Revisionist History: The Kegler

I don't have many redeeming qualities but those i do have i inherited from my old man, you see on Tuesday (1/21) my old man celebrated his 70th birthday and i spent damn near two hours talking to him on the phone, it's something that happens on roughly a weekly basis cuz though i don't live that far from my beloved hometown (2 hours by car) it seems i hardly ever really get up there, it's one of those things i'd like to change but as my old man has told me for years if he doesn't get a call from jail or the morgue he figures i'm alright, of course back in the Wilderness Years he actually meant it and now it's more of a joke, you see i always knew who came first growing up and it was my sister and i, the old man graduated from high school a semester early and figured he'd go to college but when he mentioned that to his old man he looked at him and asked who he thought was going to pay for that and when my old man said i thought you might help me out his old man laughed and his mom walked over and handed him the help wanted section with a few places circled that she had called and set up interviews for him...

Some 20 odd months later he was married and a few months after that my sister was born, as we all know that math didn't add up and the old man had no idea his teenage bride was pregnant until after they were married cuz in a nutshell the guy loved his wife, a wife who would walk out on him 28 years later when he lost his job but as we know that story has been covered already, so my old man went to work and started a family, some six years later a bouncing baby boy would come along and it was around that time that the old man started night school and roughly six years later he left that university with a degree, put himself through school and worked and had two kids and a wife and his life was drastically different in it's first thirty years than that bouncing baby boy's would be, the old man used to tell that boy, after the dissolution of his marriage that if he could do it over he'd do it just like that son of his who seemed reckless, fearless and concerned with nothing more than the three inches directly in front of him, the son would tell his old man if it wasn't for him teaching and talking and guiding him he never would have had the guts to do the shit he did, in short i'd laugh and point at him and say you could be held responsible for creating this monster...

And if there is one word to describe the man it would be grace, not the divine kind of course i mean the man's a card carrying atheist heathen, another word would be dignity because for all the shit that's been hurled his way that's how he's handled it, i mean to this day the man goes over to the house he fucking paid for to see his grandsons all in the company of his ex-wife and her new husband, sometimes i don't know how he fucking does it but as he's said before, i don't give a shit who's there i just want to see my boys... he was also the one who told this boy  not ex-communicate his mother when she left the old man, he was the one who kept on me to have a relationship with the woman even after all the shit she pulled on him, check the Maudlin Street posts about when i found sleeping in his office in the basement, the guy was fucking heartbroken, he could have easily chosen to agree with me and my choice to tell her to fuck off but he didn't, he said she was the only one i got and like her or not she was damn good to me most of my life and that i shouldn't forget it, the man's a fucking gem and i consider myself lucky... but what this post is really about is bowling...

If there is a combination of sight and sound that can take me back to my childhood it is walking into a bowling alley, yeah i know for some you probably just gagged but for me it was a memorable time growing up, you see my parents bowled in this couples league once a month from September until May or something and i used to get to go along with them and every month i'd save up my quarters so i could hang out by the video games and play Galaxian and then Galaga when it came along, i remember Gauntlet being all the rage when it showed up one day and i'd sit and wait my turn and play and ration quarters so that i could make it through the night and hopefully not run out to soon... i also would get to eat a cheeseburger and drink a milkshake from the snack bar and damn if that shit wasn't the best fucking burger and milkshake i'd get each month, i don't know what it was they did back then in the late 70's and early 80's but the shit was good...

The other thing i liked to do was watch the old man roll, you see he was a product of the late 50's and 60's when bowling was a popular sport and not the half-assed wrasslin bullshit that i see on the telly today, fuck-o's in neon outfits with to much hair gel all pumping their fist and screaming, fucking Earl Anthony didn't do that shit, he looked like a science teacher or some shit and he kicked every ones ass on a regular basis and barely cracked a smile, now my old man was a pretty good bowler and somehow he had never rolled a perfect game, he told me that the most strikes he ever through in a row was 21 and that was on a few occasions over two different games but he could never seem to string them together in one game... and so it was one night in my youth i sat and watched the guy roll the first eleven in the last game of the night, i didn't go to play video games i just sat and watched as did much of the people around him as he got closer and closer to the perfect game, with each passing frame you could hear the murmurs and the see the people stop each time it was his turn and when it came time for that last ball in the tenth frame he let it roll and sent it high, got a lucky break and the pins bounced and every one gasped as that one lone pin was left standing, a 299, the funny thing was that as he came back i ran up to him and hugged him and he laughed and said i choked that one kid, and years later when we talked about it again he admitted to actually getting nervous and said he was lucky to get 9 down, he just shrugged and smiled...

Of course as i got older and the old man had more time he joined a couple of leagues on his own, what i came to learn from my boy One-Eyed Bobby was that my dad was rolling in some of the top leagues in Cleveland, the Classic leagues as they were called, bowling against guys from all over the area, the funny thing was my old man never really talked about it, oh he'd tell me how he did and such, talk about what kind of night he had but it was One-Eye who would show me the local bowling rag and pointed out just how good the old man was, somewhere near the top in average, usually in the hunt for high series and game every week, cuz apparently in these leagues the lanes were tough, you had to figure them out and once i started asking the old man about it he opened up and told me, told me how he used to throw in for high series and high game each week, a 20 spot in each pool, i remember him showing me the cash, what i now know was more than a few hundred bucks from winning one or the other or sometimes both, how he used to regularly shoot over 700 for three games, average over 200 for the season and when you realize how hard that is you start to understand how good the old man was at the game... and in his usual manner he was his low key self, didn't matter that he was damn good at it, it was just something he did to get out a few nights a week and something he enjoyed and i do believe somewhere in there is another lesson he taught his son...

I call him Pops, just like my sons do and the Limey and most of my friends, he's been smoking for over 50 years but i don't say anything to him, we both know what that can do, he lives on his own and works the night shift and i fucking worry about him and i love the man, i consider myself damn lucky, i've seen a lot of shit dads in my time and i know mine if fucking aces, it's what i shoot for when i look at the boyos and sometimes i know i'm fucking up and sometimes i know i'm doing the old man proud but i know he gave me the tools and it's my job to use them, and all i can do is thank him for that, then pick up the phone and smile when he answers and says "hey dude how you doin?"

(on saturday mornings when i was a kid i'd often play on the floor while my old man read the paper and listened to music, a steady diet of CCR, Elvis and that guy up there, i remember when i was a kid i bought him Blue Hawaii by Elvis on blue vinyl, his taste in music wasn't to bad either)