Holy Rollers

The men who run the bowling alley in the basement of the St. John’s Catholic Club in Strawberry Hill are George, Mike and Charlie (though Charlie, a gentle man with tinted glasses, also answers to Jake — he’s not sure why).

They don’t bowl anymore, but they used to. That was in the old times. All of them make frequent reference to “the old times” when discussing their bowling alley, their church, their neighborhood. And most questions bounce back with answers involving three things: the viaduct that was built in the 1950s, knocking down half the houses in their neighborhood; the war (“the big one”); and bowling. All three remember the first time anyone bowled a 300 game, but they can’t tell the story completely until they figure out whether that was before or after the war. It was before the war, they decide.

Father Frank, the pastor, stops into the bowling alley bar for as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette. “Mike’s the baling wire,” he says. “Now, you know what a baling wire is? It means he’s the guy that keeps things running. And he serves a real good hamburger with grilled onions.”

Mike, whose name is written on a patch on his jumpsuit, accepts the compliment by ducking his head in a half-nod before walking back to the grill. Then he makes sure the ketchup and mustard bottles are full. Then he makes sure everyone knows how to reset the lanes if the balls don’t come back. His work, it seems, is never done.

Weeknights are reserved for league bowling, which fills all six lanes. But it’s not packed, like in the old times. “In better times, we had two leagues bowling each night,” George says. And there used to be five bowlers per team, but now it’s mostly three or four to a team. George and Charlie remember how it was before the fire of ’43, when the pins were placed not by a mechanical arm but by church youth — pin setters.

“That’s how we earned our spending money,” Frank adds. Many churches in the area had bowling alleys at that time, but now it’s just St. John’s and a Polish church in St. Joseph, where pin setters are dodging fast ones to this day.

Nonleague bowlers can use the St. John’s alleys only on Saturday. Leagues don’t bowl on Sunday, because that day belongs to a certain someone who is often called “almighty.” Besides, the alley is reserved for football — the fellas use the bar to watch the games on TV.

How much does it cost to bowl on Saturday? “That depends on how many you got,” Mike says. “[We] don’t want to open up for only five, but if there’s twenty … you know, it depends.”

Well, we don’t know, but we figure it’s probably worth it. FYI, the balls you can see from the lanes are heavier than the ones you’ll find if you turn to your right and look in the hallway. There’s a pool table for the sharks, too. The popcorn? It’s out of this microwave-happy world. And even if you don’t buy anything from the bar, please note the JFK portrait above the cash register.