Dead Man’s Bowling Balls
People talk about their so-called third place in life — the first being home, the second, work — as a haven where they can come as they are, free of judgment and stress. Bowl Rite Lanes was my third place, a bowling alley in Union City, New Jersey so named because it was on the second floor of a brick building above a Shop-Rite supermarket. The Shop-Rite supermarket had long since closed and been replaced by a CVS pharmacy, though the bowling alley owners didn’t see the wisdom in changing its name to CVBowl or Bowlmacy.
I was a two- or three-times-a-week customer — a “regular” — where I modestly claimed to be one of the best left-handers in the house. I played in the top leagues and practiced twice a week. The Hispanic teenage boys that mulled about got to know me well and began to treat me like some sort of uncle or cousin. There was a sweet humanity to all of this because it was proof that, under the right circumstances, people of all ages, classes, and cultures can get along like neighbors in a nostalgic old-time sort of way, even in this electronic day and age.
The owners, CJ and Annie, were the last of a vanishing breed of mom-and-pop operators who knew all their customers by name and could make special arrangements off the card for guys like me who practiced around eight or ten games at a time. I paid a monthly flat rate for practicing, whether I used it or not.
One day after a long practice session, I passed by the front desk and said my usual farewell to CJ. But before I left, he pulled out a scrap of paper and asked me if I knew a guy named Nick D. down in Hoboken, where I live. I did not. Nick’s story was that he owned two florist shops in Hoboken but he was also a part-time professional bowler who, like many pro bowlers, competed mostly on the side in regional pro tour events and in an occasional open national event. I was surprised that I did not recognize the name.
CJ gave me the scrap of paper with a phone number on it, but it wasn’t Nick’s. It was Nick’s brother’s number. Apparently, Nick had just died of cancer and his brother asked CJ if he knew anyone who was left-handed who might be interested in Nick’s equipment. Otherwise, he would just throw everything away. Like most sports aficionados, I could never have too much equipment, and maybe this guy’s left hand was miraculously the same size as mine. A few days later, I called the number and arranged to go to the florist shop where, I was told, Nick kept all his old bowling gear in the basement.
The appointed Saturday came and it was cold, drizzly, and miserable — the kind of day where parents would pack up their kids and take them to the movies or go bowling. I walked into the florist shop and introduced myself. I met the shop manager, whom I didn’t know, and introduced myself.
“My name is Steve. I understand you have some bowling balls here.”
“Yes,” he said tersely. “Right this way.”
He led me to the back of the shop and opened a wooden hatch in the floor to reveal a short, steep wooden staircase. Its steps had smoothly worn areas where a hundred years of shoes had trod up and down to store and retrieve all sorts of things, including bowling balls. I descended and found a light switch. There, on an old wooden table and in dusty piles, was this man’s bowling autobiography. If you know the history of bowling equipment, you can see the evolution of the technology and the trends that showed how certain balls came into favor and then faded away as something new came by to replace them. I saw the whole archaeological story of this man right before me going back at least 30 years — at least in the bowling sense. I also realized that there were far more bowling balls there than I could ever use. And his hands, not surprisingly, were not the same as mine which meant I couldn’t really use any of them, as they were.
I paused for a moment to consider exactly what to do: Should I decline to get involved because there was no reason to take stuff I don’t need? I already owned 12 bowling balls and didn’t exactly need any more. Should I just let all this stuff get thrown away?
I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t let them all get thrown away.
I climbed back upstairs and explained to the store manager that I would be back later with my car and that I would be taking the bowling balls with me. All of them.
I returned a half-hour later and retrieved everything I could find in the florist shop’s basement. There were about 15 balls, in all. As I corralled them into a herd on the shop floor, I noted each brand and model, and the amount of track on the ball from where it had contacted the lane each time it was bowled. The track on a bowling ball, when used by a pro, is a very narrow ring of scratches around the ball because the ball is thrown exactly the same way every time. The smaller the track, the more precise the release. This guy was good. While the forensics of Nick’s bowling balls was grinding in my head, I am sure there were florist customers who would have wondered what on earth was going on there with a herd of bowling balls flowing randomly about the floor.
