Bowling in the Backwoods

A day after hailing in the New Year, Jenny and I went to visit her family in Northwestern Pennsylvania. For those unfamiliar with the area, it is breathtakingly beautiful. Dense trees hug the hills to form the Allegheny National Forest. In the summer, the area is unrealistically green, and in the winter, it feels like the setting of a Robert Frost poem.

But the sophistication of the area fails to match the scenery. Jenny and I went bowling in a venue likely unchanged from its opening in the early 1920's. The alley made bowlers count the score by hand. The shoes were the newest additions, likely purchased during the Carter Administration.

Best of all, a bowler two lanes over from us apparently rammed the ball down the alley so fast that a pin spat back into the lane, rolled into the gutter, and lay resting in that no man's land where shoes are forbidden. No problem for the owners of this alley. A piercing whistle shot out, and a black dog mobilized from behind the service counter. The dog immediately eyed the lanes, found his target, and strutted down the gutter to fetch the pin and dutifully return it to his master behind the counter.



Good times.