Bowling alley

“ Down the line next to the baseball diamond came the bowling alley, where everyone who was not a fan or a golf fiend was taking a hand at the sport. This alley was laid on a long board table, and the game played with tenpins and small wooden balls. Six balls for a nickel they sold here, and because the sport needed something to speed it up a bit they linked it with the food table next door. ”

“ There was a single alley, at the far end of which stood ten pins. Jenkins measured the alley with his eyes and figured it to be just about the length of a conventional bowling alley. The backstop was built up of earth and was soft enough so that the pins would not splinter on striking it.
"We all know the rules," Lucretia said. "To the victor goes the rule of our land. To the loser, slavery. ”

“ There, too, is sometimes an American bowling alley, where on cold nights, or hot, for the matter of that, we roll huge wooden balls down a raised track for twenty yards, to scatter nine pins at the bottom. ”

“ An Ode.—Kilpack's Divan, now the American Bowling Alley, in King Street, Covent Garden, continues to be the resort of minor celebrities. As the club was a private one, we do not feel justified in more plainly indicating the members referred to as the "jocal nine." ”

“ EXPERIENCE is a very necessary factor in building Bowling Alleys. For six years we built alleys according to the old method of setting the sleepers in cement, nailing the beds to them, etc., and though we took great care to have all work and materials first-class, our alleys did not always give the perfect satisfaction we desired. To obviate some of the troubles, in 1892 we introduced the Reisky & Wolf adjustable alleys with improvements in the construction of the beds, etc., and later the Standard non-adjustable alleys built on the same general principles. ”

“ For a Time he kept warm in a Bowling Alley. Drive a Man into a Corner and goad him to Desperation and he will go so far as to Bowl, provided that he lives in a German Neighborhood.
One Evening he went down to see the Walhallas go against the Schwabens, but the Place was Dark.
The Authorities had interfered.
It seemed that the Manufacture of Bowling Balls involved the Destruction of the Hardwood Forests, while the Game itself overtaxed certain Important Muscles ending with "alis," at the same time encouraging Profanity and the use of 5-cent Cigars.
Steve had one Stand-By left to him. ”

“ But though the same statute absolutely prohibited bowling alleys, Henry VIII. had them constructed for his own pleasure at Whitehall Palace, and was wont to back himself when he played. In Mary’s reign (1555) the licences were withdrawn, the queen or her advisers deeming the game an excuse for “unlawful assemblies, conventicles, seditions and conspiracies.” The scandals of the bowling alleys grew rampant in Elizabethan London, and Stephen Gosson in his School of Abuse (1579) says, “Common bowling alleys are privy moths that eat up the credit of many idle citizens ”

“ They give both play­ers and spec­tators an unob­struct­ed view of the alley beds and pins. In a room con­tain­ing eight or ten alleys, one can see every pin. The runs are strong, the posts being short, and as the balls do not have to be raised so high to put them in the cage they are dropped in easier and wear longer. ”

“ The discredit attaching to bowling alleys, first established in London in 1455, probably encouraged subsequent repressive legislation, for many of the alleys were connected with taverns frequented by the dissolute and gamesters. ”

“ THE recent revival of this interesting game has resulted in the application of modern principles of system and exactness to Alleys, Pins, and Balls. What would have been very good ten years ago will not answer at all now. The alley in particular must be right from the start and remain so. This can only be expected of experienced builders, using first class materials. We have been building alleys for ten years and by giving them careful study have produced good alleys. ”

“ I believe Bateman's alley was a better one than any other in America, in the matter of the essentials of the game. It compelled skill; it provided opportunity for bets; and if you could get a stranger to do the bowling for you, there was more and wholesomer and delightfuler entertainment to be gotten out of his industries than out of the finest game by the best expert, and played upon the best alley elsewhere in existence. ”