As I packed the last of them into the car, the manager said there were more bowling balls over at the other florist shop across town. I was already in deep. Going deeper didn’t matter at this point. “OK,” I said confidently, “I’m on my way.”
It didn’t occur to me to ask myself what I had gotten into. It was simple. There were a whole lot of bowling balls in a dire disposition and I had just appointed myself as the meat wagon specialist to deal with them. I was the municipal beekeeper of bowling balls, the snake-bagger of nuggets, the circus elephant dung-sweeper of orbs.
I drove across town to the other florist shop across from the hospital. I explained to the manager, in shorthand, how I had come to the knowledge that there were bowling balls in his basement and that I had been anointed with the privilege to extract them. Without much need for convincing, he led me to a hatch in the floor where I found another dusty basement trove of bowling balls. The archaeological epoch of bowling equipment in this setting seemed to pick up where the first florist shop’s gear had left off — probably in the mid 1980s up until about 1998. There were ten balls in all. I piled them into my Subaru Impreza and drove off.
I traveled a few blocks to my apartment, having to brake earlier than usual to meet the stop signs due to the extra weight in the car. It was one of those moments where being pulled over by a cop would have made a great story, or at least a one-of-a-kind dialog.
The cop would say, “Sir, you went quite a bit past that stop sign back there. You do know how to stop at a stop sign, don’t you?”
“Uh, yes officer. Except I’ve never driven with 25 bowling balls in my car before so I guess I didn’t realize how hard it would be to stop.”
“What the heck do you have 25 bowling balls for?”
“Well, see, I’m a regular at Bowl-Rite Lanes and this guy Nick died of cancer….”
I found a parking space near my apartment and solemnly scrounged up a bucket, some cleaning supplies, and a milk crate to use as a stool. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with all these bowling balls. But I did know one thing: these bowling balls needed to be cleaned. It was the least I could do for Nick’s forgotten estate.
So I sat there on a milk crate on the curb of the road, the car doors and trunk ajar, washing each bowling ball with warm soapy water and a scrunchie sponge. There were a few famous balls among the many — famous because they were the best money could buy at the time. There was an emerald Brunswick Crown Jewel, a 1979 Columbia 300 Yellow-Dot, an AMF Pro Classic 3-Dot, an LT-48, an AMF Angle (the first urethane ball) and a few more better-than-common pieces. I had owned most of the same equipment at some point in the past, or coveted them in my youth. Some, like the Yellow-Dot, had a stubborn grimy goo that stuck like pine tar, but I smiled because it was precisely this goo that made the 1979 Yellow-Dot one of the best balls ever made. It was called a “bleeder” in its day because, at one time, someone at the bowling ball factory made a batch of Yellow-Dots with an accidentally incorrect formula of polyurethane which caused resin to sweat out through the surface of the ball. This mistake, however, proved to create a huge improvement in performance and the 1979 Yellow-Dot became one of the most highly sought after vintage models.
Nick’s bowling history was all right there in my hands. He went from a Pro Classic to a Crown Jewel, then to a Yellow Dot, then to an LT-48, then to an Angle, then to a Hammer, then to a Thunderbolt, and so on. Some of them had been used a lot. Some were tried briefly and discarded. Some were used only for certain rare conditions. Some had finger inserts, some did not. I could see exactly what he was trying to do with his game.
It occurred to me that I knew more about his bowling game than I did about him, as a person. Who was this man? I was reminiscing over someone’s life as if he were a kindred spirit, yet he might’ve been someone I wouldn’t have had the least interest in knowing personally. He could’ve been some racist bastard or a sore loser. Or maybe he was a lousy husband and a crummy father. Or maybe he was the kind of man everyone loved and rooted for, whose friends celebrated at his wedding, or whose florist shops’ customers were loyal for over 20 years. Somehow, I figured, the Gods had decided that I would bear witness only to Nick’s alternate narrative — his Third Narrative — whose chapters dealt with the struggle of man and ball against pin, lane, and blister; of contending with constant imperfection and failure more so than success.
