I went bowling on Saturday with my family and it got me thinking of all the bowling I did in college. For a while, I was going at least once a week and sometimes more. I became so obsessed with the "sport," that I asked for my own ball one year for Christmas and went out to get my own shoes as well. For my twenty-first birthday, my friends even went as far as getting me a personalized bowling shirt with my name stitched on the left breast.
The bowling alley that I went to couldn't have been any more authentic. I don't know about you, but when I think of a bowling alley, I think of sleaze and trash and that's exactly what Linbrook Bowl was. It was a 24-hour establishment in the heart of Anaheim. For those of you that don't know, Anaheim, CA is not Disneyland. Sure, the happiest place on Earth is located in the city, but don't let that mislead you. Disney has paid insane amounts of money to make the neighboring area look pristine and well-kept, but the rest of Anaheim is a dump. Everything is dirty and there are a lot of extremely shady looking characters. Linbrook Bowl is in that part of Anaheim.
I've seen drunken lunatics, sober lunatics, and I even saw a fist fight between two women in the parking lot at four in the morning. If I remember correctly, I heard "Stop it, Mom!" at the climax of the melee. It's the type of place that makes you feel unsafe when walking in, even worse when walking out, and I was never sure if my truck would still be there when I was ready to leave. The people that work at Linbrook range from tall, lanky black guys with lazy eyes to short, stocky, middle-aged women with bad attitudes. I frequented the place so many times that I found myself on a first name basis with these people, but when you rent a lane for an hour and time runs out in the seventh frame, it's good to be friends with the staff because they have the power to extend your time for no extra charge.
As crazy and sleazy as Linbrook was, some of my best memories from that era of my life have come from that place. I've bowled multiple games over 200 and even finished one with a 267 out of a perfect 300 for my personal best. One of my favorite Linbrook memories was a tournament that was held at 2:30 in the morning against the rules of the bowling alley. There were ten or fifteen people in the tournament and the entrance fee was $20. Everyone started on the same lane and bowled there until he achieved a strike. He would then move to the next lane over and bowl there until he received another strike. The first person to bowl a strike on each of the twenty lanes, would win the pot. To my surprise, I came in second place. I think I made it to the twelfth lane before I completely lost the lead and the game. It was a big event for me, though, because it was one of the first times I went bowling with this new group of friends and it felt good to prove how competitive I could be.
I didn't see any fights or drunk people on Saturday when I went with my family. I had to use the house balls and shoes because I didn't have my own with me. I walked out of the alley in the middle of the afternoon instead of the early stages of a sunrise. It was a completely different experience than what I had every time I went bowling in college, but it was still fun to think back to those times.
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