Elusive Headpin - Part 1

It’s too late to say I’m sorry … at least for Joe’s sake. Looking at him lying there all dressed up in his “Sunday best”, it’s hard to imagine the effects of the years that had passed since last I saw him.

He was our steadiest bowler in Junior league. The “clean up” man on our five man shift. He fared quite well in that fashion…saved our butts on more than one occasion. I was very surprised to learn at the end of our first (and most successful year) that he had already enlisted in the Army. He left so fast, we never really had a chance to give him a formal “send off” when he left.

I had heard that he made the military his “career choice”, there were decades between instances where word of his life’s exploits would reach my ears.

We were so young then. Randy was the “ring leader” who pulled us all together… Captain Randy. I recall the day that he first approached me about joining the league. “Come on Jim, it’ll be fun. It’s a handicap league so, it really doesn’t matter much how good you are initially. “

I had bowled since I was a kid…with my dad mostly. We would go out on Sundays to the local bowling alleys. There were three in the area of our very rural home in upstate New York. The one we most often frequented was one in a town that had the obscure name of “Mabbetsville”. The bowling lanes themselves were a “family business”. The patriarch of the family ran the desk, the two sons cared for the lanes while Mom and her only daughter manned the “snack bar”.

During our Junior League days, each one of us had tried to woo Lisa, the daughter behind the snack bar. She was a petite brunette (some said “cute” although she never liked that term) that was generally pleasant if her Mom wasn’t “hovering” over the counter and giving her instructions. Our bowling shift in that first year was an early Saturday morning time slot and “Mom” didn’t make too many appearances then. She apparently was a “late riser” on weekends.

We had a lot of success in that first year, we took first place in our Saturday morning league, played in two different tournaments and placed in both. In the tournaments it was decided that we would play in the doubles sections as well. This posed a minor problem as we were a five person team so, obviously there was an “odd man out” in this situation. I didn’t think much about it then but, it was Joe who quite readily volunteered to not play in the doubles sections allowing the rest of us that opportunity.