Nine Pin Bowling

from the May issue of Texas Coop Power (click on the headline for the whole PDF file)






STILL STANDING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

BY JOE NICK PATOSKI
PHOTOS BY WYATT McSPADDEN

IT’S SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE Fischer Bowling Club, a humble building
beneath shady oaks on a two-lane county road in the Hill Country with a
red-wood storefront exterior made distinctive by eight white bowling pins
arranged in a circle on the wall around a red pin in the middle.

Inside, it feels like a long time ago. Four teams of bowlers are keeping the
pin boys at the end of the alley under the Willkommen zum Fischer sign busy, setting up a new diamond-shaped rack of pins whenever all the old rack of pins are all knocked down, or the red pin in the middle, also known as the kingpin, is the only one left standing.
The bowlers sit in the rooster benches—as the three rows of bleachers are called—waiting their turn to roll, exchanging pleasantries and small talk, while the team captain records the team scores on the chalkboard by the side of the lanes and calls up the next team bowler. After rolling balls and knocking down pins for a while, on cue, everyone takes a break, with half of the bowlers going outside to stretch and the other half heading to the bar, popping open $1.50 beers and 50-cent sodas, keeping tabs on the honor system, firing up the jukebox or flipping through the pages of the bowling club scrapbook on the counter while three kids scamper beneath them. After a few minutes’ respite, a petite, gray-haired lady blows a whistle, and
everyone goes back to bowling.

Step inside any of the 19 ninepin bowling clubs clustered around Comal,Bexar and Guadalupe counties, and step into Texas as it used to be. Ninepin bowling is one of the last Old World traditions that Germans brought with them when they settled a broad, fertile swath of Central and South-Central Texas in the mid-to-late 18th century. Ninepins were the most popular form of bowling in the early United States, but since the 1930s, when the game was outlawed in several states for its associations with gambling and other shady activities, Texas has been the only place
where ninepins remains popular.Tenpin bowling replaced ninepin, and its popularity was sealed in the 1950s when pinsetters were automated.

But ninepin, along with the kids who “set ’em up,” never lost favor in Texas.
Today, the tri-county ninepin clubs are the last place in America where bowling
is done like this. Ninepin bowling has a direct connection to a time when social clubs functioned as community centers for German immigrant farmers and others
working the fields. It was often the only social option outside the church.
Annual memberships under $25, a night of bowling for about $6 and beers under $2 are reminders of how fun used to be a whole lot cheaper and simpler. All one needs to do is commit to bowl one or two nights a week and (for the better bowlers) be willing to travel to “roll-offs” against other clubs.

The functional exteriors of the buildings,ranging from cinder block to limestone to modern metal siding; their lowfrills,full-service interiors with tables, chairs, ballrooms, bar and jukebox; and their locations at the edge of cultivated farmland, at crossroads or in oak-canopied oases, are testament to the industriousness and values of the clubs’ founders. The current members, who revel in the old ways despite encroaching cities and suburbs, are testament to the staying power of ninepins.

The specter of the Target sign hovering above the horizon marking yet another power-center mall going up within eyeshot of the Freiheit Bowling Club in New Braunfels does not diminish what the club and the corrugated tin-sided Freiheit Country Store next door symbolize. In the here and now,ninepin bowling clubs not only still
function as they were intended to when they were established more than a century
ago, they’re cool. You don’t have to bowl or even go inside to appreciate nuances such as the sign out front of Solms Bowling Club, just south of New Braunfels and
just west of Interstate 35, that spells out “Solms Bowling Club 100 Years” in
horseshoes. For all the intrusions thatso-called progress brings, most bowling
clubs have enough land for barbecue pits, shaded pavilions and horseshoes
on the side or around back to get away from it all.





One such example is the eight-lane Mission Valley Bowling Club west of
New Braunfels at the crossroads of State Highway 46 and FM 1863. The newbie
of ninepin clubs, established in 1943, it remains a surviving slice of countryside
in a rapidly developing area. Similarly, it may take some rooting around to find
the Bulverde Community Center Bowling Club behind the Bulverde Community
Center and next to a school on Ammann Road. Even the Spring Branch Bowling Club on busy U.S. Highway 281 conveys that feeling of refuge. Go around back where the pit and pavilion await under a thicket of oaks, and it still feels like country.

