Josh Clark

Is he dead?

Yeah, he died in 1996.

Yeah, okay.

But he had a good run.

I mean, this is 1954 when he was a 28-year-old man that he decided to try this.

So he went to his dad and said, hey, I've got this idea.

Rather than basically, as a New York Times obituary put it, rather than basically making a human-sized pinball machine for golf, we're going to make this a little more interesting.

How about we cobble together $5,200 and we're going to build our own little miniature golf course?

And he did in like a shaded little lot.

And with that $5,200, they opened for business.

And within 29 days, he and his father had made 100% of their investment back.

And Don Clayton said, I think there might be something to this whole thing.

Yeah, so he –

He was initially going to call it.

He went to the bank to open a business account, and he had to fill out the paperwork, and he was going to call it the Shady Vale Golf Course.

Yeah, this is hilarious.

As the story goes, he didn't know how to spell Vale.

I guess if it was V-A-I-L or V-A-L-E.

So he just said, putt-putt.

and wrote down putt-butt.