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‘The Past Beats in Me Like a Second Heart’: Casa Venida and the Slow Death of Bowling
Casa Venida was a modest little 12-lane bowling alley, located in the blue-collar town of Compton, California. But man what a great place that was!
Casa Venida was a dark place: low lighting, dark corners, no windows. But the bowling pits were brightly lit. Twelve little numinous shrines, each of which contained ten 3.5 pound, female-figured bowling pins, the innocent victims of my roundhouse hook.
The bowling alley also had a bar and a middle-aged, heavily breasted woman who owned the place and took no guff from anyone. When I opened that door to Casa Venida, I was home.
I knew that place inside out. I set pins, kept score for leagues, bowled in leagues, bowled in pot games, played liars’ poker with dollar bills, and drank Shirley Temples from the bar. When I wasn’t doing those things, I was sitting in the spectator seats smoking cigarettes with Red, while we savagely critiqued the sad-sack recreational bowlers. We thought we were as clever as all get out.
Casa Venida was a refuge, a social club, and a playground. School sucked big time by comparison. I wasn’t one of those cute, clever, and confident boys that girls and teachers paid attention to, so school wasn’t a whole lot of giggles.
A steady girlfriend would have leavened my joyless school life, but I was too intimidated by girls to ask one out. (Did you women out there know you had such an powerful effect on boys like me?) I had a girlfriend for a very brief time. I can’t remember how I got her. Probably pure luck. She was a Jewish girl from the better side of Compton. I got to third base. Any farther would have been scary and inconceivable. I can’t remember how that brief relationship ended. She probably finally sized me up and came to the conclusion that she could do better.
Playing sports in high school would have been a godsend, but though I considered myself a whiz of a sandlot athlete, I wasn’t good enough, once I reached high school, to make the varsity teams in any sport.. I would sinned incessantly, as E. A. Robinson once wrote, if that could have gotten me on the baseball or basketball teams.
But don’t feel sorry for me. I had a place to go: Casa Venida, the neighborhood bowling alley, where there were no unattainable girls, no teachers to ignore me, no books to read. Is it any wonder that I preferred the bowling alley to school?
And I found my sports niche in Casa Venida. I discovered that if you go down far enough in the sports world, you might be able find your sport. I found bowling. And I was good. At one time I held the second highest junior average in LA. Later I bowled on the University of Oregon team. (Yes, bowling was an official sport at Oregon at the time. We even had a one-time professional bowler, Lou Belissimo, as our coach.) So I found my sport. It just wasn’t one of the big three, something your dad can brag about to his friends.
A few years back, I drove through Compton and stopped at Casa Venida. It was desolate, with shuttered windows and refuse on the pavement outside. It looked as though it had been that way for a long time.
Thomas Wolfe was right when he said that you can’t go home again. You can’t go home not only because the place won’t be the same, but also because you won’t be the same.
In the mid 1960s, there were about 12,000 bowling centers in the U.S. Today there are about 5,000. When I bowled for the University of Oregon, there were 8 lanes, later expanded to 16, along with a number of bowling classes. A few years back, the U. of O. removed all 16 lanes.
In the 1970s, there were over nine million league bowlers in the U.S. Today there are about 1.5 million. Bowling alleys used to count on their leagues. League bowlers showed up every week, the often ate before they bowled, and they drank a lot from the bar when they bowled. At Casa Venida, we had twelve leagues a week, Monday through Saturday. The first league started at six p.m., the second at 9. Almost all teams were associated with the blue-collar companies the men worked for.
The decline of league play is sometimes blamed on a trend toward social isolation.*
We have one of those giant recreation centers, Big Al’s, just a few miles from my home in Portland. It has a huge restaurant/sports bar, an arcade with hundreds of video and roller-ball games on the second floor, 24 regular lanes on the bottom floor. There are also 12 psychedelic lanes (dark with pulsing lights and loud music). Big Al’s, has no league play at all. In fact, its 36 lanes look forlorn most of the time when there are just a few rec bowlers in action. I get the feeling that its main revenue comes from the giant restaurant/sports bar and the arcade on the second floor. The guy who built this thing was wise to hedge his bets.
Were I a kid again, there would be little reason for me to hang around Big Al’s. There is no league play, so I wouldn’t be able to keep score for ten cents a line per bowler. And there would be no Shirley Temples for me from bowlers who scored 111 in the 7th frame (a longstanding league bowling tradition). And I wouldn’t be able to set pins because the automatics have taken over.
As far as I can see, there are no permanent bowling alley kids that hang around the place. So there would be no more liars’ poker, no more criticizing bowlers from the spectator seats (no spectator seats in Big Al’s), no more social life at the bowling alley.
Here’s an odd little fact that might have a larger meaning: I’ve come across four guys who used to hang with me at Casa Venida and all became hardcore conservatives. How about that? What does that mean?
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“The past beats in me like a second heart” is a quote from John Banville.
* If you want to read a very good book on the decline of league play and how that’s a reflection of social isolation, read Robert Putnam’s seminal book, Bowling Alone.
