Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop 1960s Life-The King Of The Skee Ball World

A Wikipedia entry for skee ball.

By Zack James

 

I have plenty of my own carnival and amusement park stories to tell, and will, but today I am giving my space over to Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king hell king of the North Adamsville schoolboy night and my best friend in those days. Every once in a while these days we connect and rekindle old lies and other assorted tales and some, including this one, just cry out to be twice told.  So here is Frankie straight up, Frankie in his own voice, and his story about how he became a skee addict. The time of this story is just before I linked up with him in middle school after the my family moved across town from Adamsville proper, the old North Adamsville middle school (then called junior high school). Other stories, later stories, I was there as an eye witness so I can trust them, a little anyway, this one though seems kind of well Frankie-like so let him take responsibility for telling it.

Francis Xavier Riley comment:

Walking on tiptoes its seemed, it always seemed, I entered Playland not much of a name by today’s hyped-up standards for any fly-by-night operation but then an enchanted castle in my youthful skinny dreams, at least at night when one did not notice the daytime noticeable missing slats on one of the outside walls or the desperately needed painting, maybe two coats, inside and out, or the angry smell of the refuge left behind by the who spent and lost, like the angry skimpy cheapjack winnings were going to change somebody's whole life around.

Yah, so I entered, my solemn entry, quietly as I eyed (or spied) the doings and adjust my hearing to the ear-splitting sounds of twenty (or more) pinball machines getting plenty of play. Some guy, some older guy, meaning over sixteen and allowed to play the pinball machines that we younger ones could only watch (and wait for our sixteen turn), slender, sleek, slinky girlfriend hanging from his side is on a roll at one of the machines, Madame LaRue’s machine from the look of it. That’s the one with the full-busted, vivacious women (maybe lusty is better, but all of this is mere refection on innocent, or almost innocent dreams) looking back from the point total/games remaining total area (or whatever it is called), urging the player on and on, like they were the prize and not the twenty extra games that you “win” by beating some score. This guy, this guy on a roll is working that old lady of a machine like crazy, this guy is a pro, because he knows just how to sway those hips of his to get his points, and I notice that his sweetie is alternating between looking at that old pinball hitting the banks as it rolls down the chute, and those swaying hips. All this, of course, had only subterranean meaning then, I would get hip to the thing when I had my own sixteen sweetie, and was hoping, hoping against hope that she was checking out my own wobblier swaying hips. Yah, Playland was nothing but sexual tension in the air from the “get-go”, if you knew the signal, that’s what drove rationale guys to place their honor and their manhood on the line for those extra games. But that was later, now it was all chaste, my chaste, and for all I knew we could have been in church.

Sure the place had sex, if you understood that in the widest sense but it also had strictly kids’ stuff, stuff virile eleven and twelve year old boys like me wouldn’t give the time of day to stuff, like stick-a-dime-in-the-machine and “ride” the wild bronco, or donkey, or whatever. Or, get this, put your dimes in the machine to “win” a prize if you can successfully navigate this crane mechanism and hold it long enough to get to the chute that opens up and gives you the prize. Or step on some weight machine and get your fortune ticket, or at another get your name placed on a metal I.D. tag, or farther on get pictures of your favorite cowboy actors, or other favorites by inserting coin in machine. Or, and this is strictly for lamesters, crank out your dough on one of the bubblegum machines. See what I mean, strictly kids’ stuff.

Then I moseyed (yah, that’s what I did, I moseyed, I swear) around the back and be-still my heart I was, in fact, in church because there are the skee ball lanes. Now I have been in any number of amusement parks, carnivals, county fairs, and the like, from back-county fair Freiburg, Maine to New York's Coney Island to the California Santa Monica pier, and sometimes it is called skee ball and in other places it is called skeet ball. Hey, they are both the same. At least every place that I have ever been, under either name they have had the same set-up. You don’t know skee ball? Seriously? No, sure you do. It’s kind of like bowling, poor man’s bowling, I guess. You put your dime (at the time) in and down a chute come ten small wooden (sometimes ceramic) balls. That’s the bowling-like part. The lane is tilted up with a bump barrier that leads into a bulls-eye type target area made up of different values (10, 20, 30, 50, obviously the higher the value the harder the shot) and you have to get your hand-held small ball into the hole to score points. The more points the bigger the prize (at some point), although you need very high point totals to win anything beyond gee-gads. What this game is though, and this is probably the first attraction reason why I fell, and fell hard for the game, was beyond a certain degree of eye-hand coordination you can be an un-coordinated, clumsy, hit your head on everything, stumble on everything kind of boy and still do pretty well.

