National Past Time: Kingpin Alley

Chapter 1

Sleepy Town

West of the Hudson River sits a drive-thru town more famous for its nothing than its something. Before and beyond, you can drive for miles and see nothing but the dips and jags of the forested mountains stretching out in a toothed line across the horizon. The town itself melds into the nothingness, snug as a fox in its hole. The openness envelopes you, slows you. Wealthy urbanites come to this place to escape the confining busyness and bustling crowds of the city, and passersby can’t help but remark upon the restful beauty of the virgin woodlands. It is not without reason that Rip Van Winkle chose to slumber in the Catskills.

But being alone changes a place: it gets a quirkiness living all by its lonesome, a strangeness everyone but the people living there can recognize. It seems that the more solitary a place, the more it remains the same, even as the rest of the world changes.

Everyone seems to know everybody here, and the people of this place are suspicious of strangers. Most people who live here can trace their ancestry all the way back to the early 1600s, when the town was first founded. The people judge you not only by yourself, but by your parents and grandparents as well.

If you should happen to intrude into their town, you might feel the weight of their wandering eyes following you like the eyes of a subject from a seventeenth-century portrait. If you make it your aim to hide among the crags, they will let you be; that treatment makes this place attractive to the tramps and the drifters alike. And for this reason, the druids and the Mafia both call this place home.

Yet these people are formidable in friendship. If they should decide to accept you, they will go to any means necessary to help you in your distress. And locals, authorities included, will decide to fail to see suspicious actions or circumstances, just because they know the family.

This town, Koopersville, helped make me who I am today. And if I can possibly help it, I will never go back.

Chapter 2

December 2008

On Time

When I was growing up, there was an old grandfather clock in my house that no longer kept correct time. To this day, it is a reminder of an era of gears, pins, and levers. You can open it and look at it, and the mechanisms by which it works are clear. It’s a clock that our family has owned for over five generations, and it’s passed down to the eldest son as a family heirloom. It was something that I looked forward to giving my own son someday, once I had passed on. But I never will have that chance, and that is the only thing that I regret not having, after what happened.

Where had it all gone wrong—or had it? Was there something my wife and I should have done differently, or did we do the right thing? I had always been convinced we were right, but now I’m not so sure.

I was driving in the car at 4:15 a.m. on Monday morning, and I was on my way to work at the Physical Rehabilitation Clinic of Indianapolis. I had just finished rereading 1984 by George Orwell that weekend, and I was in a pensive mood, to say the least. I reflexively checked my gas tank. It was nearly empty.

I pulled into the gas station by my office and got out of the car. I had gotten used to paying right at the pump with my credit card, although I will admit, today’s technology still made me nervous. I felt agitated, but I tried to keep a pleasant look on my face.

I shut my car door behind me and then carefully placed my red, white, and blue plastic bonus card into the payment slot. The computer asked if I was a Bonus Rewards Card Member, and I carefully pressed the button next to the word yes. I looked at the fuel pump screen and waited as the phrase Processing Loyalty flashed on the screen. Okay, I thought, my loyalty is being acknowledged by the computer. I thought of my family. If only loyalty were that easy.

I never had a big brother. I had a big sister, though, and we were very close. In fact, with all of my siblings, there were deep feelings of love, respect, and loyalty, because we were family; that was just the way it was when we were growing up. Years ago, my siblings talked of things like love, fairness, and helping the less fortunate and animals—and yet later on, when we got together as a family, they never seemed to remember things the same way that I did, and they argued among themselves.

Let’s not have discussions, someone would snap. It was always safer to stay out of it, and so I did.

I think they still love me. They say how much they love me in the Christmas or birthday cards they still send me from time to time. Well, at least my big sister still sends me the occasional card.

I squinted a little, looking at the gas tank screen. I waited for about ten seconds until the screen ordered me to reinsert my credit card.

I did. Error, it read. Please swipe card again. I did, faster this time. Error, it still read. I swiped it again, this time very slowly and deliberately. Please see attendant. I grumbled, What just happened? I hate technology. I threw my credit card on the cement in frustration and then let out an exasperated sigh. Now I had to bend over. I set my coffee on top of the car and bent over. My hip hurt. I stood up again, grasping the top of the car to steady myself, but in the process I forgot about my coffee cup. I realized I had hit it, but it was too late and it was already airborne. Coffee flew everywhere as the cup careened toward me, covering me and my cleanly pressed white dress shirt in a steamy, sticky mess.

