THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505190250
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
For the Midgett family, Jungle Golf, high on a rise at 22nd Street and Pacific Avenue, might as well be home.
The popular miniature golf course where fiberglass elephants, gorillas, giraffes and other jungle beasts reside was once the site of the family homestead. Now golf course manager Preston Midgett, who was born at the family home, lives in a bright aerie on top of the golf course's game room.
In addition, the Midgett clan, a multigenerational group of offbeat folks who are well-known around the beach, can't stay away from their golf course. They gather for lunch several times a week in the Jungle Golf snack bar.
Recently, several family members sat around a long table, dining on soft pretzels and pizza and talking about the 25th anniversary of the golf course that the Midgett family built. Today, they are hosting a private party to celebrate.
Since 1970, Jungle Golf has been a family affair. A.B. Midgett, now deceased, and Bobby Midgett, along with their mother, Elizabeth Midgett, who also is deceased, were really the ones responsible for building the course. Elizabeth had lived in the family's California-style bungalow on the hill since 1941.
The retaining wall along 22nd Street is the original wall that held the hill when the house was there.
``It's one of the last hills at the beach,'' said Gerry Midgett Ashburn, ``that and the Cavalier and the A.R.E.''
Initially, designers with the Jungle Golf franchise wanted to level the hill, the remains of a secondary dune line at the beach, and build a flat golf course like all the others that were being built at the time. But the family persuaded them not to, recalled Ralph Midgett, A.B. and Bobby's brother.
Although the course was designed by architects, the whole family participated in the construction.
``We were all pushing wheelbarrows,'' said A.B.'s son, Richard.
As far as horticulture goes, Preston Midgett, Bobby's son, also is proud of the palm trees that have managed to survive Virginia Beach winters, some of them since the course opened, and the banana trees that he takes in every winter. Ralph also likes to point out 30 live oaks on the course. The oaks are pruned free of all their lower branches.
``We keep them that way to look like Africa,'' Midgett said. ``Because giraffes eat all the way up to the top of the trees!''
That's the Midgett family imagination at work. It's what spurred Richard and his brother, Al, to seine a farm pond years ago and install their catch of long-nosed gar, largemouth bass, carp and freshwater turtles in the golf course's little manmade pond. And it's what provoked Preston to raise tobacco and cotton in patches on the course.
After Jungle Golf opened, Preston, Richard, Al and 10 other cousins all had summer jobs at the course, along with ``half the kids at the beach,'' Ralph recalled. The older generation wasn't left out. A.B.'s wife, May Henry, and Bobby's wife, Nancy, worked the snack bar over the years. And now there are even two great grandchildren who are old enough to spend summers working at Jungle Golf.
Though the family stays the same, prices have gone up. On opening day, a game cost 50 cents. Today, it costs $6 a round at night.
Three weddings have taken place at Jungle Golf, one of them being Preston's marriage to wife, Kim. They were wed on the ``other side of the volcano,'' Preston said pointing toward 22nd Street.
Back in 1970, life-size African animals were a novelty at the Beach and the Midgetts recalled the time a woman was stopped by police late one night as she rolled the elephant, end over end, down 22nd Street. They also remembered when a hippopotamus fell off a truck, appropriately enough right in front of the Virginia Beach SPCA and when . . .
The stories will go on long after the anniversary celebration is over. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
The Midgett clan, a multigenerational group of offbeat folks, just
can't stay away from their Jungle Golf course. They gather several
times a week in the snack bar. They are, back row from left: Nancy
O'Brien holding Ryland, Bobby and Nancy Midgett, Al, Nell and Ralph
Midgett; and front row: Preston and Richard Midgett and Gerry
Ashburn.
by CNB