PUBLICATION  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

FULL TEXT

I used to say, If I win the lottery, I’ll buy a tropical island and live there in sunny bliss with a couple of gorgeous cabana boys. Today, even with snow on the ground, I announce to you this official change to my Lottery Winning Prospectus: If I win the lottery, I will buy a bowling alley.

I just found out that Route 19 Bowling Center in Washington, Pa., (the place where I currently bowl) will be closing in a few months. Done. Gone. Bulldozed. For a mall.

Crap.

I like this bowling alley. I like bowling. I like bowling night.

Bowling is a family-friendly, date-friendly, friend-friendly, klutz-friendly, age-friendly outing. It’s an inexpensive bit of fun. It’s a stress-free escape. It’s a place where everybody gets a level playing field, and being average is perfectly all right.

I’m a single person who works from home; on bowling night, I get to leave the house. I get to knock down pins, knock back a couple of brewskis, hang with my friends, and laugh a full week’s worth. Bowling is the last vestige of Younger Days, when nights out were almost nightly. It is also the near end of a thread that weaves back even further, to my earliest childhood … if an unsanctioned 4-year-old wearing no shoes, standing at the foul line, and dropping a 12-pound ball onto a big toe can be considered bowling.

That cherished moment took place at the Mount Royal Bowling Alley in Glenshaw, an alley within walking distance of where I grew up. It’s where I won my first bowling trophy.

I should note that (A) it was a mother-daughter tournament with the winning score based on a combined total; (B) my mom is a really good bowler; and (C) it’s where I won my only bowling trophy. But I broke 80 that day, my mom kicked butt, and we took first place. In the tangled jungle of my aging brain, that moment is a sun-drenched clearing. Unadulterated joy. Vainglorious triumph. In my mind, that bowling alley is perfectly preserved.

In real life, it’s a drugstore.

Folks in the North Hills of Pittsburgh also will remember another once-great bowling alley: McKnight Lanes. That building is now a big-box housewares store. (I still stick out my tongue every time I drive by.)

McKnight Lanes is where I bowled in my first league and enjoyed many happy times as a kid, a teenager and a young adult. I broke in my very own bowling ball there in the late ’70s. It is actually the same ball I used right up until a couple of months ago, when it was, well, broken in completely.

Mount Royal Lanes. McKnight Lanes. And now, Route 19 Bowling Center. The three main places I have bowled — gone, gone, and going soon.

I am bummed and really quite disappointed with the world. I want to cry. I want to shout. I want to wail like a 4-year-old with a bowling ball on her foot.

Yeah, I know. Time rolls on. Things change. And, while I kind of adore the tradition and kitsch of bowling, it’s not the everyman activity it used to be. I know not everybody loves bowling. But do we really need another mall?

No. We do not.

We need more bowling alleys. Bowling alleys with cabana boys.