Bowling

In the constant adventure to find out why my youth was so, I come across the artifacts of bowling. Like going to the movies or a dance or stopping by the fountain for a soda, a youthful and accepted indoor sport was bowling.

There were other indoor sports like puzzles but this one you had to throw a ball, sort of like indoor baseball without a catcher.

On a rainy or snowy day when you couldn’t go outside to play baseball or ride bikes, there were these large halls where groups could come and bowl.

From what I recall it wasn’t very expensive to rent a lane for a bunch of kids to sit around on plastic chairs with a table and a big pad to keep scores of how many pins each knocked down.

Unlike baseball you didn’t ‘throw’ the ball but rolled it down this wooden corridor toward some milk bottle shaped targets. It didn’t matter how fast or slow the ball went. The goal was to know down all the pins on the first roll.

Just to make sure a miss aimed ball didn’t go astray, there were gutters on both sides of the lane to catch mistakes.

Now you couldn’t just walk in and start rolling the balls. There was a procedure for proper bowling etiquette.

First you had to walk up to a desk to reserve your lane. The usual bowling alley had multiple lanes so this was like air traffic control to keep all the parties moving.

Second, you had to get your shoes. Now bowling requires special shoes as not to mark or scuff up the lanes. If they didn’t have your size, you’d adjust. Tennis shoes would not give you the skidding needed to look cool on the lane so you would take your score sheet and wax pencil and find your land and change your shoes. No one wanted to think about the last person who wore these same shoes.

Third was get snacks. There always was a counter serving junk food and sugar soda to keep everyone hyped. The best alleys had a regular crew sitting on swivel stools commenting on the bowlers while drinking their long neck beer.

Now it was time to bowl!

I could go into all the nuances of the ‘art’ of bowling, but I’ll break it down to the basics. There are two types of balls. Duck pins and 10-pins are the most popular. One has smaller balls and smaller pins and the other has a large ball with three holes for your fingers and much heaver. Some of the balls were colored and some were just black and no matter how good or bad you bowled, it was all due to the ball.

Far down the lane 10 pins stood there taunting you to try and knock them down. There is a special dance to one-two-three step slide then sling the ball down the center of the lane to destroy the enemy. Well that was how a 10-year old looked at it.

In my neighborhood there were a choice of two duckpin alleys within walking distance, but I never found an interest. The places were loud and smelly and some days there were no lanes available because there were leagues of people who wore funny shirts and would bowl with a passion dedicated to football and baseball teams.

These leagues were like gangs taking over the alley. They’d move in and establish their territory. These guys (don’t remember seeing any women teams?) had brought their own balls and had gloves and powder and their own shoes like some kind of gunslingers.

While bowling was considered a ‘redneck sport’ like billiards and drag racing, the alley was one of the few places kids could hang out without getting shoed away.

Both of the local alleys were torn down so I mostly forgot the game of bowling until college. Maybe junior year (?), choosing electives for classes, I still needed a ‘physical educational’ class. I’d already taken swimming for two semesters but I didn’t see tennis or volleyball or Frisbee as choices, so I filled in a box for Bowling 101.

You can stop laughing now.

The class was on the north side of town so I had to ride my bike every Saturday to ‘attend class’. ‘How bad could this be?’ I asked myself.

The professor (?) immediately divided the class up into ‘the jocks’ and ‘the nerds’. He wanted to build leagues or teams competing against each other and most of us just wanted to get through a few hours working off hour Friday hangovers.

I was lucky enough (?) to be thrown in with the fat guy, the awkward guy and a bunch of girls. We were supposed to be the losers.

After a brief instruction on the one-two-three slide, we were thrown into competition. The jocks, of course, beat us and we left humiliated. This was going to be a long semester.

The next weekend our ‘team’ decided that rather than be demoralized for another week, we could come up with a strategy. While the other team got all the attention, we secretly found our groove.

At the end of class, there was a competition between the two teams. The teacher was expecting certain results and his smugness was about to be disappointed.

While the other team tried to use perfect form and technique, we had come up with a secret weapon. The fat guy had a power throw that rocked the wall and destroyed the pins. The awkward guy had this weird curve that when pointed to the next lane would come back dead center and knocked down every pin. One girl rolled the ball slowly between her legs but hit dead center. Another girl found a technique for spinning the ball that would wipe out every pin and a couple in the next lane. I found a method to hit the lead pin in a sweet spot and continued the same movement.

I appreciate those who work for hours on bowling or curling or croquet but that was one class where the losers walked away with the trophy.

Now, onto the movie class.