Real-Life Story #5. Bowling with father (1955).

From my memoir "TWELVE DEAD FROGS and Other Stories": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777FHXX2

FOUR IN A ROW (1955)

When I was around eleven, I somehow convinced my father (then age 58) to accompany me to a bowling alley on the South Side of Chicago where I occasionally went with my friends. I was getting pretty good at the game and wanted to show him just that – how accomplished I was. So he agreed to take an excursion, and was probably surprised at the bleak surroundings. I can still picture him, sitting there on that hard wooden bench, in that dingy, three-lane bowling alley, where everything in sight – ceiling, walls, and floor – were dark brown. He never took off his grey winter coat, just sat there fairly uncomfortably, waiting for me to get on with it.

In those days there were pinsetters, real, live people (usually boys, not much older than me) back there where you threw your ball, who then manually set up the pins after they were struck down. It was strange to see arms and hands protruding around the pins, adjusting their placement, then clearing out of the way. I guess that was part of the tension for me in those early days. I always worried about hitting someone with my ball.

Rolling the first ball, I got off to a very good start with a solid strike. I looked over at Father. He seemed to approve. And the second ball was accurate too, knocking down all the pins again.

“Yes,” he said, “That was good.”

Even the third ball was perfect. Three strikes in a row. Things were looking very promising. I was performing well for Father. But I was getting a little nervous between throws, waiting for those twelve pins to be reset again, put back up in their designated spots. I think it was those long pauses between balls that finally got to me. I wanted so much for my father to appreciate something I did. I desperately needed some kind of validation. He was always so silent and distant, so reserved. He had barely said a word since we entered the bowling alley.

Of course, I wasn’t able to distinguish between how he was responding to my bowling game and how the discomfort he was feeling, sitting so long on those hard benches, was affecting him. I didn’t yet know about his four years in a Siberian prison camp in 1914- 18, other hardships he had survived. I had noticed small scars on his body at the beach (including a scarred depression right in his butt), maybe not yet realizing that they were from gatling gun wounds, but didn’t understand how painful it might have been for him to sit so long without a cushion.

The second I released the fourth ball I knew it was doomed. It rattled down the smooth, waxed wooden alley, crashing into the pyramid of pins, but when the clatter ceased one pin remained standing. My eyes filled with tears. I was shattered. I couldn’t go on. I had failed. I don’t remember him paying for the lane, returning the shoes for a refund, or the ride back home.

I doubt anything short of a perfect 300 bowling game would have helped me satisfy my need for parental validation, that day in 1955. I’d have to wait for some unexpected success eleven years later in art school. SEE next stories #6 (“The Funny Sticks,” etc.), when I finally could shake off the problems of being a poor student (undiagnosed dyslexic) in school.