Carolyn
J. Rose
The
bad news is that I was never much of a bowler. My high game is 150. My low
games are better left unmentioned. The good news is—thanks to my grandfather—that
50+ years haven’t made me much worse than I was.
I
was just a kid when the bowling alley went up near my home in the Catskills. I
had vague ideas about what bowling involved, ideas gleaned from the duckpins
we’d set up in the cellar on rainy days, and the trophies my grandfather won.
My
grandfather was a wiry man who smelled like pipe tobacco and liverwurst
sandwiches, garden soil and liniment. A natural athlete, he was good at
swimming, skating, skiing, and other sports. But he didn’t trust to nature
alone. He believed in practice. Lots of practice. Practice with the goal of steady
improvement.
If
my grandfather was at the bowling alley when I went to hang out there with
friends, he would come over to critique my form. Frankly, there was a lot to
critique. More frankly, I didn’t much care if I improved.
But
my grandfather did. He saw that I lacked power and couldn’t manage a hook to
save my life. So he tried to teach me to control the straight-on ball I threw. Often
he had me start my approach at the scoring table and release the ball two yards
behind the foul line. His thinking was that if I could control a ball rolling a
greater distance, I’d do better when I released from the line.
When
I couldn’t master the four-step approach he suggested, he agreed that three
would do. He had me concentrate on getting low and laying the ball down as
smoothly as I could.
It
must have been painful for a man who could make the pins shake, rattle, and
roll, to watch my ball ease its way down the alley, and make only a few pins
wobble and fall. It must have hurt when I asked if he could just let me bowl
for fun.
But
I think he’d be proud that a few nights ago I went bowling with my neighbors. I
would have been happy just to be there, wearing the shoes I got at a yard sale,
rolling the ball I found at a thrift store, and listening to the thump and
whump and clatter of balls and pins. But his lessons came back to me, and I
managed, with my slow, straight-rolling ball, to lead the pack in the first
game.
After
that? Well, let’s just say I should have practiced a heck of a lot more than I
did back in the day.
