it was fun when we had to tell our names to the people behind the counter.. yeah one more game on lane 18.. tickler.. douche.. pencil..
the pin spotting machines and light up displays were really fun to watch before we all had computers and there wasn't that much tecnology arround to be amused by. argh, i guess i'm showing my age by that again. in a way most of you are lucky not to have been arround then. on the other hand, there were a lot more and better alternatives to driving before everyone had a car. i mean, other then watching the little lights on the pin spotters and the light tables for the score cards, i never really could see a whole lot of point in it otherwise. my dad told me, when he was still alive, there was a time when the pins had to be set up by hand, before they even had those things. i think he said his dad had or ran or had something to do with the kind of bowling alies they had then, and went broke in the depression because of it. not that i could ever get a streight story i could ever be entirely certain of out of him. but that much at least was believable. i know i REALLY ought to get more exercise then i do. that i'll probably die much younger then i would otherwise because i don't. it just, well if the world were build more like mazes to wander arround and explore in, like wild critters i probably would. all this open space and building codes is a conspiracy to keep people like me, who'se gratification comes from creating and exploring, from getting and staying healthy. =^^= .../\...
My stepdad was a pin wrangler in the 40s. They'd sit in the pit and have to either clear the pins or set them up after every throw. Poke your head up at the wrong time and you'd get a pin or ball in the face. if you did a good job, the players might toss a nickel on the lane when they were done.
my dad tricked me into thinking that there was a guy in the thingie the balls are returned to, told me that the guy sat in there and blew through the the little fan thing that you can cool your hands on.
once upon a time, back before the 1950s, there really was, (someone human that is, running arround behind where the pins are set up, setting them manually) other then the little fan thing, that didn't exist then either, because those mechanical pin spotters and all that stuff hadn't been invented yet either. but hell, all that was long before even i was born. back when delivery wagons in cities were pulled by horses and stuff like that. and almost no one had cars. instead there were trolleys all over the cities and trains that stopped in all the little towns between them. i think, hope, we'll have something a little like that again some day when the oil runs out. (not the horses, but inovative, clean, energy efficient public transportation) but still have computers and the internet and refrigerators and a few things like that, running off of wind and solar and the like when the coal runs out too. preferably a lot sooner. so we don't screw up the air (and everything else) too much more then what we already have. =^^= .../\...