The presence of a ninepin bowling club means a drinking establishment or dance hall is in close proximity, often as not. The Bexar and Germania bowling clubs outside Loop 1604 east of San Antonio are within walking distance of the Double Ringer Lounge (known locally as “Teddy’s”) at the crossroads of Zuehl as well as a public shooting range. The Barbarossa, Bracken and Freiheit bowling clubs are all adjacent
to classic beer joints. The 120-year-old Freiheit country store and dance hall has a rep for its griddle-cooked hamburgers, shuffleboard, jukebox and a sign out front that says, “Gun Owners Parking Only, Violators Will Be Shot.” The Fischer Bowling Club, operated by the Agricultural Society of Fischer, which dates back to the 1870s, is adjacent to a 100-year-old dance hall also operated by the society that is available for private functions. The six-lane Blanco Bowling Club is most famous for the Blanco Bowling Club Café in front of the alleys, world-renowned for its
truckstop enchiladas and lemon and chocolate meringue pies.

People are perhaps the most crucial ingredient of all that makes ninepin what it is. There’s a lilt in the accents of many bowlers who act like they’ve known each other since they were kids. This may well be the case, since some bowlers go back three or four generations. Listen close, and what you thought was pronounced “bear” for
Bexar is referred to as “becks-are” by ninepin bowlers.

Folks at one club seem to know folks at other clubs, as was the case with Kendra, who ran the Freiheit Country Store next to the Freiheit Bowling Club, who said to say hi to Alvin Seiler at the Barbarossa Trough next to the Barbarossa Bowling Club; and with Sharon Coker, the manager at the Laubach Bowling Club, who showed off the bowling pin-themed curtains she redid and gave a brief history of the club founded by the San Geronimo Harmonie as Dean Martin crooned “That’s Amore” on the jukebox. She reckoned that the bowlers in Marion were tougher competitors to go up against in a roll-off than the bowlers over at the Bexar, Germania and Cibolo bowling clubs.

As long as there are good people like Coker, the balls roll, and the pins are reset manually (don’t forget to tip your pinsetter), ninepin remains the only way to bowl in at least one part of Texas that’s like nowhere else in the world.


















THE CLUBS
Barbarossa Bowling Club, 4007 FM 758
(between Zorn and New Braunfels), New Braunfels,
(830) 625–2034
Bexar Bowling Alley & Social Hall, 15681 Bexar
Bowling Club Road, Marion (1.5 miles south of
Interstate 10 off Trainer Hale Road, east of San
Antonio), (830) 420-2512
Blanco Bowling Club, 310 Fourth St., Blanco,
(830) 833-4416
Bracken Bowling Club, 18397 Bracken Drive
(off FM 2252, north of Evans Road), Bracken,
(210) 651-6941
Bulverde Community Center Bowling Club,
1747 E. Ammann Road (west of Bulverde Road and
FM 1863), Bulverde, (830) 438-3065 www.bul
verdebowlingclub.com
Cibolo Bowling Club, 601 N. Main St. (north of
FM 78), Cibolo, (210) 658-2248
Fischer Bowling Club, Fischer Store Road (off
Ranch Road 32), Fischer, (830) 935-4800
Freiheit Bowling Club, 2145 FM 1101 (at FM 483,
1 mile east of Interstate 35), New Braunfels, (830)
625-0372
Germania Bowling Club, 1826 Zuehl Road,
Zuehl (near Bowling Club Road, 1.5 miles south of
Interstate 10 off Trainer Hale Road, east of San
Antonio), (830) 420-2675
Highland Social Club, 2929 S. W.W. White Road,
San Antonio, (210) 333-4567
Laubach Bowling Club, 1986 Laubach Road,
(1.5 miles east of State Highway 123), Seguin,
(830) 379-9033
Marion Bowling Club, 111 W. Krueger (north of
the railroad tracks by the Catholic church),
Marion, (830) 420-2205
Martinez Social Club, 7791 Saint Hedwig Road
(at FM 1516), San Antonio, (210) 661-2422
Mission Valley Bowling Club, 2311 W. State
Highway 46, New Braunfels, (830) 629–0028
Rogers Ranch Bowling Club, 1651 Rogers
Ranch Road (County Road 223 off FM 2001, 1.5
miles east of State Highway 21 between Lockhart
and Niederwald), Lockhart, (512) 398-2809
Solms Bowling Club, 175 N. Solms Road (1 mile
west of Interstate 35), New Braunfels, (830) 608–
9691
Spring Branch Bowling Club, 12830 U.S.
Highway 281 (less than a mile south of FM 306),
Spring Branch, (830) 885-4611
Turner Bowling Club, 120 Ninth St., San Antonio,
(210) 227-4412, www.turnerclub.org
Zorn Bowling Club, 12000 State Highway 1