A voice came on over the intercom. Come inside.

Could it get any worse? I trudged across the parking lot, shaking off drips of coffee as I walked. I opened the door and walked over to the counter to pay.

Problems there, partner? said a male clerk whose two front teeth were missing. He wore a tight T-shirt and had a very large abdomen. He immediately reminded me of Lester, the man who, as I saw it, had caused all of my problems. He looked at me and broke out laughing, pointing at the brown coffee that had soaked my clothes. Looks like a case of the Mondays, he said, snorting as he looked at me from over an open magazine. So far I hadn’t said anything, and I went to give him my credit card.

Why don’t you go on out there and try one of the other pumps? he said, not accepting my credit card. He leaned over the counter and grabbed a sticky bun, opened it, and took a large bite.

I’m already in here. I may as well pay, I said.

Okay, gramps. What pump ya on out there? he asked.

I had no idea which pump I was on. There were four pumps and no customers except me, and I was certain he very well knew which pump I was on. He obviously saw the whole thing. I told him, The one that’s broken out there. I was seething. My father would never do business this way. It won’t take my card.

He laughed again and said, It ain’t the pump’s fault, dude.

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and I’m in a gas station talking with Goober Pyle, I thought. All I wanted was gas, I replied.

You probably put the card in backward or something, he said now with a serious frown and thoughtful expression.

I simply looked at him.

How much? he asked.

I don’t know how much, I said. I want to fill up my tank.

I need to know how much gas you need, he said.

How do I know how much it will be? I said. We find that out when it’s done pumping. I resisted the temptation to add, You idiot!

Sir, I don’t know what your problem is, and I know you spilled your Starbucks there, but I’m just trying to do my job.

When did it get so complicated just to get gas? I thought. I’ll get twenty dollars’ worth, I said in a defeated tone of voice.

There ya go, he said. He smiled and got busy at the cash register, rapidly punching buttons. That’s the ticket, he said. Speaking of, the lotto’s at fifty million. Want to buy a ticket? Then you could get yourself a new shirt! He laughed, and, as he laughed, a bubble of snot came out of his nose. He wiped his nose with his hand and then handed me my credit card.

I left and pumped my twenty-dollar ration of petrol.

I got in the car and pulled out of the gas station, missing the good old days in Koopersville.

Chapter 3

June 1961

Groundbreaking: A Time for Hope

For me, the good old days started when my dad saw his dream start to become a reality, and for my dad, that reality started with a large hole. Mr. Monroe, the excavator, completed digging the bowling alley foundation in early summer of 1961. It looked huge, like a giant meteor had left a crater in the empty lot across from our front yard.

Everyone has a calling in life, and for my dad, it was bowling. He loved the sport. Bowling is something everybody can do. It’s a poor man’s golf, he would say. He had been into bowling ever since his college days, when he was a pinboy and mechanic at Marshall Memorial Lanes in Cedar Rapids. As was common in those days, the bowling alley was in the basement of the local Catholic church. He had also drilled balls for them and had worked in the business office because the Elks Club, who managed the Marshall, trusted his cool business sense and winning way with customers. My dad would tell stories about how, after the leagues were all over and everyone had gone home, he would lie in the pit ends and look up under the semiautomatic machines, dreaming of owning his own place. Sometimes he would stay there all night and fall asleep thinking of how to do it better.

I’ve come to believe that dreams are hardly ever entertained and even less often realized. There are snares and traps, naysayers and enviers, obstacles to overcome and disenchantment through which to persist. If you pursue a dream, you give up being a part of the crowd, because dreamers stand out by nature. Success is not guaranteed. And that is enough to deter most people—but not my dad.

My dad was not without fear, but he wasn’t hindered by it, either. And with a bowling alley, there was much to be afraid of. First there was the financial pressure, always looming like an unwanted specter. Then there was the liability. Anybody could claim anything, at any time. There were inspections, from the New York State Health Department to the American Bowling Congress. Trustworthy, dependable employees had to be found. There were the problems that could be predicted, and there were problems that were beyond imagination.

