate Godfrey and Gene Heller created "Elsie's Revenge." Sure, Elsie looks friendly, but what about all those cow skulls in the background?
"The Morgue," by Annette Goodfriend and Kirk Steers celebrated the life and mourned the very recent death of Don Clayton, the inventor of "Putt-Putt Golf."
That's Clayton's body. Golfers joined the hole in mid-autopsy.
A macabre construction bathed in black light, "The Morgue" was voted best in show, beating out a strong field of contenders.
Susan Fry (left), Cadir Lee, Michael Bayle (right), and Declan Fox created "Blind Obedience." Pop a balloon and follow the mini-golf-themed instructions contained therein to get the ball into the hole below.
Every mini-golf course needs a windmill. And this one is no exception. Though this particular windmill bears an uncanny resemblance to San Francisco's Transamerica Tower.
Best Hole Design winners Annette Goodfriend and Kirk Steers show off their hard-won trophy -- a Gumby.
The scorecard. Tim Luddy's "Putter Duck," our first-ever on-screen computer creation, is sadly not shown here. But as the scorecard indicates, it was very much present at the event.
Want more pix? Click here for "Crawfox Mini-Golf: A Brief History in Words and Pictures" -- a look at 11 years of mini-golf madness