JOBS THRU THE YEARS: Pinsetter

there’s a thousand jobs out there . . . and there’s thousand i don’t want . . .

In 1970, still not yet fifteen years old, I began and completed a brief stint as Pinsetter at the bowling lanes in Oxford, Indiana. Though automated pinsetter machines had been in existence for years, our humble bowling alley, approached up a long, rickety stairwell on the side of Messner & Sons Department Store building on the historic Town Square, was still an old-timey establishment with antiquated human-operated equipment.

I learned the ropes of this demanding profession under the aegis and tutelage of the Old Master of Pinsetters, Gil Smith, who taught me a trick or two to get even with the bastards who would intentionally try to upend the pins in such a way as to bonk you up side of the skull. Gil showed me how to use a clothes hanger to knock over a couple extra pins, and then jam a wad of chewing gum in some guy’s bowling ball holes!

That’d show ‘em!

Setting pins was not a job for the chicken-hearted, I assure you, and it didn’t take long for me to find out, when the first of a nightly barrage of rock solid bowling pins would go crashing and flying chaotically with every roll, ensuring a high likelihood of being seriously injured in the tight confines of the box.

I remember one night a fellow “spotter” getting a tooth knocked out, but he kept right on spotting.

And once the pins were knocked over, you had about ten seconds to jump down into the box from the plank and reset them manually in perfect alignment. Plus, it was hellishly hot in the box, and all we were drinking was soda pop.

Water wasn’t a thing yet back then.

I made a dime per reset, and one night cleared a whole five bucks! That equated to a back-breaking fifty resets. I lasted two or three shifts before throwing in the towel for some other less strenuous, less hazardous, and a bit more lucrative occupation.

The “pin money” just wasn’t worth it.