And then there was the task at hand. Right now, it was the construction, which was coming along nicely so far. The huge hole in the ground was not really just a hole but the beginnings of the bowling alley itself. The footings for the foundation had been completed, and the cement floor of the lower level had been poured and skillfully smoothed out. Cement-block walls had been laid by the stonemasons and lined two-thirds of the perimeter of the would-be structure, within which the bowling lanes and concourse would later be installed.

I was the only one out of the four kids who was up that morning, because it was only about six. I would still be sleeping myself had my mother not allowed me to help my father, and even that was at my mother’s concession. What if he falls into that big pit? she had said.

But finally she had allowed it when my father told her it was a boy’s rite of passage to learn how to build, it was an initiation into manhood, and it was time for me to start becoming a man. We can’t let him enter puberty having never swung a hammer, he said. And so it was settled.

I sat there at the breakfast table, eating my Wheaties and swinging my legs under the kitchen table in barely contained glee. Normally I sat there staring at the picture on the cereal box while I ate, but today I kept looking out the window and then back at my dad, who was sipping coffee.

This was a typical morning for my dad. He rose early every morning, and I rarely saw him in his pajamas. Today was no exception. He had a habit of wearing short-sleeved dress shirts, even when he was planning on doing manual labor. He wore black, thick-rimmed reading glasses even if he wasn’t reading. And he always had on a black leather-strapped wristwatch. He checked his watch, which told me that he was thinking about leaving soon. He took another sip of coffee.

I had never been allowed to have coffee because it was for adults. You wouldn’t like it, anyway, my dad always said. But since I was now about to become a man, it hit me that I should probably have some too.

Could I have a sip? I asked my dad as he took another swig. He brought his cup down and went to shake his head no, but before he could answer, I said, All the construction workers drink coffee. And I’m one now too, right?

My dad looked at my mom, whose lips were turned upward in a partial smile. My mother had a way of looking disapproving and approving at the same time, as if she took silent delight in encouraging those things she thought she should discourage.

She nodded, so my dad slid his cup across the table. I took a sip, and it tasted terrible. I wanted to spit it back in the cup, but I swallowed and then took a bigger drink. Do you want your own cup? my dad asked with a smile. I nodded.

Before my parents could get me a cup, the construction workers started pulling in across the street, which we saw through the kitchen window. My dad stood up, and I followed suit, thankful that I didn’t have to drink more of that awful stuff. My mom handed my dad a lunch pail and a transistor radio, which he always had with him when he worked. He usually listened to a ballgame or to the country-music station. I was hoping for a ballgame because I was a big baseball fan. This year, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were having their home run derby season, which was exciting if one was a Yankee fan, except that I liked the Red Sox. My dad liked the Yankees; whenever a game was on, he would tell me, It’s okay to like baseball, Paul. Just remember, according to the BPAA, bowling is the real national pastime. Then he’d wink.

My dad kissed my mom on the cheek and thanked her for lunch. She kissed him back and wished him a good day. We walked out the front door and across the lawn. My feet got wet from the dew that was still on the grass.

As we were walking, my dad said, I’ve got to talk to Mr. Ryan and the electrician about something, Paul. Why don’t you take a bucket and start going around picking up nails for me?

Picking up nails? I thought. That’s not construction. Even so, when we reached the construction site, I picked up a bucket and began walking around the site while my dad walked over to Mr. Ryan, the general contractor.

As I began finding nails and plinking them into the bucket, the Atlas Cement mixers began to arrive to pour the floor of the next level. They were huge trucks with big, rotating barrels full of cement. They emptied the barrels from a huge chute angled down at the intended target while workers waiting below busied themselves with smoothing the wet, muddy loads. Now that was construction.

I watched in fascination as the cement trucks began pouring cement over the footings, filling in the gaps between them. I kept picking up nails, but I kept looking over at the construction workers, watching their strong, fluid movements as they moved the levelers back and forth. After about an hour of picking up debris, I was finding nothing but cigarette butts, and I was satisfied that I had done as my father had instructed. By this time, the workers had abandoned their cementing job and left it to dry.

