The Perils of Bowling

Did you know that bowling can kill you? Bowling fatalities are rare but they do happen. Just last week I read a media report about an unfortunate bowling alley employee who died in the mechanical apparatus behind the pins.

Bowling mishaps of lesser severity are easily imagined. "Ouch, dropped the bowl on my toe!" "Whoops, smashed my fingers while retrieving my ball!" Things like that must happen all the time.

But fatalities? It turns out that the machinery behind the well-illuminated ivory ten-pins is a throwback to the industrial revolutions origins. Think meat-packing in Chicago in 1873 or George Orwell's "Animal Farm". Whatever you do, don't let your children grow up to be pin-setters!

Ever heard of extreme bowling? Take an ordinary bowling alley. Then turn down the lights, turn up the music and bowl the night away. Turns out that bowling fatalities multiply exponentially in the world of extreme bowling. Look it up.

I remember my grandfather and his fellow bowlers. They appreciated a night out with the boys, downing beers and rolling those beautiful, shiny balls down the laminated hardwood lanes like figure skaters on ice.

Turns out that idyllic fantasy blinded us all to the mayhem behind the lanes---bowling alley personnel carnage. Where oh where is OSHA. That's right, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and all those government employees whose responsibility it is to make the American workplace immune from injury and death?

Did you know there's a one-lane bowling alley in the White House? Former President Richard Nixon had it installed. Not at government expense. Oh no, it was paid for by Tricky Dick's friends who appreciated that government should not fund the frivolous leisure activities of government employees, not even the president. If only Nixon's moral compass has remained true to the ethic of privately funded bowling.

Subsequent presidents have made little use of Nixon's alley but W did. Some consider it unfortunate that Dick Cheney didn't take a stab at studying the internal mechanics of pin-setting.

Thank goodness ESPN doesn't pay much attention to bowling. Something about the "athletes" just doesn't measure up to the guys in the NFL or the NBA. Ever watched "Kingpen"? Now there's a bowling story worth seeing. My advice: If you should decide to take up bowling, whatever you do, don't pull a Munson.