Rolling Thunder Review
Plus, ancestors, artists, crazy pols, and an enchanting clarinetist
Dear Readers,
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to tour this fractious and troubled country, stopping in at historic bowling alleys, large or small, urban or rural, with ecumenical attention to tenpin, candlepin, duckpin, and even the few remaining nine-pin clubs that German immigrants set up generations ago in Central Texas?
No? Well, I wonder about it all the time.
Every once in a while I venture out, not knowing exactly what I’m looking for. This summer I guess it was reconnaissance. The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) launched its first-ever national tournament for league bowlers at the Bowlero in Wauwatosa, just west of Milwaukee. The back story is that for many years, the United States Bowling Congress has cornered this action, usually holding their U.S. Open tournament in Las Vegas or Reno, Nevada. Now the PBA is beginning to sponsor amateur leagues and wants to show it can bring new energy to bowling. New business, too, since the PBA was purchased in 2019 by the Bowlero Corp.1
I say “reconnaissance” because of this pressing question: If I were to take up league bowling again, should I plan to compete in this tournament next summer? I’m not deadset against experiencing the spectacle of Las Vegas at least once in my life (I’ve never been there, nor to the National Bowling Stadium2 in Reno). But for me, it’s a lot more appealing to visit Wisconsin.
And I liked the vibe at Wauwatosa. When I got to the Bowlero on a Sunday afternoon in early July, I found things in full swing. This large venue with seventy-two lanes was hosting three tournaments at the same time. There was the PBA’s League Bowler Championship (LBC), but in a separate wing there were sixteen lanes devoted to the Petersen Classic, and another six lanes for the Lumberjack Challenge, a nine-pin “no-tap” contest, where nine pins knocked down counts as a strike.3
The Petersen Classic is something to behold! A sportswriter once called it “America’s most preposterous bowling tournament.” For years and years, it attracted hardy bowlers to a shabby establishment on Chicago’s near southwest side, at 35th and Archer. As George Walsh described it in a Sports Illustrated story in 1961,
This fantastic tournament was founded in 1921 by a genial reactionary named Louis Petersen. He envisioned the Classic as revealing, not how high a man could score, but how well he could bowl under adverse conditions. Toward this end, he lavished oil on the alleys, mixed heavy pins with light pins, and occasionally (so the legend goes) sent a pigeon gliding across the approaches. Sometimes Petersen would stop play to congratulate a hot bowler. By the time he finished talking, the man's game had generally turned cold as the wind off Lake Michigan.
In 1993, the old Petersen alley was damaged by torrential rain and had to be shut down. The tournament was moved to Hoffman Lanes in the northwestern Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates. The new place made every effort to replicate the notoriously difficult lane conditions. When the tournament moved again in 2021, its hundredth year, to the Bowlero in Wauwatosa, the tradition continued. I didn’t see any pigeons flutter across the approach when I was there, but I was told that contestants bowl eight games over eight lanes and each lane has a different oil pattern. Bowlers are only allowed to bring two bowling balls, and there are no warm-ups. Who knows what kind of irregular pins they might have added to the mix. I spoke with a young guy who had traveled from Marlborough, Massachusetts. He said he averages about 240 in his league at home. In the Petersen he was coming in around 175.
We don’t know the winner of the Pete yet—this is a rolling tournament that starts at the end of April and goes through September 3. The current leader has an eight-game total of 1656, which computes to a 207 average. By contrast, the top bowler in the PBA’s LBC National Championship4 right next to the Petersen compiled a 254 average.5 It’s all about the lane conditions, folks!
Reader Reactions
In a recent newsletter about the Civil War sword I brought back from Wisconsin, I published a photograph of my ancestor Capt. Joseph Denison, taken in 1863 when he was 31. I was surprised by how many readers claimed to see a family resemblance from four generations ago.
One reader said it was “uncanny how much you resemble Captain Joseph Denison.” Another said “good god you are the spittin image of old Joe.” An ol’ friend in Texas commented that this great-great-grandfather “looks exactly like Dave Denison dressed as a re-enactor.” From my brother-in-law: “Did you rent that uniform? And the facial hair? … That man has your personality in his facial expression.”
But my sister said that the photograph reminded her of her own youngest son, who had that same facial expression, she said, when he schooled a bunch of local kids down at the pool hall. (Public-service warning that this neph has become a pool shark.)
That would take the resemblance into the fifth generation. It makes me think of the time a former colleague at a social event looked us both over and then told my nephew that he looked a lot like me, and then, as I was standing right there, immediately apologized to him in case he was offended. Without missing a beat, my nephew smoothly said he took it as a compliment.
But Enough About Me . . .
It’s time to highlight the work of some truly talented people making their way in this mean ol’ world. For example, on Friday, September 1, there will be an opening at the Alden Gallery in Provincetown, Mass., for this exceptional painter.
