His given name is Emeka Ladejobi-Ukwu. Emeka means “great deeds” in the Igbo language of southern Nigeria. His parents immigrated in 1946, when he was four. They came to California because his father loved fruit, and he heard that the best fruit in America was in Los Angeles. The family lived in Hollywood and his father worked as a janitor at a department store. He had four other brothers, Emeka was the youngest. When he was six, his father started calling him Barry, and changed the family name to Robinson in honor of Jackie Robinson, who had broken baseball’s color barrier the year before. All four boys were raised believing that anything is possible in America, that it truly is the land of opportunity, that they could become whatever they wanted to become. One became a teacher, another a police officer, the third owned a convenience store. Emeka, now Barry, had a different dream: he wanted to bring joy and fun to the middle class at affordable prices. He was eleven the first time he told his father of his dream. The entire family was having Sunday dinner. Barry stood, said he had an announcement to make, and asked for silence. When silence arrived, he said Family, I have discovered my dream, I want to bring joy and fun to the middle class at affordable prices. There was a moment of dense quiet before the room exploded with laughter. Barry remained standing and waited for the laughter to end. It took several minutes. When it did, he said I will not waver, I will make my dream a reality.

Barry struggled in school. He got one A over the course of his entire academic career, which came in eighth-grade gym. When he graduated from high school, he took a job on a construction crew. Unlike many of the men on the crew, he did not specialize in one particular field. He learned carpentry, roofing, painting, electrical, plumbing. He learned how to lay carpet, how to pour cement. He saved his money. He drove a beat-up twenty-year-old Chevy, he lived in a one-room apartment in Watts the bathroom was down the hall. Every night before he went to sleep he lay in bed and dreamed, lay in bed and dreamed.

In 1972 he found the land. It was located on a major street equidistant from the 10 (The San Bernardino Freeway) the 605 (the San Gabriel River Freeway) and the 60 (the Pomona Freeway). City of Industry was a solid middle-class community surrounded by other solid middleclass communities: Whittier, West Covina, Diamond Bar, El Monte, Montebello. The land was flat and clear. The owner was going to build a mini-mall, but decided there was too much competition.

He designed all four courses himself. He wanted them to be entertaining for adults, challenging for children. All seventy-two holes would be different, there would be absolutely no repeats. He made doglegs in every direction. He made ramps and hills, traps of every conceivable kind. One of the courses had a zoo theme and life-sized animals were an integral part of every hole. Another course was based on the famous holes of real golf courses. The third was based on famous films, the fourth was called The Spectacular!!! and involved all of his wildest ideas. He laid them out himself. He poured the concrete with friend’s from work. He laid the Astroturf, did the painting. He made sure everything was perfect, built to his exact specifications. Every spare minute away from his job was spent working on the courses. It took him two years to finish them.

He opened for business on a Thursday. There was no clubhouse, no arcade, there were no go-karts, no boats, no parking lot. There was no sign. Just a card table and cashbox at the entrance, with Barry sitting in a folding chair smiling and shaking everyone’s hand. He got nine customers. He made thirteen dollars and fifty cents. He was thrilled. He sat there day after day. More and more people came. He saved every cent he made and planned for the future. After three months he had enough to build a small shack that replaced the card table. After eight months he put in a parking lot. He lived in the same place, drove the same car. He wore a collared shirt that said Putt Put Bonanza on the back and had his name on the front.

Word spread amongst the population of the local communities. People loved the courses and loved Barry and knew good, affordable entertainment when they saw it. Eighteen months after opening, he put in the track, which was followed by the arcade and the bumper boats. In 1978, he built the clubhouse, which was as nice as many of the clubhouses of local country clubs. He considered it his crowning achievement. The ’80s were the “Boom Years.” Putt Putt Bonanza was packed seven days a week, 365 days a year. Video games became a cultural phenomenon, led by Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Putt Putt Bonanza was featured as one of the primary settings in one of the most popular films of the decade, The Kung Fu Kid, which led to an explosion of popularity in mini-golf and the park itself. Barry held races at the track, had family discount days, established a special section of the clubhouse for birthday parties. The money coming in often went to upgrading or maintaining the facilities, though he was able to build a decent-sized nest egg. For Barry, the ’80s were a dream come true, a time when his vision became a complete reality, and when it was celebrated by the throngs of middle-class customers that flocked to his attractions. When the ’ninetys arrived, it was like someone flipped a switch. People stopped coming as often, and those that did come seemed unhappy. Kids wore black T-shirts and scowls, they openly spit, swore and smoked cigarettes. Parents seemed depressed, and they kept their wallets in their pockets. Wrecks, usually intentional, became more much common on the track, little kids started getting in fights at the boatpond, most of the new video games involved guns and death. Barry figured it was a cycle, and that good times would return.

The Bonanza made enough money to stay open, but maintaining Barry’s high standards required that he dip into his savings. As the decade dragged on, and things didn’t seem to change, his savings ran dry. In 1984 he had moved from his one-room apartment to a small rancher a couple miles from Putt Putt Bonanza. He took a second mortgage on the rancher to maintain the course. There was a brief return to glory with boom of the Internet, but it was fleeting. And the kids, they just kept getting worse and worse, louder, ruder, more unruly. Occasionally he would catch some of them drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana, occasionally he’d find a couple of teenagers fooling around in one of the clubhouse bathrooms.

Barry still goes to work every day, still takes great pride in Putt Putt Bonanza. He knows, however, that his dream is almost dead. He’s closing the go-kart track and the bumper-boat pond at the end of the year because they’ve become too expensive to insure, and he knows a lawsuit would ruin him. He can’t bear to go into the arcade because it’s all weapons and death, explosions and noise. His staff takes no pride in their jobs, the turnover is so high that sometimes he can’t open the clubhouse. Some of the concrete in the holes of the courses is cracking, he can’t keep up with the weeds, he finds urine in the water traps at least twice a week. His savings are gone so he can’t do renovations. He can stay open, but that is all.

A developer came to Barry and offered to buy Putt Putt Bonanza. The developer wants to level it and build a mini-mall. The money would allow Barry to pay off his house and retire in relative comfort. Barry’s brothers tell him to do it, his accountant tells him to do it, his sense of his reason and his brain tell him to do it. His heart says no. Whenever he allows himself to hear it, his heart says no, no, no. All day long, every day, his heart screams no.

Before he goes to bed every night, Barry sits in bed and looks through an album he keeps on his nightstand. It’s a pictorial history of his life at Putt Putt Bonanza. It starts with a picture of him shaking hands with the seller of the land the moment they closed on the sale. It follows him through the planning, most of which took place at a table in his parent’s house, the building of the course, which he did with many of his old friend’s. There is a shot of him on opening day, sitting and smiling at his card table, there are pictures of him during each of the expansion phases, pictures of him with smiling happy customers, laughing children, satisfied parents. About halfway through the album, there is picture of him with the stars of The Kung Fu Kid: an old Chinese man, a young Italian-American teenager, and a blond ingénue who would go on to win an Academy Award. They are standing at the entrance of the park, the Putt Putt Bonanza sign glows behind them. Barry was forty-two years old when the photo was taken, at the height of his career, his dreams had come true and he was happy. When he gets to the photo, he stops and stares at it. He smiles, even though he knows it will never be like that again, even though he knows the world no longer wants what he has, what he loves, what he has devoted his life to building and maintaining. He lies in bed and stares at the photo and smiles. His brain says let it go, sell it. His heart says no.

His heart says no.