The City Council: A fictional narrative of rural life in the American West: Episode 166: Lemuel’s Bowling Palace

The Palace remains a tradition with its league nights and its Saturday morning sessions for kids. Beside its name, another thing remains unchanged. At the entrance hangs a sign, an epigraph, a short passage from American literature, carved in rustic font on an aged plank, a few sentences from Washington Irving.

“As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long, rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded.”

Lemuel Culp opened his establishment and immediately it was a success. In addition to the entertainment, he sold on weekend evenings hotdogs, burgers, beer, wine, sarsaparilla and green rivers. He eventually made big upgrades with the support of the Brunswick Corporation with new lanes, balls, pins, and new tables. Lemuel passed the business onto his son, Samuel, in 1918, who in 1925 added a snooker table. Prohibition made no dent in business, as bootleggers figured out the strategic effectiveness of bowling ball bags.

Men’s and women’s leagues have always been a mainstay of this popular business. The churches and fraternal societies formed teams, of course, but so did the canasta and pinochle ladies, and the poker cronies. But the most entertaining on the league nights goes to Mixed League Mondays. One team that has maintained steady dominance on this night is the coed Red Raspberry Brigade, always composed of two women and two men. The jealous among us point to the strong muscles they build in their passion for gardening, and, in fact, many of the Brigade’s members over the decades have been Master Gardeners. With that in mind, the few brave, honestly blunt will say, “Those Red Raspberry Brigaders just concentrate better than me!”

Bowling is a sport as full of fashion as found on any ski slope or golf course. Here in Warhaven, we’ve seen alligator bowling bags, three-tone ostrich bowling shoes, shirts of every hue of the rainbow with embroidered names and logos that could have been stitched by seamstress angels or demons, and balls to surprise anyone’s imagination.

Today Lemuel’s is a two-story affair, with eight lanes in the basement and twelve at ground level. In 1948 the old building was leveled in May and play continues in the high school gymnasium (which was refinished in August at the bowling alley’s expense). The Palace was constructed in red brick to offer us a faux-vintage building. It opened for business the week after Labor Day weekend. Ever since then the house has provided a physical education unit for fifth, eighth, and tenth graders, one clear reason why the business remains so popular.

The Retired Warhaven Firefighters’ Association likes to go down to the basement lanes on Saturday morning and sip coffee, enjoying the physical escapades and athletic exploits of the youth of our town. These men may be loose and crazy-minded in some venues, but here they have mastered the art of silent laughter and intelligent allusion in their banter. These senior citizens must be polite. They are the town elders, and besides, some of their grandkids are the ones rolling gutter balls or lofting or falling on their keesters, shoes sliding over the foul line, feet rising toward the lights. In these moments, they pretend to be distracted by tight belt buckles or loose shoelaces.

When strikes are bowled, that stand in unison and shout, “That’s the ticket!” In the rare cases of splits ending in spares, they rise and simply applaud. It seems for every single setup they collectively hold their breaths. For these old men bowling is a lot like being a geriatric; there is always bated anticipation.

This past Saturday, enjoying the air-conditioned basement one curmudgeon points out, “If I could have but one strike to my credit, it would be as pitcher and not bowler.”

Another counters, “If I could have but one strike, it would be to your numb-skulled head!” Nods reward the droll retort.