Uptown Lanes
by Brian Hawkins
Salvador “Sal” Salvemni kicked the wooden chuck into place underneath the heavy glass door as he cursed his morning women’s league for their taste in department store fragrances.
Lighting a fresh butt, he inhaled deeply, held it, then blew a cloud into the passing traffic along US 50 as it snaked its way through the heart of town. Hell, it’s a nice day. Might as well let the place air out some.
As Sal stood on the undulating sidewalk, one foot perched on a mound of compromised concrete, ruminating over his past and his future, the cigarette smoke inside from the Tuesday Morning Housewives League had not yet dissipated, hanging in the air like a cool, morning fog. The lingering perfume over which Sal seemed so troubled few would have noticed at all, covered so completely by the heavier, thicker scent of hundreds of Virginia Slims, Kools, and Tareytons. Soon the residual tar and nicotine would begin the ancient ritual, caressing (seducing?) the walls and the ceiling, lightly touching here and lunging forcefully there, knowing that the bond, while not permanent, would last for many years. Layer upon layer, the yellowing, tacky film coating the interior of the building remained as a legacy, a marker of the many who had entered – those who had laughed here, loved here, and lost here. The odor provided comfort to the returning, a familiarity which allowed them to remember why they kept coming back – friends long passed and, in many cases, the youth which they knew they could never recapture. Try as it might to remain, some of the smoke would waft through the door as it opened and closed, some would be filtered through the heating and cooling system, and some would leave in the lungs and on the clothes of departing patrons. But nothing and no one could rid the place of it all – nor would any of those who frequented Uptown Lanes have wished it odorless and sanitized.
Outside, the June sun was as bright as the interior was dark, a rule rather than an exception. Bowling alleys always seemed dimmer than the outside world, especially when the pinsetters sat silent and unused. Maybe there was something to it all. Certainly why summer business faded to a trickle. However, to a bowler at least, the low lighting provided comfort. As with the interior of a cave in prehistoric times, the men and women who inhabited this world felt some sense of safety in the close and subtle confines of the bowl. Surrounded by members of their own tribe and circling around personal fires, lit by their own hands and held at finger length, they knew that whatever horrors the world held, they would be, if only for a few hours, insulated from them, safer in their numbers and half-hidden by the shadows drawn like curtains around their community.
For the same primal reasons, when the lighting is low, everything that happens becomes more personal, more intimate. Restaurants, the fancy ones with the folded napkins where you pay at the table rather than at the register, operate on the same theory – dim the overheads and romance will follow. Indeed, romance had flourished from time-to-time in Sal’s establishment, mostly in the form of young men stealing away to the even more dimly lit basement, a cave within a cave, for whatever good time they could coax from their lovely companions.
Shaking his head to throw off what he thought of as sentimental bullshit, Sal toed the chuck back inside and let the door swing shut behind him. Just a half hour or so after the league had finished, the place was quiet. The crashing of balls against pins had faded, and Sal rounded the counter to finish the league tally at his register. The eight lanes sat dark and silent off to his left. Perfect companions to a man trying to concentrate on his books. The take was always the same, but he had to total the number, check to make sure the league secretary hadn’t screwed up, and get the money ready for deposit. Even with the handgun hidden behind the counter, he didn’t like leaving that kind of cash in the drawer, especially when he was there alone. As he finished the deposit slip, enclosed the money the in the bank bag, and slid the bundle in the small safe under the counter, Sal decided he had time to bowl a couple of games.
Typically, afternoon did not see many customers wander through the doors, and the summer men’s league wouldn’t arrive for hours. A perfect opportunity to practice. He liked the solitude of bowling alone, or so he told himself. Grabbing his shoes and ball, he flipped the switches to turn on Lanes 3 and 4.
