Dad Nearly Ran Mom Down in the Bowling Alley Parking Lot

‘I didn’t do it, so don’t worry’ he said

Extramarital affairs and family dramas played out in our bowling alley all the time when I was a teenager. It was the ’70s, and women showed up to bowl in tight black slacks and nicely pressed league shirts. Thirty-something young mommies bowled on leagues, and when my mom — the queen of the bowling alley! — stepped up to throw her ball, all eyes were on her. Everyone thought Mom was a total ‘fox’!

She stood, absolutely still, holding her green ball up to her chin with both hands. Her golden blond hair was as round as the bowling ball. She always got her hair done, a yellow immovable helmet with shellacked hair spray holding her curled swirls in place. That hair wasn’t going anywhere!

Mom had spirit. Everyone in the place stopped to watch her.

Stopped grilling the sandwiches. Stopped providing the smelly shoes. Stopped getting quarters for the pinball kids.

Mom was a sight. I was proud!

As a kid, I was a chubby little girl with stringy brown hair and red bumps on my bare thighs. White socks that didn’t stay up. There was no two ways about it, I was plain and didn’t turn heads.

I’d already given up on transforming into a swan. The chances of my suddenly becoming lithe and graceful were unlikely. I accepted the sad fact that I was going to be the girl with a nice personality. Yes, this made me a little sad, I do admit.

“Pretty is as pretty does!” said Grandpa. I knew what that meant. I focused on being nice.

As a little ugly duckling, I wasn’t without talent. I could play piano. I could read and write well. Turn heads? No. Never, unless it was someone laughing at my ill-fitting clothes.

But my mom? Watching her was like watching someone dance tango.

At the bowling alley, she was in prime form.

Staring at the triangle of erect bowling pins, she began her wind-up. She glided across the floor, extending her arm back and launching the ball with a determined swing. At the end of her throw, she held her deep curtsy — the prettiest position of her form — until the ball hit all the pins.

Strike!

Mom was a talented bowler. She’d come back from her turn either smiling like a movie star or shaking her head slightly.

My parents made a fine couple. Dad’s hair was black and his eyes dark brown, a tall man with a great physique and a nice smile. Mom was a flirt, and so was he. At our home in rural Oregon, it was close quarters. My parents were spending more time ‘at work’ and less time around us three teenagers in the tiny house we lived in.

Around the time I turned fourteen, I began paying attention to the disintegration of their marriage. I was a kid who saw and heard everything. And I was also curious.

I had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. The bathroom next to their bedroom. The heater vent upstairs, which opened into their bedroom. My brother and sister and I ran covert ops on our parents.

Because Mom and Dad were a ‘passionate pair,’ it was in our interest to know when to run out into the woods on our farm and wait out the fight. I knew something my siblings didn’t.

My parents were cheating.

Years later, I asked my sister if she knew. She was shocked; no, she didn’t know. This surprised me, but I was a secret-keeper. Children shouldn’t have access to such secrets, but in addition to being a notorious eavesdropper, Mom told me everything. Sigh.

So, I knew my parents were having affairs, and holding their marriage together for ‘the sake of the kids.’

Mistake!

Their marriage was held together with scotch tape and paperclips. Things were falling apart fast. As I got older, it was tense at home. It felt like I was on the edge of a cliff most of the time. My stomach was in knots, and Mom constantly trash-talked my dad to me. At that age, I believed her, but as a smart kid, I knew she wasn’t without blemish.

It was mostly a total breakdown in the marriage, and both parties were at fault. Could things get worse?

They could, and they did.

When Dad figured out Mom was having an affair with one of the leaders of my community, he was furious. Never mind he was having his own relationship with a woman just ten miles up the road in the neighboring town.

In the ’70s, an affair was not a surprise. People were either open swingers — and gossiped about — or they were hiding their romances. They were talked about too. In my little town, everyone was sleeping with someone’s husband or wife.

Even my swim coach was sleeping with someone not his wife — -the pool cashier. She stood at the front, giving out white towels and selling red licorice ropes while heating up the reception office with goo-goo eyes at the coach. He strutted around in shorts and a black athletic jacket, blowing a whistle and chewing on licorice.

My siblings and I swam laps and did flip turns, watching coach pat the licorice seller on the backside when he thought we couldn’t see. One time I saw him lift her and put her on the counter and walk right into her, her legs around him. What was that all about!

Then I did my flip turn and was headed the other way. I had laps to swim. It’s occurred to me that the 72-lap swim every day was probably meant to keep the swim team kids busy.

Everyone has their secrets in a small town.

