This Sump Swallows Chumps: The mud trough is fifteen feet deep, 150 feet long and 30 feet wide and will take one to two years to settle. Best to stay off it.
The tons of silt, muck and mud excavated from The Club ponds contained a mother lode of premium golf balls–30 years' worth of errant shots from well-heeled members that found their way to the deep, calm stillness of the pond water and mud. Thousands of remarkably preserved and eminently playable tiny white orbs, many of them Pro V Ones, Vincent noted, encrusted the slick dark brown surface of the settling slurry.
However, the presented tableau, as seductively beckoning as it was, belied its inherent lethalness. It was a siren song of fatal attraction. For any forager who ventured on its surface, looking to save a couple of bucks and get some quality golf balls, would sink inexorably over their heads and suffer an agonizing expiration by asphyxiation as the mud filled every last centimeter of their breathing passages. The La Brea tar pits it was not, but Vincent could think of numerous more comfortable ways to pass.
Vincent looked at the pit and the Kingston Trio rendition of the hapless Charlie trapped underground on the MTA came to mind:
"Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may be stuck forever
'neath the muck of The Club
He's the member who never returned."