Before lacing up, Sal stopped and grabbed a beer from the white refrigerator sitting comfortably between the Coke machine and the off-limits area behind the counter. The alley had never been large enough to house a bar or restaurant, so Sal sold a few chips and candy bars and had the machine for pop, of course. Still, his league bowlers wanted to drink each week during their competition and at Uptown this meant carry-in rather than carry-out service. That night many of the men arriving for league would come in with cases of twelve or twenty-four beers bought at the package store and stuff the fridge at the beginning of the evening. By the end of the third game, however, they could have rightfully hung a “Full Vacancy” sign on the thing, and the trash cans would be overflowing with more dead soldiers than a group that size should be able to kill. Sal took the cans and bottles left behind for recycling or to reclaim the deposit, so he never really minded he wasn’t profiting from the liquor sales. He knew he didn’t have the space for a bar and, to his mind, a license was too damn expensive anyway.
After throwing a few shots to untangle his aging muscles, Sal began to work on his game. He didn’t keep score. He often told his students, “You don’t see the Packers or the Steelers countin’ points in fuckin’ practice, do you? League is for score; practice is for learning to knock down pins.” In this, Sal followed his own advice.
The lanes had not been oiled since yesterday – no sense wasting the money and the juice on the women who just came to bullshit and gossip – and they were hooking. His ball was only a couple of years old but after throwing the same equipment for ten years, he had succumbed to the new Manhattan Rubber campaign (MORE LIVE RUBBER! the posters announced as they depicted notable pro bowlers smiling proudly while holding their new ball of choice) and purchased this one. This black sphere was as good as any other he supposed. It did hit the pins hard, but on conditions such as these, just about anything would. He figured there was as much dirt as oil out there and not even enough lubrication to slick down his ex-wife’s barren pussy. Because of that, the ball had a tendency to overreact, to hook too much. With the lanes too dry for him to play his usual angle, straight and somewhere just outside of the second arrow, Sal moved in and practiced hitting a deeper line.
Some of the guys on TV like Salvino and Weber could really bend it, but Sal had no illusions of bowling like the pros. Repetition and muscle memory was the name of his game, and he had a pretty good one. Averaging around 185 for the last few years, he owned some of the top scores in the city. A few years back, he had even shot a 700 series, which got him an article in the newspaper. Lane 6 had been acting up all night, and he had been forced to run back and forth (the kid working nights had been a no-show, and he fired his little ass, too) between his team and the pits to keep the machine running and still bowl. Not only had his been the lone 700 in the city that year, he’d done it with the teams bowling around him. He’d roll two or three frames to catch up when he returned, then go work on the fritzing machine once more. Looking back, he was pretty sure he hadn’t finished one cigarette the entire evening. The American Bowling Congress might or might not have considered the score legal, but the general consensus with the local officers was “Fuck ‘em.” As far as they were concerned, Sal had more than earned every strike he’d rolled.
He worked on keeping his head down, looking intently at his mark around the third arrow. Sal felt good today, stroking the ball with ease through his short, four-step delivery. He stood no more than five-five in his bowling shoes, so his steps were always short. His stature, along with a deep knee bend, also kept him low to the foul line, allowing him to roll the ball onto the lane rather than launching it like a cannon ball.
Having thrown maybe a game’s worth of shots, Sal realized he had three strikes in a row. Not wanting to go against his mantra about keeping score while practicing, he struggled to ignore the number of strikes in his string. This became increasingly difficult as three turned into four into five. The sixth shot ran a little high, and Sal barely managed to trip out the four pin, a rarity for a full-roller playing that deep. Moving slightly more than one board left (“Miss left, move left,” he taught), the seventh strike was flush in the pocket and all ten pins dropped into the pit. While he had rolled seven or eight in a row on more than one occasion (even having the front nine one night in a league session before splitting in the tenth for a career high game of 267), any bowler’s nerves would begin to pick up after this many in a row. Though this was just practice and not sanctioned competition, twelve strikes would still be a perfect game (at least according to the legendary Andy Varipapa, another old Italian bowler whom Sal idolized as a kid – and as an adult).
Strikes eight and nine came as easily as one and two when he had not been concerned at all about the outcome of his practice shots. With only three left, Sal breathed deeply, grabbed his ball with both hands and continued to follow his routine. He placed his left foot on the twenty fifth board, blew some warm air into the thumb hole before inserting his fingers, sighted just left of the third arrow, and methodically delivered his shot. Strike. Sal executed the next two shots with the same poise and the results were the same. Twelve in a row. A 300 game. He downed the rest of his beer, crushed out the cigarette he had left unattended in the ashtray for the last five shots or so, and looked around the bowl.
