If you've been paying attention to my columns and short films for the last 15 years, it has probably become apparent that I am not of the conventional mindset.  There's a reason for that.

I spent my formative pre-teen/teen years on a US Army Special Forces base, deep in the Bavarian Alps.  Known as Bad Tolz, it was 10th Special Forces Group Hdqtrs and had once been Himmler's SS Officer's Training School.

Years later, after too much walk-mow-cup-changing, I enlisted in SF and somehow managed to break my coccyx on a parachute jump.  (For the anatomically challenged, it's not what you think, it's on the other side.)

Due to the cracked spine, I developed a somewhat ape-like gait and was subsequently removed from the general population and put to work in the dark basement of the Special Warfare Center.  Ordered to make training films for Special Ops, I soon became an expert in what makes Spec Ops work:  Never attempt a direct attack when an indirect operation could succeed.

It's the heart of Unconventional Warfare, (UW) as there is always a stealthy way to minimize casualties, deflect blame if Murphy shows up and still win.

My brother Mike and I eventually brought this philosophy to Super Low Budget Golf Course Maintenance.  (SLBGCM)  Dad, a former 11th Airborne paratrooper was already a nearly famous veteran of UW in Very Low Budget GCM, (VLBGCM) having surreptitiously acquired a spray rig by using SF tactics to circumvent insane bureaucratic equipment purchasing rules.

Dad didn't even have a spray rig and was repeatedly denied the opportunity to buy one.  Yet, the regs did allow for replacement parts, so he bought all the replacement parts from Lawn & Turf for his nonexistent rig and ordered the parts delivered . . . completely assembled.

Anyway, while I hobbled around Fort Bragg like an orangutan with a malfunctioning defibrillator in his pants, Mike was training for his GCS career by spending 4 years in Spec Ops with the 1st/75th Ranger Battalion.

In golf, we quickly learned it was impossible to successfully acquire equipment or defeat ridiculous grooming standard demands using the Direct Attack.  The Post-April surge in hysterical pleas for softer, faster greens, year-round blooming azaleas and thickly overseeded argyle fairways always won out over common sense and crippled the course with a fiscal siege mentality.  We knew we had to go UW.

To fight off the moronic proponents of US Open replication or the Memorial Tree Cult and their contagion of Brass Plaques, we used SF methods.  SF was originally designed to train indigenous personnel in resistance techniques, so we resisted.

Here's a short training film, "FLOWER BED RESISTANCE", similar to one I produced at Fort Bragg.