“ The Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam, now New York, were much addicted to it, and up to the year 1840 it was played on the green, the principal resort of the bowlers being the square just north of the Battery still called Bowling Green. The first covered alleys were made of hardened clay or of slate, but those in vogue at present are built up of alternate strips of pine and maple wood, about 1 × 3 in. in size, set on edge, and fastened together and to the bed of the alley with the nicest art of the cabinet-maker. 345 The width of the alley is 4l1⁄2 in., and its whole length about 80 ft. ”

“ The following list is well adapted for one pair of Public or Club Alleys. For a Single Alley take half of the list of Balls and Pins. It is desirable to purchase large balls at first as they turn to smaller sizes. ”

“ In wrestling the Cornwall and Devonshire men excelled, and a ram, or sometimes a cock, was the prize of the victor. Bowling alleys were commonly attached to the houses of the wealthy, and to places of public resort. Among the games at ball we find tennis, trap-ball, bat and ball, and the balloon-ball, in which a large ball filled with air was struck from one side to the other by two players with their hands and wrists guarded by bandages. ”

“ The links are 3,327 yards out and 3,002 yards in, a long and sporty course, the delight of the true golfer and the terror of the duffer.
Woodvale is very exclusive. The membership is limited, and hundreds of the best people in the city are on the waiting list. Our club house is one of the finest in the country. In addition to the links we have tennis courts, croquet grounds, bowling alleys and other games, but why one should care to indulge in any game other than golf is a mystery to me. ”

“ WINN’S BALL RETARDER FOR BOWLING ALLEYS.
Some means for retarding or reducing the speed of returned balls is an absolute necessity, otherwise they crash into each other making a disagreeable noise, injure the balls and knock the smaller ones off the runs. When taking a ball off the runs bowlers have often had their fingers badly crushed by a swiftly returned ball. ”

“ In the mean time, the court enjoyed every kind of diversion, in a place where amusement is sought with avidity. The game of bowls, which in France is the pastime of mechanics and servants only, is quite the contrary in England, where it is the exercise of gentlemen, and requires both art and address: it is only in use during the fair and dry part of the season, and the places where it is practised are charming, delicious walks, called bowling-greens, which are little square grass plots, where the turf is almost as smooth and level as the cloth of a billiard-table. ”

“ Out in the blowy wet weather again, by avenues and by-ways, they raced through the Park, climbing up to look over at the wind-driven water of the old reservoir, clambering down a great wet bowlder on the other side—the girl as agile and sure of foot as a boy. Then they pushed toward Eighth Avenue, missed the entrance and wandered about in a labyrinth of bridle-paths and footways, suddenly found themselves back at the big bowlder again, scrambled up it warm and flushed with the exertion, and dropped down for a moment to breathe and to get their bearings. ”

“ He had likewise a tennis-court and bowling green at Whitehall, where at noonday and towards eve, blithe lords, and ladies in brave apparel, might be seen at play. Bowling was a game to which the people were much devoted, every suburban tavern having its green, where good friends and honest neighbours challenged each other's strength and skill. And amongst other pleasant sports and customs were those practised on May-day, when maids rose betimes to bathe their faces in dew, that they might become sweet-complexioned to men's sight ”

“ A bowl alley is the place where there are three things thrown away besides bowls—to wit, time, money, and curses, and the last ten for one. The best sport in it is the gamesters, and he enjoys 193 it that looks on and bets not. It is the school of wrangling, and worse than the schools, for men will cavil here for a hair's breadth, and make a stir where a straw would end the controversy. No antic screws men's bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless, to speak sense to their bowl, and put their trust in entreaties for a good cast. ”

“ Who ever learnt a Scotch song out of books? They are possessed of souls, these songs, to be caught only from living lips. The bodies alone are to be found within the bars.
Passing Bolton we saw the first bowling green, sure proof that we are getting northward, where every village has its green and its bowling club, the ancient game of bowls still offering to rural England attractions paramount to more modern sports. ”

“ An annual bowling-match was formerly held on feasten Monday, between Paul and Mousehole men (Mousehole is a fishing village in the same parish) ; the last of them took place sixty years ago. Up to that time the bowling-green, an artificially raised piece of ground, was kept in order by the parishioners. No one in the neighbourhood now knows the game; the church schools are built on a part of the site, and the remainder is the village playground. ”