As empty as the beer can in his hand.
His exuberance at his performance, though completely internalized, quickly diminished as he realized he had no one with whom to share his accomplishment. It’s not that no one would believe him; if he said he had done it, everyone would know it to be true. No, the boys would all accept his story, if he decided to tell them. But in that moment, to Sal, the small building seemed immense, as if the empty seats and quiet lanes stretched on forever, a wasteland void of all life but his own, incapable of supporting more than one being at a time.
Chucking his ball down the two steps from the settee area, then kicking it behind the counter where it would rest until tonight, Sal decided most definitely not to tell anyone about the game. He had bowled a 300, and it was his; if no one was here to see it, the hell with them. The accomplishment was personal, and he would keep it that way.
After he finished tying the knots on his street shoes and threw his empty Lite can in the trash, Sal began preparations to strip and crosswipe the lanes with oil for tonight’s men’s league. Doing it early in the day gave the lanes time to set up, but it also sometimes meant they might get some open play before league and that often equaled lower scores.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Lost in the daily conundrum, he did not notice when Ernie Baker, a man twenty years his junior and probably his best friend, stepped through the door and headed across the concourse to where Sal was preparing the stripper, which would remove any lingering oil as well as the accumulated dirt and grime.
“Hey there, Sal old pal. Watcha up to?” Ernie asked as he hopped up to the settee area where Sal stood over can of conditioner, rags, and his best lane mop.
Surprised, Sal started and nearly unleashed a torrent, in both English and Italian, at the interloper but quicky identified the voice and bit his usually sharp tongue. “What the hell are you doing here, Bakes? Don’t you work anymore?” he asked, making no mention of his just-finished practice session.
“Too much, my friend. Too much. Naw, the boss gives me a day off every once in a while. He let me cut out early. Thought I’d stop by, maybe bowl a couple before league.”
“You’ve got some shitty timing, Ernie. I gotta strip and oil. You help, it’ll go faster.”
They worked in silence as they moved from left to right, Ernie first stripping the lanes, Sal coming along behind to spray oil then wipe it into the shape he wanted – left to right, then right to left.
They stopped twice to smoke, taking the time to do things the right way, Sal’s way. Soon enough, the job was finished and Sal watched Ernie warm up for the evening’s competition, giving him a few pointers (“Put the goddamn ball on eight and trust it,” he repeated) as the session progressed. When his timing felt good, Ernie drank a Big Red and Sal a Pabst as they awaited the arrival of the eight five-man teams bowling that night. Together they fogged the air around them, talking about the things men need to discuss when they are in the company of other men, Sal almost forgetting his long string of strikes that afternoon and certainly not telling the tale. To his way of thinking, some lights were better kept under a bushel, no matter what the Good Book had to say. Hell, he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the rest of it either.
In a few hours, when league ended and the pot games, which would last long into the night, took shape, generations of smoke – staled and as much a part of the place as Sal himself, clinging to the walls and ceiling, the chairs and the Coke machine, the stools at the counter and the house balls on the racks behind the lanes – would be joined by what the men newly produced as they battled one another for five and, later, ten dollars a game until their wives called or the promise of an early morning at work forced them home. This cloud – one that looked like rain but would bring nothing, that would not give life but in some cases, in some men, take it instead – would hover until it too began to drift out the door into the night or remain to coat the remnants of innumerable days, different in no substantial or measurable way from the one which had just passed.
Brian Hawkins lives and works in southern Indiana. He and his wife, Lacy, both teach at the high school from which they graduated. They also own (and rarely operate themselves) a used bookstore in town. They have three cats and two dogs, along with a number of koi and goldfish in their small ponds. Brian has a B.S. from Indiana University, an M.Ed. From Indiana Wesleyan University, an M.A in English from Morehead State University, and a graduate certificate from IU in political science. Brian's work has appeared in The Barcelona Review, Spank the Carp, Strangest Fiction Anthology – Vol. 2, Jelly Bucket, and Dark Horses, and Bristol Noir. He bowled in his first league at age five in 1982 and has not missed a season since. He can be found on Instagram @hawk.it.is and Bluesky @hawk_it_is.
by Brian Hawkins
Salvador “Sal” Salvemni kicked the wooden chuck into place underneath the heavy glass door as he cursed his morning women’s league for their taste in department store fragrances.