Yah, sure, that sure-fire, low-level skill idea may have been the first reason, maybe, that I fell for skee ball, but think about it, I was an eleven year old boy and while sex, eleven year old ideas about it anyway, were not uppermost in my mind, and I didn’t then quite have it figured about girls, or rather about their charms overcoming their incessant giggles, their scent, that bath soap fresh scent, was in the air. So, maybe, I would have played a few games here and there, and dropped it as too easy, too kids’ stuff, or too boring like me and every other kid did with lots of things, and moved on to, oh, archery, let’s say. But you know there has to be a woman, or really a girl, come into this story somewhere, else why bother to tell the story in the first place. There is plenty about carnivals and amusement parks to describe without bringing women in, right? And certainly no one is going to hold their breath for more than six seconds over the mysteries of skee ball, straight up. At least I hope that‘s the case.

Okay, to the story. Yah, it was a dame, a dame, well, maybe, a mini-dame let’s say that led me to a life of skees. And it wasn’t intentional, or at least I don’t think so, but reflecting back on it now you never know. See, after a while, whenever we went to Playland, or rather to the beach where Playland was, I bowed out of going on rides, playing the odd-ball carny-type games like putting a quarter down on a number and have some barker spin a wheel for fame and fortune or trying to hit milk bottles to win a prize, or throwing darts at balloons, or, well, you get it, I was single-mindedly devoted to skees. After six or seven times I got good at it, or at least figured out the torque angle on the thing that got you to the bigger point circles in the target area. Yah, yah, I know this is not rocket science or even close but it was a small victory to an awkward-gaited kid.

Now skee then, and now too probably, is not exactly a game that world-beating pinball wizards (or video game masters-of-the-universe today) would even give an off-hand tumble. Nor would girls who were crazy for pinball wizard guys, with their swaying hips and all. But, maybe, just maybe, kind of awkward, wayward eleven or twelve year old girls might, mightn’t they? Well, that idea, that possibility is what drives this story. I was minding my own skee business when this twist (girl, although I didn’t call them twists then that came later when I became king of the corner boy schoolboy night and had to keep things snappy to keep guys like Zack and Markin amused, just girls) came up to a skee lane a couple of lanes over (no waiting in skee-world), put her money in and starts playing. I don’t know exactly which one it was but either on her second or third roll she went “crazy” and rolled the ball so hard that it bounced over into my lane. Naturally, skee master of the universe that I was got miffed, no more than miffed. She came over to apologize and I could see that she really was sorry-so what are you going to do, right?

Now in the universe of female beauty, even eleven or twelve year old female beauty, this girl, this Mary Beth when she told me her name later, was nothing but middling, and that may be giving her the best of it. But here is the thing and I picked up on it right when she came over to offer her apologies, she had this very winning, very winning smile. Well, like I said what are you going to do. Obviously this maiden in distress needed a little help in the skee department and before I could offer her some tips she boldly asked me if couldn’t, pretty please, pretty please, please help her with her game. Well, yah, what are you going to do, right.

So naturally we go back to her lane and, after showing her one of my moves on the target, I got behind her a little to show her the right way to do it. Whee! I probably had been closer to a girl before, dancing, or some quick-artist petting party kiss thing but this was the first time that I seriously noticed that girls had curves, curves that kind of fit nicely together. And she noticed that I noticed too because she did not back away, or anything like that. But, come on now, I was a serious skee man and so after showing her the ropes I excused myself, and head back to my own lane. A couple of minutes later after she had finished her game she came over to my lane and offered me her coupons (these coupons automatically came up after your game and gave you the appropriate amount based on your score. You later redeemed them for prizes, etc.) and said that she wouldn’t be using them. And, get this, she also said, and I give an exact quote here, “Wasn’t it too bad that I couldn’t be good enough at skee like you to win a prize and go home happy.”

Yah, I know, I know, I know now the oldest trick in the book. But then, well I did try to help her with her game and maybe she could learn something by watching me, and she had those curves and all. So naturally, I was compelled to win a little trinket for her. And so I was off to do battle. I will say having sweet Mary Beth at my side inspired me and I scored pretty, pretty well. Well, enough in skee world language to win her a lucky rabbit’s foot key chain. Pretty good, right. She thought so, and was so delighted by her prize that she said she would keep it forever and wouldn’t I like to go for a walk down to the sea wall and talk. Well, she had my head spinning, for sure, but like I said before I was eleven and didn’t have the girl thing, the girl charm thing, quite figured out then. I said I needed to keep playing to hone my skills but maybe some other time. She said yes, in a voice a little hurt now that I think about it, some other time.

 

I went to those skee lanes plenty of times later when I wised up about girls and their charms, hoping, looking to see an awkward girl with curves and a rabbit’s foot key chain dangle named Mary Beth but I never saw her again. But maybe, just maybe, that is why I still roll  skee.