Sunthing Special

I don’t know about other parts of the country, but growing up in a suburb of Cleveland meant you grew up going to a bowling alley. Everyone’s parents were on at least one league and you were encouraged to learn as well. Alleys were smoky, there were no bumpers to prevent your balls from going in the gutter, and you had to keep score with a pencil, a knowledge of scoring, and a basic ability to add. Needless to say, things have changed! If you want your kids to experience the modern age of bowling for a moderate price, go to Legend Lanes (formerly North Lanes) on State Road in Cuyahoga Falls. On Sunday mornings from 9 to noon, it costs just $1 a game, and from 1 p.m. to close, you only pay a penny a pin. But don’t go around 2:30 on a Sunday if you want one of the 16 lanes with bumpers. We waited for 53 minutes. Yikes! By 4 p.m. they were pretty much all empty, so that’s probably a good time to go. It is a bit odd playing in a lane that has bumpers. If it weren’t for the bumpers, I don’t know if my son and daughter would have knocked any of the pins down (they were throwing/dropping the balls in slow motion like they do in the comics). And I felt like I was cheating when I threw what would have been a gutter ball and it richocheted off the bumper and knocked down nine pins instead. Still, it’s more fun to knock down pins than not whether you’re an adult or a kid! And it is nice to not get all that secondhand smoke and have the computer do all the scoring for you. So if you haven’t been bowling since you were a kid, you might want to give it a try!