Lighting a fresh butt, he inhaled deeply, held it, then blew a cloud into the passing traffic along US 50 as it snaked its way through the heart of town. Hell, it’s a nice day. Might as well let the place air out some.
As Sal stood on the undulating sidewalk, one foot perched on a mound of compromised concrete, ruminating over his past and his future, the cigarette smoke inside from the Tuesday Morning Housewives League had not yet dissipated, hanging in the air like a cool, morning fog. The lingering perfume over which Sal seemed so troubled few would have noticed at all, covered so completely by the heavier, thicker scent of hundreds of Virginia Slims, Kools, and Tareytons. Soon the residual tar and nicotine would begin the ancient ritual, caressing (seducing?) the walls and the ceiling, lightly touching here and lunging forcefully there, knowing that the bond, while not permanent, would last for many years. Layer upon layer, the yellowing, tacky film coating the interior of the building remained as a legacy, a marker of the many who had entered – those who had laughed here, loved here, and lost here. The odor provided comfort to the returning, a familiarity which allowed them to remember why they kept coming back – friends long passed and, in many cases, the youth which they knew they could never recapture. Try as it might to remain, some of the smoke would waft through the door as it opened and closed, some would be filtered through the heating and cooling system, and some would leave in the lungs and on the clothes of departing patrons. But nothing and no one could rid the place of it all – nor would any of those who frequented Uptown Lanes have wished it odorless and sanitized.
Outside, the June sun was as bright as the interior was dark, a rule rather than an exception. Bowling alleys always seemed dimmer than the outside world, especially when the pinsetters sat silent and unused. Maybe there was something to it all. Certainly why summer business faded to a trickle. However, to a bowler at least, the low lighting provided comfort. As with the interior of a cave in prehistoric times, the men and women who inhabited this world felt some sense of safety in the close and subtle confines of the bowl. Surrounded by members of their own tribe and circling around personal fires, lit by their own hands and held at finger length, they knew that whatever horrors the world held, they would be, if only for a few hours, insulated from them, safer in their numbers and half-hidden by the shadows drawn like curtains around their community.
For the same primal reasons, when the lighting is low, everything that happens becomes more personal, more intimate. Restaurants, the fancy ones with the folded napkins where you pay at the table rather than at the register, operate on the same theory – dim the overheads and romance will follow. Indeed, romance had flourished from time-to-time in Sal’s establishment, mostly in the form of young men stealing away to the even more dimly lit basement, a cave within a cave, for whatever good time they could coax from their lovely companions.
Shaking his head to throw off what he thought of as sentimental bullshit, Sal toed the chuck back inside and let the door swing shut behind him. Just a half hour or so after the league had finished, the place was quiet. The crashing of balls against pins had faded, and Sal rounded the counter to finish the league tally at his register. The eight lanes sat dark and silent off to his left. Perfect companions to a man trying to concentrate on his books. The take was always the same, but he had to total the number, check to make sure the league secretary hadn’t screwed up, and get the money ready for deposit. Even with the handgun hidden behind the counter, he didn’t like leaving that kind of cash in the drawer, especially when he was there alone. As he finished the deposit slip, enclosed the money the in the bank bag, and slid the bundle in the small safe under the counter, Sal decided he had time to bowl a couple of games.
Typically, afternoon did not see many customers wander through the doors, and the summer men’s league wouldn’t arrive for hours. A perfect opportunity to practice. He liked the solitude of bowling alone, or so he told himself. Grabbing his shoes and ball, he flipped the switches to turn on Lanes 3 and 4.
Before lacing up, Sal stopped and grabbed a beer from the white refrigerator sitting comfortably between the Coke machine and the off-limits area behind the counter. The alley had never been large enough to house a bar or restaurant, so Sal sold a few chips and candy bars and had the machine for pop, of course. Still, his league bowlers wanted to drink each week during their competition and at Uptown this meant carry-in rather than carry-out service. That night many of the men arriving for league would come in with cases of twelve or twenty-four beers bought at the package store and stuff the fridge at the beginning of the evening. By the end of the third game, however, they could have rightfully hung a “Full Vacancy” sign on the thing, and the trash cans would be overflowing with more dead soldiers than a group that size should be able to kill. Sal took the cans and bottles left behind for recycling or to reclaim the deposit, so he never really minded he wasn’t profiting from the liquor sales. He knew he didn’t have the space for a bar and, to his mind, a license was too damn expensive anyway.
