The Bowling Alley
I peddled my bike up town past Royals and the National Bank of Commerce. There, next to Ray Montoure’s Standard station and across from Johnny and Nina’s Breiford Ford dealership proudly stood Blaine’s very own bowling alley.
By todays standards, it was a modest establishment. That being said, it provided a great center of entertainment for our community. It seems to me they had about eight lanes that were hand set. There were always a number of pin setters, but I think the king of the pin setters may have been Bobby Johnson’s friend Eddie.
Now I’ve always heard that commercial fishing is considered by many to be a high risk occupation. If that’s true, and I would certainly agree, it must pale to the life of a pin setter. I mean, there was a pair of brothers from out on the Sweet Road that could send that ball down the alley with deadly effect. Often pins shattered. It sort of reminded me of those “age of sail” battles when cannon balls would send splinters flying to impale the poor sailors.
So, as I watched I fought for some standard by which I might accurately fore tell the life expectancy of a pin setter. Failing to find an objective criteria, I fell back on “Not very damned long.” In addition, they wanted you to step lively. I mean yeah, you can’t keep the bowlers waiting, but still, that looked perilously close to actual work. I wandered back to watch the pool players.
Like many things in life, I am not a great pool player. I do get the general concept and on rare occasion I’ve sunk a two bank shot, but good, no. I can send the cue ball off hopefully in search of prey, but too often it simply wanders with a mind of its own. Mind you, my spatially
enhanced mind could plot the intended route of march and intended victims with brilliant accuracy but my fine twitch muscles failed to deliver the refined stroke that would grant me a glorious victory.
It is because I have a rare survival instinct that I knew one would never, ever, play pool against Eddie the king of the pin setters. He had the athletic ability and knowledge of the physics of inertia, mass, force and kineses that would quickly empty my pockets of the money I’d just gotten at Thrifty Foods for my beer and pop bottles.
I wandered over to the snack bar and sat on a stool, starting a conversation with Jennifer Chapman’s grandmother. I ordered up a Coke and she poured the syrup in and added the carbonated water. She explained to me how the syrup, water, and temperature all had to be within a certain range. Further, the Coke representative has singled them out for being a particularly fine example of the fountain employee’s art.
Jennifer Chapman’s grandparent owned the bowling alley and her mom worked there. In a brilliant piece of marketing, Jennifer’s mom must have decided that she needed to create her own future customers. To facilitate this, she set up the Blaine Junior Bowling League.
The Junior Bowling League was the reason I was there that day. Mrs. Chapman was going to give us free lessons, and when it came to free, I was all in.
Now setting out to bowl is not as simple as it might seem. First you had to find a pair of shoes that would fit. I could find the right width, but it seemed like there was always extra room fore and aft so my foot world drift. I got my pair of shoes and wandered off to the bathroom where I stuffed toilet paper in the bow to limit my foots movement inside the shoe to less than half an inch. That done, I admired the multi-colored leather panels that made up the shoe. I guess they tried to make them too ugly to wear but cool enough to bowl in.
Next came the ball. These represented a massive weight at the end of a young kids arm, but with some work there might be hope of sending the ball down range to devastating effect. In my case devastating effect was not going to be very fast.
Completely outfitted, we sat attentively as Jennifer’s mom explained the fine art of bowling.
“I’m gonna teach you how to spot bowl. Now they didn’t put those little arrowhead marks on the alley just for style. You use those to help you know how to deliver the ball.
I looked at the marks on the floor, considering how to use them.
She stood there with the ball poised in front of her, elbows in tight to the side looking down the alley.
“This is called the four step approach. you don’t want to hit the head pin ‘cause it’ll give you a split. You need to curl the ball between the one and the tree pin, what we call the pocket.”
I watched as she did this with pretty darned good accuracy.
We were all shepherded to an open space off to the right in front of the door where we did dry run after dry run of the four step approach. Finally the magic moment arrived and we all got to use the real ball on the real alley.
Now here was real danger and you quickly learned not to stand directly behind any of the nascent bowlers. The ball it seems could be released backwards as well as forward. It could also be delivered with the same trajectory as a mortar round with a high arc to land with a thump on the alley, leaving a small dent in the surface. I prayed mine would head off in the right direction. It did.
I actually was able to pay attention and before long most of us were able to approximate what bowling should look like.
Then came the scoring. None of this fancy stuff like today where the scorebook is kept on some computer and lights flash and everyone knows whats going on. Nope, it was paper, pencil and basic math. You actually had to know some math and if you made a mistake it was quickly pointed out. I was in pretty good shape after having played cribbage with my dad since I could hold cards in my hand.
The spot bowling seemed to make sense to me and I was able to bowl with enough consistency that I actually enjoyed it. I guess I probably averaged around 130, which for a kid wasn’t too bad. However years later, as I tried to succeed in college, it sort of hampered me.
You could take all sorts of classes for PE credit at Skagit Valley College. I saw bowling and thought heck, I know how to spot bowl, Jennifer’s mom taught me. So, I signed up. The first day of bowling was my finest hour bowling. I rolled a 200 game. The only problem was, you were graded on progress and it was all down hill from there. I did manage to attend all the classes and do what was asked so I got a B and was thrilled with that.
I think the last time I ever bowled was when I was at Western and Bobby Dolan came down to see Becky and I. We went bowling at that alley on State Street. Unlike me, Bobby was an athlete, he could play basketball with an intensity and drive that left me lagging far behind. He had taken up bowling and figured he’s do the same with a bowling ball as he’d done with a basketball. But, I had a secret, Jennifer’s mom had taught me how to spot bowl.