Bataan Duckpin Bowling Lanes

Hometowns

I was around 8 years old when memories of the rather humid bowling lanes at the end of the small but buzzing commercial district of my childhood neighborhood started to etch itself into my memory. The lanes were always filled with much older elementary students who were tired of swimming in the pool just behind the lanes and mothers with their toddlers, some as old as I, always took their break here from their afternoon tennis sessions and household chores.

The lanes always had that loud rumble that led me to believe that thunders were caused by the gods playing bowling and as I basked in the playground between the pool and the bowling lanes, the sun sank its way behind the nuclear powerplant just across the bay but almost always, you'd hear it say goodbye.

As I now return to my hometown, the lanes are silent, the pool has only the wind to break its surface and weeds and vines are the only thing that visit the playground. The sun still sinks behind the mothballed powerplant across the bay but now it looks away in anger, like a friend you haven't talked to for years.