After throwing a few shots to untangle his aging muscles, Sal began to work on his game. He didn’t keep score. He often told his students, “You don’t see the Packers or the Steelers countin’ points in fuckin’ practice, do you? League is for score; practice is for learning to knock down pins.” In this, Sal followed his own advice.
The lanes had not been oiled since yesterday – no sense wasting the money and the juice on the women who just came to bullshit and gossip – and they were hooking. His ball was only a couple of years old but after throwing the same equipment for ten years, he had succumbed to the new Manhattan Rubber campaign (MORE LIVE RUBBER! the posters announced as they depicted notable pro bowlers smiling proudly while holding their new ball of choice) and purchased this one. This black sphere was as good as any other he supposed. It did hit the pins hard, but on conditions such as these, just about anything would. He figured there was as much dirt as oil out there and not even enough lubrication to slick down his ex-wife’s barren pussy. Because of that, the ball had a tendency to overreact, to hook too much. With the lanes too dry for him to play his usual angle, straight and somewhere just outside of the second arrow, Sal moved in and practiced hitting a deeper line.
Some of the guys on TV like Salvino and Weber could really bend it, but Sal had no illusions of bowling like the pros. Repetition and muscle memory was the name of his game, and he had a pretty good one. Averaging around 185 for the last few years, he owned some of the top scores in the city. A few years back, he had even shot a 700 series, which got him an article in the newspaper. Lane 6 had been acting up all night, and he had been forced to run back and forth (the kid working nights had been a no-show, and he fired his little ass, too) between his team and the pits to keep the machine running and still bowl. Not only had his been the lone 700 in the city that year, he’d done it with the teams bowling around him. He’d roll two or three frames to catch up when he returned, then go work on the fritzing machine once more. Looking back, he was pretty sure he hadn’t finished one cigarette the entire evening. The American Bowling Congress might or might not have considered the score legal, but the general consensus with the local officers was “Fuck ‘em.” As far as they were concerned, Sal had more than earned every strike he’d rolled.
He worked on keeping his head down, looking intently at his mark around the third arrow. Sal felt good today, stroking the ball with ease through his short, four-step delivery. He stood no more than five-five in his bowling shoes, so his steps were always short. His stature, along with a deep knee bend, also kept him low to the foul line, allowing him to roll the ball onto the lane rather than launching it like a cannon ball.
Having thrown maybe a game’s worth of shots, Sal realized he had three strikes in a row. Not wanting to go against his mantra about keeping score while practicing, he struggled to ignore the number of strikes in his string. This became increasingly difficult as three turned into four into five. The sixth shot ran a little high, and Sal barely managed to trip out the four pin, a rarity for a full-roller playing that deep. Moving slightly more than one board left (“Miss left, move left,” he taught), the seventh strike was flush in the pocket and all ten pins dropped into the pit. While he had rolled seven or eight in a row on more than one occasion (even having the front nine one night in a league session before splitting in the tenth for a career high game of 267), any bowler’s nerves would begin to pick up after this many in a row. Though this was just practice and not sanctioned competition, twelve strikes would still be a perfect game (at least according to the legendary Andy Varipapa, another old Italian bowler whom Sal idolized as a kid – and as an adult).
Strikes eight and nine came as easily as one and two when he had not been concerned at all about the outcome of his practice shots. With only three left, Sal breathed deeply, grabbed his ball with both hands and continued to follow his routine. He placed his left foot on the twenty fifth board, blew some warm air into the thumb hole before inserting his fingers, sighted just left of the third arrow, and methodically delivered his shot. Strike. Sal executed the next two shots with the same poise and the results were the same. Twelve in a row. A 300 game. He downed the rest of his beer, crushed out the cigarette he had left unattended in the ashtray for the last five shots or so, and looked around the bowl.