Of all the things to know about Nick, I knew precisely nothing except for this: We both felt something that kept us coming back to the sport to try something new, to get better — even though, with the best equipment and athletic commitment, sometimes the pins did not fall. And there also were moments where our worst shots sometimes came out right even when we didn’t deserve the results. And that there was no way to control the outcome either way. We knew that to bowl as we did was to love to bowl, to never quit, no matter the outcome.
He did not quit, evidently, until he got cancer. The serial numbers on the balls indicated the year they were made, and I could tell that the time between his new bowling ball purchases became longer toward the end. The newest equipment wasn’t used as much. One of those latter day bowling balls was probably the last one he threw before his body betrayed his ability to do so.
And then, some time after the offset core Brunswick Blue Rhino, he died.
When I finished cleaning the last ball, I loaded them all back into the car and went upstairs again to locate a wax pencil. I emptied out my bowling bags and tossed them in the car. I drove out to Hudson Lanes in Bayonne and loaded up my bags with some of Nick’s bowling balls and carried them into the bowling alley amidst the chaos and racket of a rainy Saturday afternoon’s open play. But I was not there to bowl. I found a ball rack with enough space to add some bowling balls and discreetly unloaded four of Nick’s bowling balls onto it. I pulled out my wax pencil and wrote a brief note on each ball as though I were writing to him — simple stuff, like on the LT-48, a note saying that I had had one too and that it was my favorite ball of all time. It was known as a lefty’s ball for some reason. I bowled two 299’s with mine when I was 16.
When I was done, I went back to the car, packed four more, and did the same, each placed on a rack with a short note written in white wax. Then I drove to Roosevelt Lanes in Jersey City and unloaded another four, then to Wallington Lanes, another six, then finally to Bowl Rite Lanes to donate the last few. I kept one of his LT-48’s plus a red pearlized Hammer ball which I eventually had re-drilled for myself. Finally, I approached the front desk where CJ was holding court and placed the two remaining bowling balls on the counter. I told him I had taken care of all of Nick’s bowling balls and that these were the best of the lot. I said I would pay for them to get plugged and redrilled if he knew any kids who could use some decent equipment but couldn’t afford to buy a new ball. He appreciated the thought but said that I didn’t have to pay for the plugging and redrilling. He would take care of it.
With that, I left. My job was done. I had done well by the Gods. But I needed to do one more thing.
I went home and I picked up the phone. I called each of the bowling alleys I had just visited and had Nick D. paged. Each desk attendant would say, “Just a minute,” set the phone down with a clunk, and then make an announcement on the PA, “Nick D., phone call. Nick D., come to the front desk.” Of course, after a minute or two of ambient bowling alley rumbling, they’d come back on the phone and say, “No, sorry. He ain’t here.”
“Thank you,” I said, and there was peace in the alley. Wherever Nick happened to be in the great beyond, at least he knew where his gear was.
Epilogue:
A few years later, I met and fell in love with a woman who was an artist. Valentine’s Day came around and I wanted to impress her by making something interesting to give her as a gift. But at the time, I was in the midst of moving and everything was in storage except the essentials — clothes, some cooking stuff, my toothbrush and my dozen bowling balls. I made an executive decision to retire my red pearlized Hammer bowling ball — one of the items I kept from Nick’s estate.
I sawed it in half with a hand saw (which took several days) then drilled a hole into the flat part, glued in some found objects, added a rose paper design, polished it up and presented it to her. It went over big.
Later, she asked me for the other half of the ball so she could make something for me for my birthday the following May, which turned out brilliantly. Within a year, she moved in and the two halves of Nick’s red Hammer were reunited on our mantle. We’ve been married 19 years now and have two kids.
I had to quit bowling because of family obligations, and CJ and his wife have long since sold Bowl Rite Lanes and moved on to other interests. But somewhere out there, Nick’s gear lives on.
