Sydney Weaver
About fifty percent of Americans who go to the gym do so in the morning. That percentage comprises mostly millennials. Hitting the weight room or the treadmills in the morning is a great way to stimulate brain activity and get your day started. The trip usually takes an hour to an hour and a half, then you go home, get a good breakfast, and you’re on your way.
But there is another group that the statistics don’t talk about who prefer something other than the gym to stimulate their brain activity and start their day.
If you Google “bowling leagues in Billings, Montana,” you are given the option to go to Fireside Lane’s main website. There you find the list of bowling leagues (all ages!), or their Facebook page, which, in turn, brings you to their website with the list of bowling leagues. Safe to say, Fireside Lanes is the go-to place for all your bowling league needs.
Fifth on the list of women’s teams, you find the Plaza League. They start playing at 8:50 a.m. every Thursday for a total of thirty-two weeks including playoffs and championships. Unlike our gym-goers, these ladies are at the bowling alley from 8:30 a.m. till around 12:00 p.m., spending almost four hours battling it out. Next to this information is a 406 number, and I decide to dial it. Someone named Vera couldn’t possibly be scary to talk to.
Vera is the league secretary and “has been doing this for years.” When I call her, she answers with the loud “HELLO?” that’s only developed after living through the deafening rock concerts of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I turn the volume down on my phone as she tells me that they’ll start playing next Thursday and to be there around 8:30 a.m. for the pre-season meeting with all the teams.
A bowling alley in the morning gives off the same vibe as a school that isn’t in session. The whirring from the lanes hasn’t yet begun, the clattering of pins and slam of heavy bowling balls on the wooden laminate is more of a ghostly echo. Something you know was present at one time but is now nonexistent.
The guy at the front desk who doubles as a bartender points me to the room where the ladies are meeting. It smells like Macy’s perfume and hairspray. The younger women are seated at high-top tables while the older ladies get comfortable at the low tables closer to the speakers. Standing at the front is Vera.
She looks exactly as I pictured in my head. She is a short, old lady, with classic puffy white grandma hair. Her bright pink t-shirt reads “sarcasm is my love language.” The shirt is a size too big, and there are vertical rips down the sleeves.
Notebook in hand, Vera follows the list of items on the meeting agenda while Brenda, another leader of the group, talks to the ladies, going over the rules and regulations and how the year will pan out. A big issue item on the list: an increase of twenty-seven cents in lane pricing.
Brenda proposes two solutions to the problem. Everyone can pay $1.86 every single time they come in to play, but that means that if someone is absent, the rest of the team will need to cover for them. The other solution is that everyone could pay $30 at the beginning of the season. This would solve two issues. All lane fees would be taken care of so nobody would have to cover for an absent player, and they would have money for the end-of-the-year party along with money for a prize for the winning team. This is all lost on me and my 8:30 am brain and lack of coffee, but the other women in the room understand immediately and the room erupts into murmurs. It’s another hour before the balls even start to knock down pins.
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In an attempt to get their body moving and activate their brain in the morning to prepare for the day, most people will go to the gym, hit the weight room or the yoga studio, or go for a run. But for these women, the heavy thunks of bowling balls and clatter of pins is the best alarm. It is everything combined in one: heavy lifting as they slink ten pounds down the alley, cardio from jumping and dancing around to the ’60s and ’70s music playing over the speakers, and brain activation from the calculated movements needed to get a strike or figure their way out of split pins. For these women, there is more to bowling than just playing the game. It is something I didn’t realize when I walked into Fireside Lanes on a rainy summer morning. For these women, it is a lifestyle as they battle over club politics and battle their way through thirty-two weeks to victory.
Sydney Weaver is a creative writing major from Park City, Utah. She is a senior on the Rocky Mountain College ski team and has been published in the second and third issues of The Rocky Mountain Review.
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