Thankfulness and Bowling

Forest around Lake Zurich. Good place for hunting.

During his youth Thanksgiving marked the opening of rabbit-hunting season for my father. With his small rifle, he didn’t bother going after larger game (assuming there was any left in the area other than the deer that lived on the farms). So, early fall was squirrel season, late fall-early winter was rabbit season, and anytime he had the car to chase them around the fields qualified as pheasant season.

It is doubtful that any of his kills ever ended up on the Thanksgiving table, although he doesn’t recall the exact nature of that festal spread. When he was small, the family shared their holiday meal with Anton and Raisie, eating whatever delightful dishes Raisie could concoct. Instead of apple pie, the meal would be topped off with piping hot apple strudel. Mmmmm. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

In Lake Zurich, it was up to Grandma Lou to do the cooking. During the war, food was rationed, so even the holiday meals were planned around what was available. After the war, it still took a few years for the economy to rebound. By the time he was old enough to appreciate a groaning table laden with goodies, he was old enough to want to be out and doing on a day off from school.

And, let’s be honest. My grandmother was no chef. She could burn water. One Friday when he was a wee lad, dad was handed a plate of scrambled eggs and corn—just as appetizing as it sounds, folks—for his dinner, and instead of eating it, he threw it at the ceiling in disgusted protest. He didn’t get anything to eat that night. Frankly, I’m surprised that he didn’t get a whipping, and then have to eat what fell off the ceiling.

Once he was married, he and mom came back to the homestead for Thanksgiving for several years, right up until they moved away for work. Then it was my mother’s turn to try to please several finicky appetites. One of my sisters-in-law has fond memories of helping her mother prepare their Thanksgiving dinner. But there were so many little bodies invading mom’s kitchen—and not to help prepare—that mother, in frustration, asked Dad to take them out of the house. He decided it was the perfect day to go bowling.

Learning to bowl is required in our family.

And that, my friends, is our family’s Thanksgiving tradition: we go bowling. Oh, there was a year or two where Mom joined us, but only if the meal was already under control, and the turkey was a’roasting, or much later, with only a child or two left at home, when we tried to go to a restaurant for our feast.  Usually, she shooed us out the door, and enjoyed some peace and quiet while she attacked one of her least favorite chores, cooking.

Dad, as it turns out, was a league bowler, both before and after his Navy stint. He took Mom bowling a time or two when they were dating. He had a purple-and-gold bowling outfit (yes, outfit. His mother managed to find purple pants to go with the lovely purple team shirt. So what if they were too big? Just tack that waist, and enjoy the oh-so-flattering paper-bag effect!), but Mom managed to “lose” it during a move.

Both he and Mom bowled on the company bowling team when they lived in Pennsylvania. Legend has it, the two best female bowlers on the team were both 9 months pregnant (yes, Mom was one of them) during the league championships. The betting pool was fierce. Both ladies went into labor the same day, but there were many different bets booked. Who would deliver first? (The other mom) Which baby would be bigger? (Ours) And who would win the wheelchair race to the cars after being discharged from the hospital? (Dad and Mom, by a hair).

Old school bowling alley

Tony came by this bowling craze quite naturally. There was, after all, an 8-lane bowling alley in Lake Zurich. The perfect place for a young, not-quite-hoodlum to gather after work with his buddies. 

By his late teens, Lake Zurich had the alley, a drive-inn restaurant, a gas station-restaurant-malt shop complex, and two—yes, two!—police officers. There was the night-time guy who doubled as the street-sweeper during the day, and a new-to-them daytime officer with actual experience in law enforcement, and his own pistol.

Now the police officers knew my father. They knew to watch him. When Dad got in his car, the police officer would follow him around, and then report his doings to his parents, hopefully before too much trouble happened. Once, when Dad was at the bowling alley, he came outside to find the day officer in the parking lot.

At one end of the lot was a large pile of dirt that had been excavated from a building site.  Now, remember, the officers knew Dad, and Tony, by then, was well acquainted with them. And Dad has always been good at shooting the breeze. This Saturday, he was full of hot air, discussing guns and aiming and the practice of policing.

Dad asked the officer how well his aim was. Could he, for instance, hit a small target at a medium distance? I’ll bet, said Tony, that you couldn’t hit my watch if I put it on that dirt pile 80 feet away.

Well, the officer was willing to take that bet, and hoped Tony wasn’t too fond of his watch. Dad marched over and put his watch—actually, his father’s watch that he had borrowed from him, but why quibble over unimportant details?—on that mound of mud. The officer took slow and careful aim with his pistol, leaning against a break wall, steadying himself before…Boom! And off went a round.

The dirt flew up from the mound in a fountain of brown spray. There was certainly no doubt he could hit a large target, but what about the watch? Now Tony spared a moment to consider what his father might have to say about a watch with a bullet hole, and he approached the pile with some trepidation.

Not to worry. The officer had missed the watch by about an inch, covering it with dirt and muck, but leaving it otherwise untouched. Tony just brushed it off, and tucked it away. The watch would live another day. And so would he. Maybe that was an early Thanksgiving Day for Tony.

Maybe that’s why we go bowling on Thanksgiving: not to get us out of Mom’s hair, but to remind Dad that possessions are fleeting, but family is forever. To remind him of the lesson he learned that day by the bowling alley.

But don’t bet on it.

Happy Thanksgiving!