Memories of Bowling Night

My parents were both into bowling. But my father was much more serious about it, so serious that he wanted to be in an all-male bowling league. Why? Because men are better bowlers, he said.

So this was not a fun little pastime that they enjoyed together. My father joined his serious Wednesday night all-male league, and then, not to be outdone, my mother joined her all-female Wednesday night league at a different bowling alley.

And so Bowling Night was born.

My big brother Duane and I enjoyed Bowling Night. Sometimes Duane would go with my father and I would go with my mother, but that turned out to be way too boring, because it could take 3 hours or more for them to play all of the games. So most of the time my brother and I would stay together, going with my mother one week and my father the next.

While we were there, we were the helpers. If Mom or Dad needed a soda, we would go get it for them so they didn’t miss their turns. At the end of the night, I used to fetch my father’s bowling ball from the lane, shine it up, and put it in his bag for him while he tallied up the scores and changed his shoes. I remember one year, when his team couldn’t think of a name, they ended up calling themselves The Tams, named after me.

All the bowlers in both leagues used to love us. We were well-behaved kids. This guy Al in my father’s league was my buddy. He used to talk to me all the time and tell me stories and jokes. And there was this little trick he would play on me: when I was about to sit down, he would pull my chair back and I would fall on the floor. Everyone got a chuckle out of it, even me.

One night I decided to offer Al a chair while he was watching the other bowlers and waiting for his turn. I pulled over one of the nice big padded winged-back chairs.

“Sit here, Al!”

Somehow, when that large, balding, grey-haired man hit the floor with a tremendous thud, and his drink splashed up and all the ice cubes went all over the loudly-patterned carpet, somehow it just didn’t seem to be the cute little joke I thought it would be. Al seemed to come down a lot harder than me, the scrawny little 7 year old that I was. I hid in the ladies room where no one could get me. It took Al quite a while to coax me out of there from the doorway.

Duane and I usually got hot dogs or burgers with fries for dinner, we would sit up on the swivel stools, just like eating at the diner or up at the counter at Woolworth’s. Some nights we even got ice cream sundaes, or banana splits. Those were my favorite things to get because they always came with real whipped cream and a cherry on top. Yum!

The other great thing about Bowling Night was that it was also Allowance Night. Every week, as long as we kept our rooms cleaned, we would get $5 to spend however we wanted. We could play video games, buy candy, play air hockey… with five dollars we were nearly rich. Of course, our rooms had to pass Inspection before we went out. If we didn’t pass Inspection, we didn’t get the five bucks.

And if all that wasn’t cool enough, Bowling Night was on a school night. So we were up late on school nights, running around and playing games. It was our night out, too.

One night while at Dad’s bowling alley, we discovered that right next door was a slot car raceway. To my brother, this was absolutely the most awesome thing ever. You could rent a car and a controller for a half hour and race your car around the track.

It was just like the AFX race sets Duane used to get for Christmas, only bigger. And way cooler. The corners were banked just right so your car didn’t go flying off the track. This was very different from AFX, which came with these yellow flexible plastic guardrails that went around the corners to keep your car from careening off the plastic roadway. But of course they didn’t work as intended, and our cats would attack the cars and start swatting them around the living room with their paws while Duane chased them, yelling that they’d better not wreck his best car.

Yes, my brother was in heaven down in that slot car raceway. Pre-pubescent boy heaven.

I was too intimidated by all the older guys around there to actually race a car myself, but I liked watching Duane race. Occasionally, if his car did jump the track, I was there to put it right back on so he didn’t waste one precious minute of his racing time. After all, he was spending his entire five bucks on this.

So what did I spend my five bucks on? Up at the counter at the raceway, they sold great big prismatic stickers for $2.00 each plus tax. I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen, much cooler than any stickers that the other kids put on their brown-paper-bag-covered books. Yes, I blew my money on stickers. I remember buying these cat stickers in every available color, and I specifically recall this green square prismatic sticker which simply bore the words “Macho Man.” Ah yes, it was the 70’s. And my book covers were the coolest at school.

Around here, many of the bowling alleys have closed down. The one where my mother used to bowl is now a supermarket, and the one where my father used to bowl has become a huge arcade. I don’t even think that either of my parents bowls anymore. There are still bowling alleys around, of course, but there seems to be less of them. Is it less popular now, or are there just more recreational choices?

Funny thing is, that slot car raceway is still there. That place has die-hard fans.


“We all have our 'good old days' tucked away inside our hearts, and we return to them in daydreams like cats to favorite armchairs.” - Brian Carter