And in time, all secrets are revealed, as they were the night of the bowling alley fiasco.

The sound of a bowling ball traveling an expanse of wooden floor, then exploding a rack of pins, is a sound I can conjure like magic. I can hear the sound of a strike in my mind so easily.

I grew up spending at least one day a week at that bowling alley, so I learned the culture. You could ask for shoes two sizes smaller, because the smelly old bowling shoes were so stretched out they wouldn’t be tight. No one needed a nine on the back! Just get the sevens. They wouldn’t be too tight.

Signs told us about old bowlers. We sat at the snack shack eating grilled cheese sandwiches and learning the culture.

• Old bowlers never die, they just lose their balls.
• Old bowlers never die, they just end up in the gutter.
• Old bowlers never die, they just strike out.

By the time I was sixteen, I was staying home when Mom went to bowl her league games on Wednesday nights. She and Dad had begun fighting about her after-bowling activities. She and all her league friends, men and women alike, went to the local bar — The Spinning Wheel, which we called The Spawning Wheel.

Someone was always in the backseat of a car at that place. The Spawning Wheel was an aphrodisiac to all the desperate cheaters struggling to raise children in rural Oregon. Many fights occurred between the bowling alley and The Spawning Wheel — only a mile apart.

It was the local hot-spot, and rumor had it a prostitute lived on the floor above the bar. Everyone went to The Spinning-Spawning Wheel, and its reputation was sleazy and very well-loved. So when the thirsty bowlers hit the town, there they went.

Drinking, dancing, and flirting until midnight on a Wednesday! Dad was not happy, not one bit.

First, his wife left him at home with the three sullen teenagers. Next, dinner was two pizzas and two jugs of coca cola. And last, he suspected her of engaging in some nefarious activities after bowling — like seeing her boyfriend, or flirting and dancing at The Spinning Wheel.

“Oh, we’re just going out, us girls,” Mom would say, so nonchalant. She was forty at the time. I knew Mom loved drinking and dancing, and bowling was becoming a cover for her nights out.

When Dad went to the bowling alley one Wednesday night, he’d already had a few shots of something. Mom told him a few days earlier she was leaving, and getting an apartment in town. Things were at an apex, and what goes up must come down.

Dad sat in the gallery seating behind Mom’s team. Every time she went up to throw the ball, he turned into a rude heckler. My dad, a rude heckler! Oh, I could see it. I loved Dad, but he could be a spitfire.

Oh, looky looky Loo! Aren’t you cute! Getting drunk and hanging out at the bar tonight?

Mom called me from the bowling alley. She went up to the phone by the shoes and called me to “Come get your father! He’s being a pest!”

I had an old blue Ford Falcon, but Dad had a Chevy Malibu, chocolate brown.

“Why can’t Dad drive home?” I asked.

“He’s drunk and making an ass of himself!” she said.

I’d never seen Dad make an ass of himself, so I drove to the bowling alley. Curious Georgina! By the way, at this point, I was indeed a swan, oddly enough. I never would have guessed, but I was now a cute girl. Not only that, but I had strong opinions about everything, USA. Just ask me!

I was always in my parents’ business, so ready to read Dad the riot act in some very mature manner. As sixteen-year-olds do. My dad, to his credit, usually let me give him a bit of instruction. Often, he said, “That’s enough now” and I knew to stop talking.

He could be patient at his best. At his worst, well, here he was making a spectacle of himself and embarrassing Mom. Sixteen-year-old me to the rescue! It’s no wonder I never had kids. It makes me shake my head to consider the ridiculous things my parents had me doing.

Dysfunctional? Oh, without a doubt!

When I drove into the bowling alley, I saw police lights in the parking lot and Mom was talking to some police officers. She looked shaken up.

She said Dad waited for her in his car outside the bowling alley. When she went out to go to The Spawning Wheel, he jumped on his gas pedal and tried to run her down. It just so happens the police were sitting in the parking lot watching people meander in and out of the bowling alley. It’s not as fun as shooting rats at the dump, but that was a daytime activity.

Dad swerved and did not run her over, but Mom jumped back and was upset. The police said they’d arrest Dad if she wanted them to, but instead she cried and Dad apologized. When I got home and talked with Dad, he said, “I wasn’t going to do it. Jeez. I just wanted to scare her a little.”

And that was the end of the discussion. That night, Mom came home at midnight. She opened and closed the front door quietly, and then she and Dad said goodnight in bed. Then after a minute, Dad said, “I’m sorry.” And she said, “It’s okay.”

And that was the last time it was spoken of.

Thanks for reading my story. I appreciate you!