I looked at their work, and it was really pretty good for the most part. The leveling boards were balanced on the scaffolds that had been temporarily constructed along the perimeter of the newly poured cement floor. To prevent them from rolling off, the workmen had placed iron plates at each of the two ends.

I stepped up on the folding ladder that had been left next to the scaffold. I thought the cement was a little uneven where the two different concrete footings came together, about ten feet out. The leveling boards were right there, and if I could move the iron plate off the end closest to the outside edge, I thought I could pull the leveling board off by myself. I really thought it would save my dad some money if I could just do it myself, and no one would even know.

As I pulled the iron plate that was situated at the outer edge off the leveling board, the iron plate on the other end crashed down into the cement flooring, which as it turned out was still wet. And when I tried to catch the leveling board as it flew upward, it hit me in the chest and knocked me off the stepladder. I fell face-first into the cement.

Uh oh.

My dad apparently heard the commotion because I saw him walking over to me. He was not pleased with me. Paul, that’s something I would have expected from any other kid.

I knew this was going to be bad because he gently put his hand on the back of my cement-caked head and then slid it down to my shoulders. My dad had big hands. But Paul? My straight-A student Paul?

This was not going to end up good for me. Sorry, Dad, I said. I tried to smile like his straight-A student Paul would have smiled if report cards had just been issued.

This was not report card day.

This is just not something I would have expected from you. He told me he needed to hose me off so that the cement wouldn’t hurt my skin. My dad knew just what to do because he had worked in a cement plant with his stepdad, when he was in high school. You’re going to need a haircut too, you know.

Normally I hated haircuts because my dad was the barber, and he covered my shoulders and arms with a big white sheet. I had to sit there for about forty-five minutes until every hair was tapered just perfectly, and I couldn’t move.

The haircut only took about two minutes that day. My dad shaved my head.

Chapter 4

August 1961

A Time to Build Up

I needed all the help I could get when I was nine, and being nearly bald wasn’t going to help me any. At least the rash-like scabs on my stomach, arms, and legs from the wet cement burns had finally gone away. That would have been all I needed, because school started in a week, and the other kids already picked on me. For one thing, I normally had red hair, which made me stand out in a crowd. Even my dad would sometimes say, Make sure you do what’s right when you are playing with the other boys, Paul, because if something happens, they’ll always remember that red-haired kid. Besides having red hair, I was kind of little and good in school, which only made me more of a target. I didn’t really care. I mean, I cared what people thought, but at the same time I wanted to be different. Don’t let others determine how you feel about yourself, Paul, Dad often told me.

I didn’t see the point in telling my dad that just before school got out the year before in June, Bart Dobermeister had chased me all the way up the hill in the woods behind the schoolyard. I never knew I was that fast—I kind of surprised myself. I had always thought Bart was faster than me. I had been feeling good about that all summer. If he would have caught me, I don’t know what he would have done. I guess he would have beaten me up. I did not know why; I never did anything to him.

When my dad told me he was going to teach me to box because my grandfather had taught my dad to box at about my age, I was excited because that meant no more blisters on my heels from running up that darn hill. It was about a half mile long, with a steep grade and plenty of rocks and tree roots to trip over. Plus, I had nearly ruined my good school shoes that were leather, and my mom had made me shine them all night with black Cherry Blossom boot polish so that I missed my Cub Scout pack meeting, which threw off my whole schedule for my Wolf badge.

My dad was a very good boxer. At the 1940 Golden Gloves Midwest Championships held in Milwaukee, my dad had won the heavyweight division, and from that point on, he never lost a fight in college, in YMCA, or in an AAU competition. At one time he was even going to fight professionally. He had signed a contract with a sponsor out of Louisville in the professional circuit in 1949, and his very first professional bout was the featured broadcast for Saturday Night Fights, on radio station WLS AM 890, Chicago. The sports reporter for the Chicago Tribune described it the next day in the Sunday morning paper:

The last bout of the evening between Pete Fox of Cedar Rapids and Rog Salvadore of Dodge City stole most of the show; the Iowa native displayed some promising ring characteristics that brought the fans to their feet on more than one occasion. The Louisville-sponsored Iowa fighter took almost everything in hand except Referee Jack McCaskey. His ring technique immediately gained the fans’ favor, as he sometimes begged his opponent to come after him and then slipped fists in with the speed and power of a true professional. It was a dramatic KO in the fourth round, and the champ watched as they carried the loser out on a stretcher. This kid’s gonna be a good one. He’s gonna be a favorite. He’s as crafty as a fox, and he could be the next Joe Louis.

