Tuesday, June 12, 2007

"Incoming!"



I recently heard a line in a movie that reminded me of what we did as teens, " ....let's sit down have a few drinks, tell lies and call up some women!" Pretty much that's what we were doing in our gameroom bar the night this happened.

It was a Friday because my father was bowling. He bowled in the old Schenectady Classic League at Towne Bowling Academy. They bowled at 8 p.m. each Friday night. My Dad was a good bowler. He consistently averaged over 200 and he took it seriously. He participated during the time when bowling teams wore the wild shirts with their name on the front and the sponsor's name on the back. I remember black with red letters, red with white letters but my all time favorite bowling shirt was when my Dad bowled on the Towne T.V. team. The first year they had dove gray shirt bodies with charcoal grey arms and black lettering. The next year was the best - pink bodies, dark grey sleeves and lettering. The sponsor had sent his wife to order the shirts.

There was other paraphernalia too. You had to have stylish shoes, a brightly colored towel for your hands and the obligatory custom lettered bowling ball bag. My Dad's bag was tan with "Bud Nichols" painted on both sides, along with a picture of a bowling pin.

When the gameroom bar was first built, we had very little furniture. There were 4 barstools, a card table and 4 chairs on one side of the room and a pool table on the other. The vertical metal poles had been boxed in and benches were built around them for seating.

I was sitting on the far bench and Nick was lining up a shot on the table when the door at the top of the stairs slammed open and my father's bowling bag came flying down the stairs. It hit the cellar floor, tile over concrete, bounced twice and hit the far wall with a bang. We then heard my father open the kitchen door entering we heard my mother ask," what was that, Bud?"

Dad answered," It was my God damn bowling ball. I hope the son of a bitch broke!"

My mother told him that we were down there. He yelled down, "You guys alright?" We told him we were fine.

" Yeah, well screw you two - don't piss me off tonight!" A father's concern for his child's well being = priceless.

This all happened in a split second. We cracked up laughing.


1 comment:

Nick Marino said...

Just think, if we we standing at opposite ends of the table, there was a good chance he would have made the first human 7-10 split!
He was no doubt sending us a message, as we did wake him more than once playing hoop in the driveway and bouncing the ball off the chimney.

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