Here comes Halloween and Bob the dog will be going to the various festivities dressed as a lion. Party down, Bob.
Nice post Kent. Thanks. Did you know there was a time when professional bowlers made the same kind of scratch as did the guys who played real sports like football and baseball? I remember seeing professional bowling on TV regularly when I was a kid in the 1960’s but I had no idea the top bowlers did as well financially as this article indicates.
Bowling is like poker or bingo — a low-commitment activity whose main purpose is to give people an excuse to chat. It’s my kind of sport.
I was born the year Putnam published his “Bowling Alone” essay. I grew up in the era of playdates, and MySpace (remember that?) burst onto the scene about the time I reached middle school. Facebook and smartphones followed not long after. The Internet became my generation’s bowling alley.
The idea that I could‘ve had a second home “out there” in the world — a place where I, too, could’ve been a “local” — is one of those faux-nostalgic fantasies that we sentimental types sometimes indulge in . . . until I remind myself of what high-schoolers were really like, and I realize that I wasn’t missing much.
The photo of Bob the Dog is priceless; and he expresses his opinion of the costume very well, too.
Thanks for the post. It brought back a lot of memories.
Lily, I followed bowling on tv, all the way back to the late 40s, with the same intensity that Yankee fans follow baseball. Bowlers like Don Carter were my heroes.
@roblong built a TV series around the idea.
How did you play liar’s poker? We used to play what we called liar’s poker a lot when I was building restaurants.
Jim, he does kinda look like a lion, doesn’t he? He’s sunning himself in the photo, hence the languid pose, but he doesn’t seem to mind his lion mane. It seems to puff him up.
It looks to me like Bob was thinking about a costume for you to wear on Halloween. Did he come up with anything?
Randy, we played it this way: Let’s say four are playing. The first guy declares that he has a pair of kings.
The next guy has to either call the first guy (the one who declared he had two kings) a liar — or he has to beat two kings by declaring that he has, let’s say, a full house of two kings and three fives.
If he called the guy a liar, everyone shows their hands to see if two kings are there. The two kings merely have to show up in the four hands. If the kings are there, the guy who declared he had two kings wins the pot (three dollars plus his own). If two kings are not there, everyone keeps their money and the next guy declares a hand.
Lion tamer.
That’s more or less the way we played it, but if the declarer hit the exact number of kings, everyone paid him double. We didn’t call anyone liar, we just played until no one would bid anymore, and the last guy to bid was on the spot.
Kent, your story of the disappearance of being able to hang out/work as a kid at the bowling alley is similar to what has happened with golf. Back in the day kids were able to make some money looping (being a caddie). It could be hard work, but you were outside and met some interesting people. Now with golf carts the need for a kid to carry your bag is gone.
I’m 67, so I’ve lived through the boom years of bowling. Whitestone Lanes was air conditioned, hyper modern, 1962 style, a piece of the future in an old town that had long since become part of NYC, and in every neighboring old suburb there were bowling alleys. All gone now. Like the OP says, it’s a genuine sport, but it didn’t take much exertion, and back then men didn’t go to the gym to work out. Most jobs were physical enough to give you all the exercise you needed.
Out here in Los Angeles, there are a few left. (The ice skating and roller skating rinks that were still around in the ’70s have disappeared.) A chain called Bowlero has taken a couple of them over and tried to remake bowling for the Millennials; really loud music, a live DJ, party-hearty drink service.
At the 1964-65 World’s Fair, AMF (American Machine and Foundry) had a fascinating display, a pin setting machine encased in glass so you could see the intricate mechanism that cleared, lifted, and reset the pins. That was a postwar development; my father still remembered when this was done manually.
Gary, when I started hanging out, there were no automatic pin setters anywhere. I don’t remember when the first ones appeared, but I think I remember they were Brunswicks. AMFs came a little later. At one time or another, I worked in the back keeping both brands of pin setters operating. The first ones jammed easily The first ones that were installed at Casa Venida were Brunswicks.
Enjoyed this post, Kent. My parents bowled in leagues at a place called Timber Lanes and my brother and I always got to have a soft drink and some fries before we were told to go to the kids’ playroom while they bowled. This would’ve been in the ’60s. We weren’t supposed to go tearing around the place, but I don’t remember staying confined in that room for very long. I remember how luxurious the bowling alley was with its miles of plush carpet surrounding the bowling area and the terrazzo floor in the entry. In high school, my best friend was on leagues and I’d go watch her every so often when she’d spotted a cute boy we needed to check out. I bowled on leagues as a young married just to have an activity out of the house, and I later bowled on leagues when I traveled doing contract writing work. I even had my own ball, bag, and shoes. Spiffy! It was a great way to fit in with new co-workers. I wasn’t a great or skilled bowler, but I threw a decent backup with a 12-pound ball when most of the women I bowled with had an 8- or 10-pound ball. Good times!
I know one bowling joke, but it needs to be said out loud, to bowlers: “I know a guy who bowled three-hundred and one. How? Well you can’t bowl three-hundred and lose.”
