chapter 6
Going On The Road
In the early days at Ave M, back in the late 50s, it wasn't what you would call a big action house, mainly the kids, such as myself, Roy, Marc, Bernie, Norman and many others would bowl pot games and some head to head matches. Many of the local bowling alleys such as Elmwood, Leader, Windsor, Shell and Jamar had the same situation.
Saturday mornings and afternoons were the big times to us. A women by the name of Jose owned the lunch counter at Windsor lanes in Boro Park, she had her own stable of teenage bowlers, we would go down there on Saturday mornings and challenge her guys, trying to get into her deep pockets. It was something to talk about and look forward to all week long. We set up a lot of home and home matches and that's when the doctoring of the alley conditions would come into play, trying to gain some sort of an advantage, it usually would backfire.
I remember the time I was bowling A home and home match against one of the top guns from Elmwood lanes. The first three games were at Ave M, I was ahead by a total of 38 pins going into their house. I threw a semi spinner and bowled much better on fast dry lanes. The lanes at Elmwood were so oiled down that nobody could hit them, the condition was actually laughable, the 38 pins became monumental, I won the match. If they had left the lanes alone, he would have had a legitimate chance of beating me.