Crazy Politicians
My friend and former colleague Scott Stossel got me to pondering again: What must it have been like for the shrinks of America after Trump’s improbable rise to power in 2016? As so many of us watched in disbelief during his time in the White House, the question that wouldn’t go away was: What the hell is wrong with this man? Well, a lot of psychologists schooled in the variations of personality disorders probably had plausible answers. But most of them kept it to themselves. Ever since they got in trouble for speaking out against Barry Goldwater in 1964 (he was called “schizophrenic” and “psychotic”) the profession has insisted on “the Goldwater Rule,” i.e., don’t claim to diagnose someone you’ve not had as a patient.
I enjoyed this conversation in which Scott spoke to Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac, who has written a novel called Death of the Great Man. The story is about a toxic populist American president who is found dead on the couch of his psychiatrist. The departed president is noticeably Trumplike. And the psychiatrist is notably Peter Kramerlike. The question the author toys with is what it would be like to attempt to treat someone like Trump. He skirts the Goldwater Rule by imagining a fictional character known only as the Great Man, who ends up in therapy.
Scott mentions an argument made by Columbia psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman in 2018 that it’s quite possible that Trump “simply has certain personal qualities we don’t find ideal in a leader, like being a narcissistic bully who lacks basic civility and common courtesies. That he is, in a word, a jerk.” But not mentally ill. It’s clear Kramer doesn’t buy that. He suggests there was some kind of “loose paranoia” in the Great Man, a variety of delusional disorder.
I think diagnosis is very helpful. But personality disorders—that is, borderline personality, sociopathy, or paranoia, the kinds of diagnoses that were debated with regard to Trump—were never something where I’ve found the particulars that useful. Patients don’t necessarily stick with one personality-disorder diagnosis—they can have one and a year later have another, or the diagnosis can even disappear, and they end up with just depression or drug abuse or something, and don’t have the personality disorder. It’s not a very stable diagnosis.
Well, maybe sportswriter David Roth got it right in the very beginning. He made the case in The Baffler on August 22, 2017 that Trump is the quintessential American asshole, New York variety. He predicted that he would never get better as a president or a person. That’s a pretty good diagnosis right there.
Crazy-Talking Politicians
If Joe Biden starts glitching in public the way Mitch McConnell has been doing (like, is Mitch having transient ischemic attacks?) then what? Will our nation turn its lonely eyes to Kamala? It is surely true that Kamala Harris’s public performances are somewhat less weird when they are not edited down to video clips that show her at her most inarticulate or cackley moments. But hoo-boy does she have some moments. I think this little piece of satire went out there without stirring up the K-Hive, but I was struck by how well Substacker Phil Christman caught her unusual rhetorical stylings. I guess the whole thing is available only to paid subscribers, but here’s an excerpt of “Kamala Harris Orders a Sandwich”:
I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that as it relates to bread, and as it relates to what we need to do in terms of containing the ingredients of the sandwich, we know that there are things and tools that are available to us to contain those ingredients.
Let’s be clear. Gluten allergy is real in this country. Wheat allergy is real in this country. I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices. For too long, we’d been told there were only two options: wheat or white. You can believe in the need for ingredient containment and also oppose excessive carbs. Today, for America and for the future, because it is the time that it is, I believe that the time is when we will have a lettuce wrap. . . .
The little dollop of horseradish sauce, right? The little dollop of horseradish sauce. So when you think about it, there is just a little dollop of horseradish sauce.
The ingredients must work together. Work together. To see where we are. Where we are headed, where we are going and our vision for where we should be.
No salt and pepper. [Bizarre, inappropriate laughter]
Rocchenroll and Baisiboll
I came across this video a while ago and it knocked my socks off. Here is a band formed by Hetty Loxton of London, with her childhood friend Charlotte Jolly on the clarinet, and three Italian musicians backing them up. It’s a charming rendition of Napolitano Renato Carosone’s 1956 hit song about youth in Naples who were “acting all American.”
You’re dancing rock and roll,
and playing baseball,
but where’d you get the money
for the Camel cigarettes? Mummy’s purse!
The PBA was founded in 1958 by Eddie Elias and was based in Akron, Ohio, until it was purchased in 2000 by three wealthy Microsoft executives, who helped modernize the operations before selling the league to Bowlero Corp.
The National Bowling Stadium in Reno was where they shot the iconic scene in the 1996 movie Kingpin, in which Roy Munson goes head-to-head with Ernie McCracken and his feral combover.
My above-average bowling friend Al once rolled a perfect game on a no-tap night at the old place out on the Concord Turnpike. That is, he strung together a bunch of legit strikes with a bunch of nines.
There were six divisions in the LBC tournament, which included amateurs bowling with handicapped scores, and pros bowling scratch. The leaders of each division will meet for a televised competition on October 1—at Bayside Bowl in Portland, Maine!
The prize for first place in that division was $25,000.
I'm pretty sure you rolled out another fantastic edition of Dots and Arrows, DD, but as I was watching that video you posted at the end, all your carefully chosen words went poof. "Whiskey and soda, rock and roll!"