There was a time in America, after World War I and before "women's liberation," when bowling alleys were enclaves where men engaged in a manly sport within a manly culture. The point of bowling, was to get out of the house, away from the domestic life of womenfolk, and hangout with the guys. Wives, mothers, and girlfriends were not expected to approve of this activity any more than they approved of whiskers in the sink; it was just something men did in their leisure time, when they weren't shooting pool or playing poker, and was as much a part of men as their dirty fingernails. The only breasts in the bowling alley were on the serving wench, and they were not the perky, self conscious mounds of a middle-school, post-pubescent girl, but great, pendulous, sweaty, masses of mammalian flesh, what Nora Ephron calls "true knockers*," belonging to an ox of a woman with a longshoreman's sinewy arms, a tree stump neck, and the vocabulary of a blast furnace laborer, awoman who puts a man at ease. Like most all-male, American institutions, the bowling alley has been neutered, sanitized, and taken over by the effeminate guerrillas of judicious behavior, and they have visited havoc on every facet of a once valiant sport.
The terminology of the game has suffered considerably at the hands of euphemisms and the sensibilities of the gentlemen's club atmosphere has given way to a shameful concept called "political correctness." Formerly, it was a game of alleys, gutters, short left hooks, and men with sixteen-pound balls. Life on the approach is now characterized by "sweeping arcs" on "lanes" delimited by "channels" in a "recreation center" where the men's room prophylactic machine, to its great embarrassment, is labeled "Personal Products," for God's sake. The language of bowling has been transformed by a femino-androgyne coalition of thesaurus-thumping prigs into a sterile desert, devoid of "male-speak." Of course, they were not satisfied with merely bowdlerizing the vernacular; the carnage visited on the sporting tools and equipment has been no less distressing.
The equipment was more basic in those days, with a less manufactured feel. The pins were made of seasoned hardwood; alleys were given coats of lacquer and spread with oil from gutter to gutter, stem to stern. The ball of choice was the Brunswick Black Beauty, made of one-hundred percent hard rubber. This ball was not designed to sweep or cling or retain water; it was made to survive hard-ass, head-cracking collisions with pins made of solid maple. A manly bowler knew it was him against timber, mano-a-pino, as he grasped the ball in a fist-like grip, clambered onto the approach, fired off a screaming slider, and felt an elemental satisfaction at the crack of good wood. Men's leagues today, if they can still be called that, feature characters with prosthetic-like devices, stretching from finger-tip to elbow, presumably designed to buttress limp wrists and facilitate "finger tip" grips. The soft plastic ball is laid on the plastic-coated, precisely oiled lane, after much elaborate contortion by its deliverer, and does its ballet in the direction of hollowed out, plastic-coated, precisely weighted pins. If this doesn't produce the desired results, then, the room, inevitably, resounds with lachry-moronic voices wailing "it's too oily" or "it's too dry," distressingly reminiscent of the sounds from a freshmen Biology class as the children cut into their first earthworms. Previously, the equipment merely allowed participation. There was no status to be gained from a bankroll-enhanced supply of user-friendly gadgets nor from the propensity for affected behavior that, it seems, must be acquired simultaneously. Tampering with the tools of the game has sent bowling averages soaring and lent proof to the old axiom of life that "if it was easy, everybody would do it."
As the participation goes up in the sport, it's to be expected that quality of competition at the highest levels would increase, but because of efforts by the sanctioning bodies, such as the American Bowling Congress (ABC), the scores and averages are now ridiculously elevated. Recently, in September, 1995, Dan Dzierba of Chesterton, Indiana, bowled two perfect games in one weekend. The first was in his league on Friday night, followed by another, on Sunday, in a men's tournament in South Bend. It sounds on the surface like a once-in-a-lifetime achievement, but the sports section of the local newspaper, the Gary Post Tribune, used only three lines of print as they mentioned it in passing. Dan bowled six games in the South Bend tourney and finished with what seems, a phenomenal 231 average. He finished in fifth place, one position behind his son, Scott, who averaged 233.
Larry Henry, also of Chesterton, has a long history in bowling. Born in 1951, he bowled his first game before the end of 1952 and currently carries an average well above two-hundred. His mother is enshrined in the Bowlers' Hall of Fame in St. Louis, and his brother is a member of the Pro Bowlers' Tour. Larry has an extensive list of complaints about how the game has changed for the worse. "The bowling establishment members are running around like gerbils on methedrine finding ways to increase scores for no other reason than to build the ego of beginners and dilletantes," says Larry. "It used to be that three-hundred was an unattainable score and it kept the game interesting because you always had a goal to shoot for. The way today's bowlers are catered to, it only requires a few lessons and they can acquire the average of an old time pro. Now it's like a fantasy sport where self-esteem building is more important than talent." Japanese artists have a tradition of intentionally flawing a work of art to avoid perfection so the gods will not be jealous. The ABC, and others, obviously do not subscribe to this philosophy. Because of their collective efforts, bowling alleys are now so full of screaming brats, weepy fops, and harpish ladies, all shooting, what used to be, excellent scores, that it has cheapened the game and lost its appeal as a gathering place for men. As one hapless, cigar smoking veteran was overheard to say, "I shoulda stood [sic] in bed."
In those times, the skill requirements of the game were as primitive as the equipment. Male bonding was not a seminar in the woods, paying someone for the privilege of beating a drum around a campfire and lamenting the shortcomings of one's father. Male bonding was not yet something defined, but, if it had been, it could have been defined as bowling. Bowling was a way of life, a ritualized artifact passed from fathers to sons, uncles to nephews, men to boys. Men who bowled had no need for sensitivity training. A comment to one of these dinosaurs, such as "I'm trying to find myself," would probably have elicited a response like "Look in your pants." It is a culture lost, like the Mayan or Incan civilizations of prehistory, and despite its failings, it was an important transition stage and touchstone in the evolution of Americans' middle class, ethical growth . Its simplicity was deceiving and its sins were hidden, like a crazy aunt in the basement, but its value, in a society lacking rites of passage for boys coming to adulthood and for men who needed outlets for their frustrations in a world recovering from two devastating wars in consecutive generations should not be overlooked. It will be missed, as are all lost cultures.
* Efron, Nora "A Few Words About Breasts: Shaping Up Absurd." Primus.
McGraw-Hill, 1995. 191-197.
copyright© 1996, - Kensey Alsman