As things in life happen, an old bowling buddy hit me up to bowl with him again and, since we are both back on “day” shifts at work, we decided to do it.

 Due to circumstances I wont go into, we ended up bowling in an OLD center with the original lanes and pinsetters from 1957. Wood lanes with Brunswick “A” setters, and they’re both in bad shape.

 What an experience! If you have never had the privilege to bowl on tougher, challenging conditions, you should. It will surely make you aware of, and appreciative of, the EASY conditions virtually ALL recreational league bowlers got these days.

 I have averaged over 200 for close to 20 years now. My average now? 188!

 The best results I’ve gotten are since I’ve gone “old school”, got my old white dot regripped, and moved out to the first arrow (actually playing the 3-4 board).

And, for the first time in years, I feel truly challenged to perform at a high level to score, and rewarded when I do.

 Honestly, I sort of dreaded bowling in this place. I knew it was old, and was probably going to be hard to score in, and I was right. Thing is, I’m actually glad now that we did, and am having the time of my life with the challenge of throwing an old white dot on old wood lanes!

 If you get the chance, I recommend bowling a truly tough shot in a tough house to bring you “back to earth”. It’s actually been fun, and I look forward to league nights again!

Its not easy to even find wood lanes west of the Mississippi (well at least west of Texas and outside California) as our cities are newer.  There are like two in my entire state and they are long drives to little towns in middle of nowhere.  There is one in the state next door on way (again in fairly small town) to my parents going to hit up sometime.  Hard to find those places out here to even attempt it.  Do remember how much tougher it was as a kid with rubber balls on a four lane alley in rural midwest though.  In our youth league (12 and under IIRC) 130 was by far the highest score anyone got and everyone was in amazement about that game.

It wasnt the wood lanes per se it was the condition they were in.  I averaged as high as 215 on wood lanes in the late 70s using white dots and yellow dots.   There were very tough wood houses,  but the best players in that era didnt bowl on them

I guess it all depends on your perspective.   It isnt even the same game on those old brick yards compared to modern synthetics using state of the art lane machines.  House shooters putting up telephone numbers are going to get humbled on the old brunswick house, but the guy averaging 190 in the old house is unlikely to to come close to the boomers on a house shot at their place. 

I use to ask a hypothetical when some of these boards got in hot disputes over walled up conditions.   If a guy can out average me by 15 pins on a house shot, but I can out average him by 15 on a Wolf pattern, who is better.

It wasnt so much the wood, as it was the finish.  By the early 80s hard urethane lane finishes had replaced lacquer.  It was this change that heralded in the lane blocks that ultimately became the typical house shot of today.   Synthetics had pretty much replaced wood in our area by the mid 90s.  I bowled regularly in one of those old wood houses.  It scored much better than an anvil lane if the wood was walled and the anvil lane had a flatter pattern.