Thundering Oak Enterprises

About Thundering Oak Enterprises

Auburn's municipal golf course closes its fairways to play on the hardest mornings of the year, when frost turns the oak-lined roughs white and the greens crew stays inside instead of heading out with the mowers. Thundering Oak Enterprises works that same quiet property in a different season of its own, clearing the clubhouse parking lot and the cart paths that wind between the oaks so the pro shop can open on schedule. A cart path holds ice differently than open turf — narrower, shaded by the same big oaks the company takes its name from, slower to let go of a freeze once it sets in. With the course silent and the fairways empty, the work has a stillness to it that summer never allows: just the scrape of a blade against asphalt and the oaks standing bare overhead. By the time golfers start checking the weather again, the lot and paths are already clear and waiting.