As empty as the beer can in his hand.
His exuberance at his performance, though completely internalized, quickly diminished as he realized he had no one with whom to share his accomplishment. It’s not that no one would believe him; if he said he had done it, everyone would know it to be true. No, the boys would all accept his story, if he decided to tell them. But in that moment, to Sal, the small building seemed immense, as if the empty seats and quiet lanes stretched on forever, a wasteland void of all life but his own, incapable of supporting more than one being at a time.
Chucking his ball down the two steps from the settee area, then kicking it behind the counter where it would rest until tonight, Sal decided most definitely not to tell anyone about the game. He had bowled a 300, and it was his; if no one was here to see it, the hell with them. The accomplishment was personal, and he would keep it that way.
After he finished tying the knots on his street shoes and threw his empty Lite can in the trash, Sal began preparations to strip and crosswipe the lanes with oil for tonight’s men’s league. Doing it early in the day gave the lanes time to set up, but it also sometimes meant they might get some open play before league and that often equaled lower scores.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Lost in the daily conundrum, he did not notice when Ernie Baker, a man twenty years his junior and probably his best friend, stepped through the door and headed across the concourse to where Sal was preparing the stripper, which would remove any lingering oil as well as the accumulated dirt and grime.
“Hey there, Sal old pal. Watcha up to?” Ernie asked as he hopped up to the settee area where Sal stood over can of conditioner, rags, and his best lane mop.
Surprised, Sal started and nearly unleashed a torrent, in both English and Italian, at the interloper but quicky identified the voice and bit his usually sharp tongue. “What the hell are you doing here, Bakes? Don’t you work anymore?” he asked, making no mention of his just-finished practice session.
“Too much, my friend. Too much. Naw, the boss gives me a day off every once in a while. He let me cut out early. Thought I’d stop by, maybe bowl a couple before league.”
“You’ve got some shitty timing, Ernie. I gotta strip and oil. You help, it’ll go faster.”
They worked in silence as they moved from left to right, Ernie first stripping the lanes, Sal coming along behind to spray oil then wipe it into the shape he wanted – left to right, then right to left.
They stopped twice to smoke, taking the time to do things the right way, Sal’s way. Soon enough, the job was finished and Sal watched Ernie warm up for the evening’s competition, giving him a few pointers (“Put the goddamn ball on eight and trust it,” he repeated) as the session progressed. When his timing felt good, Ernie drank a Big Red and Sal a Pabst as they awaited the arrival of the eight five-man teams bowling that night. Together they fogged the air around them, talking about the things men need to discuss when they are in the company of other men, Sal almost forgetting his long string of strikes that afternoon and certainly not telling the tale. To his way of thinking, some lights were better kept under a bushel, no matter what the Good Book had to say. Hell, he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the rest of it either.
In a few hours, when league ended and the pot games, which would last long into the night, took shape, generations of smoke – staled and as much a part of the place as Sal himself, clinging to the walls and ceiling, the chairs and the Coke machine, the stools at the counter and the house balls on the racks behind the lanes – would be joined by what the men newly produced as they battled one another for five and, later, ten dollars a game until their wives called or the promise of an early morning at work forced them home. This cloud – one that looked like rain but would bring nothing, that would not give life but in some cases, in some men, take it instead – would hover until it too began to drift out the door into the night or remain to coat the remnants of innumerable days, different in no substantial or measurable way from the one which had just passed.
Brian Hawkins lives and works in southern Indiana. He and his wife, Lacy, both teach at the high school from which they graduated. They also own (and rarely operate themselves) a used bookstore in town. They have three cats and two dogs, along with a number of koi and goldfish in their small ponds. Brian has a B.S. from Indiana University, an M.Ed. From Indiana Wesleyan University, an M.A in English from Morehead State University, and a graduate certificate from IU in political science. Brian's work has appeared in The Barcelona Review, Spank the Carp, Strangest Fiction Anthology – Vol. 2, Jelly Bucket, and Dark Horses, and Bristol Noir. He bowled in his first league at age five in 1982 and has not missed a season since. He can be found on Instagram @hawk.it.is and Bluesky @hawk_it_is.