It was a birthday party for our greatnieces - the twins Preslee and Mason (6) and our goddaughter Finley (4) and it was held at a typical Baltimore kind of place...the fabulous Stoneleigh Bowling lanes, which are below a little strip of stores about a block from where I just retired, and several blocks from where I was once a lethargic high school student.
The party was fun...the kids were loving it. Our nieces' grandmom Kathy made 28 poodle skirts for all the little girls in attendance, and the party had a 50s theme. Seeing the kids bowling, eating cake and ice cream and hopping around to 50s music was a lot of fun. I'm sure that for most of them, it was their first time to hear Bill Haley and the Comets.
And then Peggy and I got to bowl for a while, and let me tell you...the last time I rolled a bowling ball, Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. And this is duckpin bowling, which I probably hadn't done since 4th grade!
You might not have duckpins in your town. They're very popular here in Baltimore. According to Wikipedia, the legend that the game was invented here lives on. I mean, we always heard that as kids, that John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson, as Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s, developed the game at a bowling alley they owned downtown on Howard Street. The Wikipedia is sort of murky on the history anyway. The story we got was the ballplayers wanted a little more action down at the end of the alley, and you surely get that with duckpins. The pins are short and stubby and you roll a much smaller ball (with no fingerholes) than the one used in tenpins, and boy oh boy, when you hit that kingpin just right, those pins scatter like ducks on a pond!Hence the name.
We had such a good time, we want to go back sometime and have another one. Come join us?
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