Dynamite post, Kent!
Growing up in Fountain Valley in the early 80s was truly amazing for a kid. Within walking distance of our house I had my choice of:
I was in heaven. My kids are always very jealous when I tell them about it.
A few years ago I was working on a project in San Diego, and I went to the Chili’s in my hotel’s parking lot for dinner every night. As a result I got to know everyone who worked there.
One of the guys was about my age and grew up in Orange County.
Turns out we’d hung out at the same Malibu Grand Prix on Saturdays for years and probably played each other on Joust and the like many times.
I miss those days.
When I was a little ‘un, My Mom was in a league with Her coworkers. They bowled at Don Carter’s All Star Lanes in Fort Worth. I had to sit and watch those nights, because I guess She could afford bowling, but could not pay anyone to watch Me at Home (and older Brothers didn’t care to). I did get to drink all the ice cold Cokes I wanted with endless maraschino cherries to eat.
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Every year in elementary there were fundraisers. Always having to sell something; it be candy bars, popcorn tins, holiday trinkets, etc. The student that sold the most would win some prize.
I, like 97% of the other kids, would just give the list to Mom and She would take it to work and coerce anyone and everyone to commit to buy something.
We’d return with the sheet after about a week. Jimmy’s got 11, Josh got 17, Sheila got 12….. and there was this one.
Brandi: 119 First Prize!
Every. Single. Year.
Her Mom ran a Brunswick and would make all the league players purchase something before They could play. Man, I hated Her… still hate Her.
My wife hasn’t worked since the kids were born, and I work remotely, so we always skipped those fundraisers (and at a small Lutheran school there were a lot of them) and just wrote a check instead.
The one We got dropped off at had 3 Putt-Putt courses. The 18th hole on one of Them was simply a straight 15′(?) shot to the hole, but the last 5 or 6 feet of it was up a 4 foot hill at 45 degrees. And those idiots aimed that hole at the interstate!
Of course, every single kid that got to that hole teed off with Their putter like They were on the 18th at Pebble Beach. Those balls would launch up that hill, over the fence, and onto the service road with passing cars and all.
Employees would threaten to kick out those Who did it. Kids wouldn’t care. They had a sign made not to do it or else. Kids wouldn’t care. Most of the older teens got close to the highway. My Uncle became sort of local legend for being known as the only one to have made it onto Loop 820 once.
Ours had batting cages and a driving range. It was right next to the 405, but the netting kept all the balls in where they belonged.
Sadly, pretty much all of it is gone now, except the mini golf, bumper boats, and batting cages.
Sad.
This one the courses are different, now.
The two story arcade is gone, but They have bumper boats, cages, and go carts.
Ain’t the same, though.
Nope, not even close.
All of the places on that corner (golf, boats, MGP, roller rink, bowling alley, and Chuck E Cheese) used to be packed on a Saturday night with everything from parents taking their kids out to teens and college students on dates.
Today? Ghost town.
The Putt-Putt here in Albuquerque closed last winter for the last time. Makes me sad. Sure, we’re getting a Topgolf, but that’s not the same, especially for kids.
Ooooh! I forgot the best part…
When I was in 7th grade, the pizza place paid me and my best friend $5 an hour and all the free pizza and Coke we wanted to put flyers on the cars in the parking lot across the street. We didn’t have to talk to anybody or try to sell anything. It was great.
So we’d work a couple of hours on Saturday morning, fill up on pizza and Coke, and then have $15 each to blow on video games for the rest of the weekend.
It was heaven.
My Dad bowled in a league on Thursday nights. If we were finished with our homework, my sister and I would go to the bowling alley with him. We would watch the guys bowl, or sit in the bar with our orange Crush and the bartender would put Batman on the tv for us, or we would play the pinball machine. If there was an empty lane, we would bowl. When we got a little older, we would play pool. To this day I have no idea what my mom did while we were all out having a good time, but she never came with us.
We had a bowling class in high school – we walked to a small bowling alley a few blocks away from the school. I still like to bowl, but I can’t get anyone to go with me.
Gary, I can’t believe you wrote this comment without mentioning the bowling alley Nixon installed in the White House.
We tore down our last bowling alley a few months ago (to make room for a Taco Bell – good luck with that). I used to bowl in a league, and had a great time. Was thinking about picking it up again, but not if I have to drive 20 miles . . .
Stad, league play was the heart of bowling alleys — and their profits. When leagues began to die off, so did bowling alleys. I also bowled in leagues.
Great post Kent. Brought back some memories. When I was a kid on Long Island we had a bowling alley under some of the businesses on Main Street. It was only four or five lanes, a teenager from my block used to work after school to set the pins. I don’t know if it still exists. My wife and I bowled in leagues until they closed the old Naval training base here in Orlando where we bowled. They still have some thriving bowling alleys here where leagues are active. We sometimes go to one near us and have had to wait for one of the sixty lanes due to leagues, birthday parties etc.