Rohman’s Pub
103 Rohmans Rd., Shinola, PA
My son Jack loves to bowl. He’s eight now and we’ve been doing it for as long as he’s been able to pick up a ball and toss it towards the pins. The ball would creep ever so slowly down the alley, I used to think that it may just stop before it reached the target, but it always made it. Slowly rolling into the pins that fell, reluctantly, sometimes only one or two falling and other times a slow-motion chain-reaction would topple the lot of them.
But what he likes much more than bowling is the automated mechanisms that reset the pins and send the ball back to us. To this day, he still watches for the ball to whip by that little window at the end of the alley, where you can catch a glimpse of it, for a split second at the beginning of its journey back to the machine that coughs it up for us to grab it and fling it down the lane again, repeating the process in an endless loop.
Like all 21st Century kids, he loves watching videos and back when he was first introduced to bowling, we would watch these “behind the scenes” videos of what goes on back behind that gate that scrapes the upended pins back into that pit, from where they magically appear a few seconds later, ready to be struck down again. Like all boys and the men they become, he’s fascinated with mechanical things and their processes and in the age of YouTube, there’s endless fodder for consumption.
One day we came across a video of one of the last remaining bowling alleys in America (maybe, the world?) with the old-fashioned system of self-setting pins, as in, you set the pins yourself. But, you don’t just set the pins on little arranged printed circles, at the end of the lane there is a pedal that, when depressed, allows 10 pencil-sized pins to rise out of holes a few inches to ensure that one places the pins exactly into the proper place. When the pedal is released, they sink back down into the lane, freeing the pins for the impending collision.
I was curious where the place was. I Googled it and found the town: Shinola, PA and after checking the map, I found that it was not far, about an hour from our Hudson Valley home in Cornwall, NY. I told Jack, “That’s great, it’s not far, we’ll have to check that place out soon!”
That was like 4 years ago.
Last weekend my friend James asked if I’d accompany him to a little town in rural PA, “about an hour away” I thought about it.
“Well I have Jack, he’ll have to come.”
Then a lightbulb went off…hmmm rural PA, about an hour away…what was it that I wanted to…oh yeah! That fucking antique bowling alley!
It was perfect. Kids don’t typically like long car trips and this would certainly sweeten the pot. With his razor-sharp memory engaged, he instantly remembered the video, so it was on. We were doing this! So after taking care of what we needed to do, we checked the map and headed to Shihola. It was one, 11-mile-long, windy road through a mountainous, snow covered landscape of lakes and summer bungalows. Beautiful, really. I was looking forward to a cute little Main Street with its old 1848 pub at the center, flanked by mom and pop stores and other small-town staples. As we approached our destination, I looked at the GPS.
“Is this right? Says we’re one minute away and I don’t see shit around here.”
“I dunno let’s see.”
As my car rounded a muddy, dirt road, a structure finally came into view. It was a pub alright, in the middle of friggin nowhere, surrounded by mud puddles, so large that they should have been mapped and named. Not that this was a bad thing, just not what I was expecting. We found a place in the mud to park and scrambled past the regulars, who were cackling and smoking outside the front door. I knew this was a really, old bar, but, wow. It was a sight. Beautiful, old, wood everywhere shellacked with a heavy patina of cigarette smoke from years past. Tin ceilings and an enormous wood-burning stove occupied a prominent space, despite the radiators that lined every wall. Several dart boards and their accompanying chalk boards, a pool table and even an old cigarette machine, something I haven’t seen in a long time. The individual bar “stools” were spring-loaded, heavy metal contraptions that folded out from under the bar and kept in place by asses connected to happy beer-swilling patrons, they automatically tucked themselves away when not in use. A beautiful example of the genius of a by-gone era.
A cute bartender explained the bowling situation. I grabbed a beer, paid and she led us up the stairs. Photos adorned the walls of happy, drunk people of the distant and not-so-distant past, engaged in all sorts of fun things. Many showcased some kinda back-woods, inebriated, winter olympics that made me wish I was there. Think winter variations of say… the three-legged race, sack races, tug-of-war, things of that nature, only with snow and lots of beer. I think there were residents on these upper floors, the building laid out like an Inn. We saw a person or two shuffle by. As we got settled in, I said to James, “Are we in The Deer Hunter?”
The alley was perfect. It looked as old as it was. Depression-era for sure, back when things were built to last (I know it’s a cliche, but so true!) Heavy-duty wooden benches that fit puzzle-like into U-shaped formations with racks underneath to hold bowling balls. The art-deco styled ball return was a work of art with a mechanism to catch the gravity-driven ball as it returned home. There were 4 lanes and we were advised to only use one and try not to walk on the lanes, but instead in the gutters. Which I found difficult, my footing unsure. James was much better at it, as he found a work-around: walking on the beams that separated the alleys.
Jack raced to the end of the alley and inspected all the wonderful mechanisms. Within a minute he was an expert. He constantly encouraged us to bowl, so he could continue stepping on the lever, setting the pins and his favorite part, sending the ball back on the manual, gravity-driven ball return. My joy is watching his joy and that joy indicator is his trademark jumping up and down while wind-milling his arms. It was heaven. Of all the voices I could hear from down below, I could have sworn I heard Christopher Walken and John Cazale yelling for another round.
