just follow the cat

Part 1 - Bowling in Baltimore

Bowling in Baltimore. Specifically, that means duckpin bowling where the balls are smaller and the pins are smaller and fatter. Unlike ten pin bowling, no one has ever rolled a perfect game of duckpins. It is a sport where players range from very bad to decidedly mediocre and thus it parallels much of life around us.

In the early days of television, stations needed shows to fill time not offered by the networks. Duckpin bowling shows became popular in Baltimore. One of these shows involved kids competing in a four-frame contest. The show was called Pinbusters and the host was Sam Wilson. Though some girls and boys got so nervous that they bowled terribly, Mr. Wilson always had a kind word for them. "Take your time, son" or "That's how to do it, hon." Actually, it wasn't so much the words he used as his reassuring tone. When the result of the contest was certain, he'd call the kids up to the microphone with a comment like, "That's it! We have a champion."

Sam Wilson was also locally famous for naming some of the more difficult spare combinations in duckpins. If you left the 5 and 10 pins, he'd call it the Dime Store Split. The dreaded 7 – 10 combination was called the Goal Posts. If you had the 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9, Mr. Wilson called it The Basket with a Handle. But the worst of all was the 5, 7, and 10 or what he referred to as The Faith, Hope, and Charity. Never once did anyone convert that spare. No child. And no adult. Because unending Faith, unlimited Hope, and unrequited Charity are simply impossible to touch all at once.

But watching the faces of the kids when they realized that they'd have to convert The Faith, Hope and Charity just to stay in a contest was awful. It seemed so unfair. After all, it was impossible to have any faith – faith that this child or any child could win a match when the chances of succeeding were so infinitesimally small. There was no hope either. And even though every kid knew it, they still tried to do the impossible. Many of them even hopped in the air as the ball approached the pins. But the most certain of all certainties was that there was no charity. The winner was the winner and no one ever gave up their trophy. You could cross your fingers, rub a rabbit's foot, knock on wood, or flip every horseshoe upright and it wouldn't matter. The winner was the winner.

So someday in the future when all of us sleep our final sleep, we hope to imagine a ball rolling toward those three pins. We will see it lightly kiss the left half of the 5 pin and careen toward the corner knocking over the 7 just as the tumbling 5 pin undercuts and knocks over the 10.

In our personal fairy tale, this vision will be good enough. Good enough to bring faith to the faithless, hope to the hopeless, and charity to the forgotten.

                                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                     the Good Citizens of Baltimore