Carts Are in Demand, but Who Said Anything About Golfing?

Vehicles Pull Duty as Both Transport and Hobby

Christopher Van Wie takes the back seat with dog Star as his daughter Angela, 11, drives his six-seater golf cart, which was painted and decorated to resemble Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car. In shotgun is Angela's cousin Kaitlin Hudson, also 11. (Michael Williamson - The Washington Post)

Checking the mail. Visiting neighbors. Taking the kids to the bus stop.

For residents on the outskirts of Washington, using a golf cart doesn't necessarily mean playing golf. Marty Scanlon, for one, appreciates his cart foremost as a piece of furniture.

"When we're together," the 45-year-old says, sitting on his cart next to his buddies, "this garage exudes knowledge."

Parked next to him is a neighbor who recently pulled into Scanlon's garage on his own cart. They face a TV, watching football highlights, smoking cigars and drinking beer. Conversation veers from politics to pontoon boats to cheese dip.

"It's a think tank," said Rick Rickson, 44, lifting a cup of Bud Light out of his drink holder.

The trio of former Navy chief petty officers, who live outside Leonardtown in St. Mary's County, are hardly alone. In spread-out subdivisions across the country, cart owners no longer have to hoof it a quarter-mile or climb into the car when they want to visit a neighbor at the end of the street. Residents in retirement villages also like carts, including aging car buffs looking for a substitute vehicle to tinker with.

Although no one definitively tracks this kind of cart use, as many as 40,000 of the estimated 200,000 carts built each year end up being used by non-golfers.

Lots go to businesses, such as apartment complexes, car dealers and the like. But a sizable number end up with homeowners, said Don DelPlace, publisher of Golf Car Advisor, a trade magazine and wholesale catalog with products for the residential set. Among the Advisor's offerings: alloy wheels, rifle holders (for hunting) and kits to convert carts to roadsters resembling a Hummer H2 or a Buick Lucerne.

Inside Scanlon's garage, as many as five Navy veterans -- all in their 40s, all working for the government or for government contractors -- gather to watch football. In their Navy careers, they logged a combined 20,000 hours of flight time. These days, those without carts sometimes drive over aboard riding lawnmowers, giving them a place to sit to watch the games.

Like all their garage gatherings, the one held the evening before Thanksgiving was conducted on the clock. By 7:30 p.m. the three on hand had to return to their non-cart lives: wives, kids, adulthood. Rickson had pumpkin pies to check on. Tom Garrahan, 43, had to get ready for a trip the next day to Ocean City.

"I'll catch you guys on Sunday," he said, flipping on his headlights, pulling out of Scanlon's garage and riding off into the darkness.

About 40 miles north, along the Anne Arundel-Calvert County line, Christopher Van Wie, his wife and their three kids live on a three-acre lot at the end of a cul-de-sac.