By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Tidy Bowl
My hearing is bad. So when someone summoned me to grab balls and hit the lanes, I thought they they meant hurling bowls at pins. I decided to do more research.
Hardwood lanes 60 feet long (same as a pitching mound to home plate), 42 inches wide, lined by gutters have arrow demarcations 15 feet from the foul line, on which I’d practice bouncing glass, ceramic, fine China and Tupperware basins — at semi-hollow maple pins. Coated in white nylon or Surlyn with red stripes around their necks, they were set in 1-2-3-4 triangle grids I tried to knock down, ideally with the first (strike) or second (spare) bowl per frame. Dental plates worked less well.
“You can’t bowl with bowls,” Capt. Queeg of my Pullman Tavern team said. “It takes balls.”
“You’re full of bowel movements. Do they serve beer?”
“Do they call us keglers? Every alley does.”
Blatz, Schlitz, PBR … my mouth watered like Bartender Zeke does my drafts. “We use Rolling Rocks,” Queeg said, showing me his 16-pound, 8.959-inch diameter sphere drilled with finger holes.
“Yours is made of resin, not stone,” I said. On the next alley Dylan Mulvaney led a Bud Light team.
“They’re good,” Queeg said of that group, who were lit already. “They beat us.”
“You go into alleys, trans teams beat you and you go back? Dump the balls, try bowls.”
“Are you nuts?”
“No more than you,” I said. “I saw Humphrey Bogart you in ‘The Caine Mutiny’ based on Herman Wouk’ book.”
“Woke?” shouted Ron DeSantis, advancing his campaign at the Tidy Bowl by pressing flesh, especially Dylan’s. “I have to get elected someway,” he said. “PACs have sunk too much money in me.”
“A pox on you,” I said. “You’d ban Wouk books?
Won’t staying Florida governor give them enough return?”
“Never mind,” Queeg told the Tidy Bowl Man in his skipper’s outfit atop a skiff in the bowl’s basin. “They’re both deaf. Gotta fix their hearing.”
“Like Trump’s trying to do court hearings?”
“Wouldn’t you if you could? Everything’s framed; it’s like bowling and photography,” DeSantis said. “Want a break from the law? First fix it.”
Glass, ceramic and China bowls shattered when they hit the wood and shards slid off varnish into gutters. Ring-necked peasants laughed when Tupperware too bounced off them.
“You need heft,” Queeg said.
“Dylan diets but throws strikes,” I said as the Influencer struck again. “Negotiating facts, scores and deals is an art.”
“Clean up these fragments!” the Tidy Bowl skipper ordered.
“Of reality? Why deny what is all around you?
“You’re the one making up this mess,” he said. “Here’s a broom.”
I handed it to my wife, who flew off. “Did you say I’m waking this up?”
“Woke! I knew it!” DeSantis shouted. “I’ll cancel your culture!”
“Counterculture icons,” I said, “were role models was growing up: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Jimi Hendrix …”
“Cancel cancel culture!”
“Who canceled culture to begin with?” I asked.
“I went deaf but heard music in my mind,” piped up Beethoven, composing a new score. “Want an overture?”
DeSantis squeezed Dylan. “I thought you were married,” I said.
“If I can’t get traction with Trump’s disciples, I have to with someone. I’m an aspirant.”
“Give me aspirin,” Queeg said. “All this shattering breaks my brain and makes me want to roll steel balls. How about a tumbling pins song?”
In walked the Rolling Stones. “Don’t play ‘Tumbling Dice,’” I pleaded.
“God doesn’t with the universe, pinheads,” said Albert Einstein.
“Who let you in?” asked the Tidy Bowl Man. “Let’s adjourn to the Pullman Tavern.”
We made quite a crew piling out of our Yugo limo: Dylan, DeSantis, Beethoven, the Stones, T.B. Admiral, Queeg and me. Bartender Zeke rolled his eyes. “The usual?”
“Blatz,” I said, “in a bottle this time.”
“We’re out. Want it in a bowl?”
The Stones started playing “Shattered.”
“That’s the trouble,” Queeg said. “You can’t ever get what you want using real words. ‘Woke,’ ‘cancel culture,’ ‘build the wall,’ ‘hope and change’ … turn into tropes. They mean demons you drum into zealots’ minds. Repetition rules them.”
“Like bowling with balls? Why not balling with bowls?” I hinted.
“I’m running with the bulls,” said DeSantis. In walked Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. “No, not those Bulls.” Zeke brought in Red Bulls instead for all.
“Energy drinks are your running mates?” I asked.
“They run away from me. That’s why I picked Dylan.”
“That way you’re sure to strike out,” the Influencer said.