Bowlers and Other Radicals

Bowlers are a strange bunch. I do not know another group of athletes – if you can call bowlers athletes – as dedicated to their sport as bowlers. Most would bowl 24-7, if they could. Their average is the most important single number in their lives, even more so than their IQs and the number of times they have sex a week.

I know all about bowling because I had two roommates in college that were avid bowlers, and I worked for about a year in a bowling alley. I witnessed many strange events during that year, but the most traumatic occurred when I accidentally switched off the power to all the lanes.

League competition is the bread and butter of every bowling alley and most avid bowlers are members of at least two leagues. Bowlers establish an average in each league, the better bowlers handicapped so that all the teams are more-or-less equal. This is never the case, as the better bowlers always have the advantage.

At the Monroe, Louisiana bowling alley that I worked at, the biggest league bowled on Wednesday nights. The bowlers were not all as good as those that bowled on the Friday night scratch league, but many were. Unlike the Friday night scratch league, the Wednesday league included both men and women.

The bowlers on the Wednesday night league were all serious bowlers. Most came into the bowling alley and bowled a game or two every day. One of the couples that bowled on Wednesday night was particularly avid. Maybe I should say rabid. I will call them Sam and Bertha because I can’t remember their names. Sam was an older person, short and with bowed legs. Bertha was at least twice Sam’s size and everyone called her Big Bertha – at least behind her back.

Big Bertha maintained a one-eighty average and was proud of it. She and Sam were partners on a team, and they led the Wednesday night league by a small margin. The particular Wednesday I am thinking of was the last night of the league and she and Sam were playing Lou and Dave for the championship. The two teams were neck and neck going into the tenth frame. That is when I made my mistake.

Big Bertha had rolled nine pins. If she picked up the easy spare, she and Sam would be the league champions. Someone asked me to reset the pins on a nearby lane, just as she prepared her release. Hitting the wrong switch, my heart almost stopped when all the lights on the bowling alley lanes went dark. I flipped it back on immediately but this only had the effect of causing all the lanes to reset the pins. Bertha’s ball struck the ball block with a resounding thud.

I was stuck behind the alley’s circular control desk, or I would have run for my live. Instead, I awaiting my impending fate as Big Bertha locked her angry stare on me and charged in my direction.

“You stupid SOB!” she yelled, leaning over the cabinet top. “You ruined my game, you stupid SOB!”
My inadvertent mistake caused all activity in the noisy bowling alley to come to an abrupt halt. Joe, the manager of the bowling alley, came out of his office and rushed to the control desk. Bertha was big but Joe was bigger. An ex-college tackle, gone only slightly to pot, he stood six-foot-four. Bertha backed off when Joe got between her and me.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said in my contrite voice. “I hit the wrong switch.”

“The stupid SOB did it on purpose!” Bertha said, still shouting.

Joe raised a placating palm. “I’ll fix it. We will put everyone back as it was before the outage.”

Joe and my two roommates Trellis and Chuck – the alley engineers – begin restoring the lanes to where they were before my mistake. I waited, under orders, in Joe’s office. Once they restored order, Joe joined me in his office.

Joe was big and imposing, but he was also a pussycat. “Eric, I’m firing you,” he said. “At least for a couple of weeks. Big Bertha will have calmed down by then.”

Joe ushered me out the back door. Chuck and Trellis laughed their proverbial rear ends off when their shifts finally ended and they arrived back at our apartment.

“You dumb SOB!” Chuck said. “You’re lucky that old bitch didn’t kill you.”

Trellis went to the refrigerator and returned with three cold cans of Schlitz. “Here’s to you,” he said. “Seeing the look on that old bitch’s face was worth every bit of the extra work you put us through.”

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