The very next day, in September 1949, my dad quit boxing. He had knocked his opponent out so badly that it bothered him, and he quit. Plus, he used to say it wasn’t good for your head to get hit like that, anyway. That was when he decided to go into the bowling business instead, where he could help people. Bowling was respected.

It wouldn’t be too long before my dad started gaining that respect, because the construction of the alleys was coming along nicely. The steel beams had gone up in a week after nearly two months of preparation, and one could now see the beginnings of the new building taking shape.

The new bowling alley was already the talk of the town. The kids in town, who would play ball in the lot up by the woods, would take a break and come down, look around at things, and talk to my dad about the new bowling alley. They already knew him from school because he was a shop teacher at Koopersville High. My dad would give them a drink out of the hose connected to the well that had already been drilled and would say, Tell your mom and dad to come on up and join us in a league. It’ll be a lot of fun. So before the alleys were even open, we were becoming very well known in the community.

That was also why I tried not to talk about other people, because gossip almost always caused problems. In certain parts of the East, almost everyone was related to everyone else in some way, so I learned not to say anything about anyone, and not to tell anyone my business. I never knew when I could be talking about the great-niece, once removed, of a friend’s grandpa’s brother, or someone’s nephew or cousin, or great-grandchild, or a sister’s brother-in-law. One could be talking about the family of a former spouse, or someone’s estranged son, or who knows? It was safer not to mess with it, because more than likely, it was going to get back to them.

Today, though, we were alone in the basement of the alleys because it was Sunday morning before church, and it was time for my first boxing lesson. I loved any chance I could get to do something with my dad, just the two of us. My dad was a teacher through and through. If he taught me how to box, I would be good.

I was very short, so my dad stood me up on two milk crates so that I could reach the speed bag that he had installed just around the corner at the bottom of the basement stairs. Now, the punching bag was at eye level. My dad said, You’ve got to learn to keep your eye on the bag, focus on the task at hand, and think. Boxing is a sport that requires intelligence, Paul. You’ve gotta always watch the other guy, and don’t show him your cards. Plus, he said with a slight smile, fighting helps your arm and shoulder strength for bowling.

My dad may not have wanted to hurt anyone, but he drew a distinct line between that and protecting himself and his family. Part of protecting me was teaching me to protect myself: "Keep your hands up, protect your face, left jab, right cross, and on the speed bag, you gotta fly … Tuh tah, tu tah, ta tah, tuh ta. Back hand left, cross right, back hand right, cross left, back left, lead right. Now use your elbow and make it sing … Tic et ta, tic e tah, tic et ta, tic e tah, tic et ta, he said, demonstrating on the punching bag. Keep your eye on the bag, and remember the phrase ‘No pain, just constancy.’ It’s mind over matter. Boxing is a gentleman’s sport, Paul. Don’t get mad—get even. Then he would clarify. If you get mad when you’re boxing, you can’t think clearly, and somebody might get hurt."

Chapter 5

September 1961

A Time to Get Up

I wasn’t boxing, but I got mad and still couldn’t think. My mom interrupted my enraged stupor when she called out in a sing-songy voice, Come on, kids! Get a move on! Today’s a big day!

It was the first day of school and the first year that all of us kids would be starting school together. Hope and I were starting the fifth and fourth grades, respectively, while Ginny would be starting first grade, and Richie would be going to kindergarten. Last night, my mom had kept saying, Set your alarms early, so you have plenty of time to get ready! I want the first day of school to be a special memory. I want to get some pictures of the four of you all dressed up and holding hands out on the front lawn.

I had set my alarm for 5:45 because I wanted to be the first one in the bathroom. When the alarm rang that morning, I turned it off on the first ring and sprang out of bed. The next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back in a big pile of dog poop. Poop was everywhere—on the backs of my legs, on my rear, on my feet, and smeared into my brand-new white throw