“ Big International Event Begins To-day at Union Hill Schuetzen Park.
The international bowling tournament, in which votaries of the indoor pastime from all over the country are expected to take part, will begin to-day at Union Hill Shuetzen Park, Union Hill, N. J., and continue all week. The programme consists of contests of all descriptions at the pins, from the regulation ten frame game down to candle pins and cocked hat. In addition there will be shooting competitions, parades, vaudeville performances, fireworks, dancing, speechmaking and other attractions. ”

“ Some years later it became known as Vauxhall.
Bowling must have had some attraction for the people of New York, for in March, 1732-3, the corporation resolved to “lease a piece of land lying at the lower end of Broadway fronting the Fort to some of the inhabitants of the said Broadway in Order to be Inclosed to make a Bowling Green thereof, with Walks therein, for the Beauty & Ornament of the Said Street, as well as for the Recreation and Delight of the Inhabitants of this City.” ”

“ The great bowling-green was crowded with jostling, laughing bowlers; the archery ground afforded amusement to many competitors, for our Islonians are skilful in the use of the long-bow and cross-bow; parties were gathered for cricket, balloon, quoits, nine-pins, and leaping the bar. Some of the lads and lasses began at once to trip it to fiddle and pipe and tabour. Many of the older folk were content to stand or sit and watch a set of morris dancers, or filled the booth where a company of strolling players performed a blood-curdling tragedy and a side-splitting farce well within the hour. ”

“ Still later the Lyceum was called the Broadway Theatre.
"Murderers' Row" has its start where Watts Street ends at Sullivan, midway of the block between Grand and Broome Streets. It could not be identified by its name, for it is not a "row" at all, merely an ill-smelling alley, an arcade extending through a block of battered tenements. After running half its course through the block, the alley [Pg 98] is broken by an intersecting space between houses—a space that is taken up by push carts, barrels, tumbledown wooden balconies and lines of drying clothes. ”

“ The ancient bowling-green at the Stewponey remains in good condition to the present day, although the once popular and excellent English pastime of bowls has there, as elsewhere, fallen into desuetude.
In old England there was not a village, country house, without its bowling-green. A century ago the game held its own steadily, and it is within the last seventy or eighty years only that it has lost favour and has been supplanted by croquet and lawn tennis. ”

“ Turning to the right we find ourselves in a country of massive bowlders. They seem to have been broken off from the summits above and arrested here for future ages and movements to change or pass on.
The road grows severer than ever, and we cannot help again picturing those old heroes driving their wagons up, while the women and children toiled painfully on foot up the steep and rocky slopes. ”

“ If we compare gentlemen bowlers of the age of nineteen with professionals of the same age, we shall find that the former have nothing to fear from the comparison. But pass on for five or six years, and the gentlemen are seen to be behind in the race for pre-eminence. Can this be the fault of public schools? Is it not rather that after leaving school few, scarcely any, systematically practise bowling, although they are just at the right age to improve, having stronger muscles and more experience, to say nothing of leisure hours and increased opportunities? ”

“ It is medium paced, it pitches on the middle stump, a little more than half-way down the pitch, and it turns away ever so slightly towards the leg. Any one can look a good bat who is opposed to bad bowling. And I maintain that it is no sort of sense indulging in wild panegyrics about schoolboys who have never been tested by first-class bowling.
If a boy seems promising the county authorities should give him a trial, and, if he does well, then let the pressmen get busy. Every one is [Pg 83] so terrified lest a good man may be overlooked. ”

“ But to the historian there is a picturesque side, and many of us can remember something of the same sort of match in the south of England on the village greens, when the spectators used to sit smoking churchwarden pipes, with beer in china jugs on small round tables, and when many a match used to be finished in one day.
William Lillywhite and Broadbridge, as I have said, brought in round-arm bowling; and with no heavy rollers or mowing machines invented, I should think it probable that many bowlers were successful who were nevertheless not possessed of great skill. ”