When I was in 6th grade we lived in the “Frog Town” part of Wabeno. This was a small street that bordered the Oconto River than runs through Wabeno. My uncle, Mitchell Neuville, owned his home there. My aunt Josie had died recently and Mitchell rented the 1st floor of the house to my mom. At the other end of town was my uncle Curt’s Chevrolet dealership. Across the street from it was the Green Lantern Bar. Typical of many bars in Wisconsin at that time, there was a small bowling alley in an adjacent room. There were, if my memory serves me correctly, only 4 bowling lanes there.
It was summer vacation and I had been down at Range Line Creek near the Green Lantern and had wandered in to the bowling alley to see if I could pick up some pocket change setting pins. I had done this once or twice before and had been rewarded by the bowlers with a quarter or two for setting their pins. In those days a quarter was all I needed to see a double bill at the movie theater and get a bag of popcorn too.
The way that pins were set was totally manual. At the end of the lane, between the gutters there was a machine with openings for each of the pins. After putting a pin in each of the openings I would jump up on and pull down with all of my strength a lever at the rear of this device. This would lower the device and stand the pins up on their proper position. Releasing this lever would cause the machine to return to its raised position and would be the signal to the bowler that they could now throw the next bowling ball. There was a small pit in back of the machine that would receive the pins that the bowler hit with the ball they threw. The ball also landed in this little pit. Adjacent to the pit was a raised platform for the pin setter to jump up on, lift their legs out of the way before the next ball arrived and pins were hit with a resounding crash. Occasionally a pin would ricochet off of the side of the pit and bounce up and hit the pin setter. Bruises were a frequent occupational hazard.
On this day, Abe Estreen came in with some friends and he asked me to set pins for them. There were 4 people, so I worked two lanes, jumping back and forth to set the pins. They came in early in the afternoon and bowled and bowled and drank and drank. Abe was a huge man and his hands were so big that he put his thumb in the thumb hole of a ball and then wrapped his hand around the ball without using the finger holes. When a ball he threw arrived, pins flew everywhere. The more alcohol he drank the harder he would throw the ball. He even cracked a pin in two and I had to replace it with a new one. Every so often at the end of a game he or another of his people would put a dollar bill in the thumb hole of a ball and roll it down the gutter and that would be my tip. The last time they did that there were 2 balls each with a $5 bill in the thumb hole. I was in heaven, I had earned exactly $20! Exhausted, I looked at the clock and it was after 8pm at night and I was hours overdue at home.
Oh boy! I feared I was in trouble with my mom. But then I remembered “money”. I exchanged all of the bills the bowlers had given me for a $20 bill and headed home. When I got to the front porch I took the $20 and held it in my hand so it was easy to see and extended my arm completely in front of me. Two more steps and mom was at the door with a ferocious look on her face. But her view of me was almost completely blocked by the $20 bill. I said, “I was setting pins at the Green Lantern for Abe Estreen”. Then her expression eased and she opened the door took the money and said “go wash up and I will fix dinner for you”. What a relief – she didn’t toss me across the room!
I later learned that the $20 I had earned was equal to a weeks wages for her. No wonder I was greeted so warmly.
