My Mom, the Bowler

My Mom, enjoying her favorite hobby: bowling. (Photo colorized with MyHeritage photo tools.)

 

 

My Mom, Ann Kozlina Gilbride, loved to bowl. Her only break from us kids growing up was belonging to a bowling league in the evening one night a week for a few years. My Aunt Marian tells me it was Wednesday nights at 9:30 p.m., as she belonged to the same team and league as my Mom, in the early 1970s.

 

Our Grandma Margaret Kozlina came to watch the four kids on those nights. Grandma didn't drive or have a car, so she rode the bus that ran the Lakeshore Blvd. route from her home in Cleveland to the E. 288th stop in Willowick by the Cabin Restaurant and walked the rest of the way to our house. We loved Grandma's visits and eagerly looked out our front door window to see when she turned the corner of Blissfield Drive, and then went to meet her halfway down the street. 

 

After dinner, Mom packed up her avocado-green bowling bag, with her 13 lb. green swirl bowling ball (don't ask me why I remember how much it weighed), and her tan bowling shoes with the brown laces. And off she'd go.

I can't believe I found an image of the same bag that Mom had!

 

As I was asleep when she got home, the next day I loved to hear how she did bowling. And as I recall, she was a pretty good bowler. It was from her I learned such bowling terms as a "split," "spare," and the fun one: "turkey." I remember learning that bowling over 100 was a good score, and sometimes she might bowl 120 or 130. Impressive, at least to me. 

I'm not sure the photo's origin. Mom was certainly younger in this than when we were kids and she joined that local league. I wonder if this photo was from her high school days in the late 1950s or maybe after high school but before she got married in 1959. It's an 8" x 10" photo, which leads me to think maybe it was in a news publication—high school newspaper, employee bulletin?

 

Eventually Mom gave up the bowling league. I'm not exactly sure why. She did work a very long work week, sometimes as long as 50-60 hours in regular hours and overtime. And there were a few times that she worked the 2nd or 3rd shift, so that would have made bowling in the evenings difficult if not impossible. It could also be that as her kids grew we had too much going on to afford her a night out once a week. Or her scoliosis might have also slowed down her bowling days as it progressed over time.

 

She passed on her bowling influence to her kids. My older brother and I did after-school bowling for a few years when we were in elementary school. And both my brothers worked in the Wickliffe bowling alley when they were teens. Bowling has been a fun activity to share with my own family over the years.

I'm glad that Mom had that small respite from raising four crazy kids, and even more glad that I have this photographic memory of her enjoying herself.

Until next time...

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