"Oh, come on, I love bowling! It's the perfect workout.
Six seconds of workout - drink beer half an hour."
~Roseanne
"One of the advantages bowling has over golf,
is that you seldom lose a bowling ball."
~Don Carter
One of my early ideas when I created my Updated Bucket List for YEAR 77 was to repeat some of the activities I had enjoyed in the past but hadn't done for a long time. Bowling is one of those activities. I've tried but I can not remember the last time I bowled. I bowled several times way back when I was setting pins in the early 1950s -- i.e. over 60 years ago, but I must have bowled a few times since then.
Bonnie & I and Dale & Pam spent Thanksgiving in Big Bear this year at our respective cabins. Dale knew that I had bowling on my Bucket List and on Sunday, when all our guests were gone, we decided to go bowling at the Big Bear Bowling Barn. Both Dale and Pam have bowled recently; in fact Pam bowled on a Women's League Bowling Team at one time. Watching me throw gutter balls was probably going to be pretty boring to them. Bonnie has bowled even less than I have, so she decided to have a drink and watch (and laugh at me). Photos below show the Bowling Barn from the parking lot; the registration desk with an emphasis on the bowling pin carpet; a shot of the lanes which have very low florescent lighting; and finally the bar/pool room.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
We decided to bowl two games - one to warm up, and the second to demonstrate our true talent and abilities. The lighting was very low so it's difficult to see the excellent form shown by Dale in the first photo below, and Pam in the second photo. Fortunately the bowling alley has a system to keep score automatically, and although Dale & Pam may have known how to do it, I didn't have a clue. The third photo below shows the score of our first game; Ron 78, Pam 116, and Dale 74 - a few points away from a 300 game. The first photo in the second row shows our progress in the second game and that I had a score of 77 in the 8th frame. Because of my fixation with the number seven, I figured this was a good sign that I was going to get several strikes in the 9th frame. Of course this didn't happen and I fell to last place by the end of the game. Dale was very proud that he had a better score than Pam for that game. Of course, none of this was serious competition and we had a lot of fun.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
After bowling we went to Maggio's Pizza for a good meal and a lot of old stories from our time growing up in Utah. It was generally agreed that it was a miracle that our mother survived the teenage years of Dale and I. It was a fun evening for Bonnie & I visiting with Dale & Pam.
A Little History: One of my childhood jobs to earn "my own money" was setting pins at the Logan Lanes bowling alley. Of course pins are set automatically today, but in the early 1950s we used a manual setting apparatus and after each ball was thrown a boy (the "pin setter") would put the pins that had fallen into the apparatus and after the second ball would reset all the pins. Those of us pin setters that liked to bowl would be able to bowl when there were not enough customers to keep us all busy. On League Night we were all very busy, setting two lanes, or sometimes four, at the same time. There was no free bowling for us on those nights.
