I unwrapped that old scorecard right there on my basement floor, and I had to sit down, because it was not blank, it was filled in, and the names at the top were Frank and me, from a night in 1964.
The old man who ran that bowling alley for forty-six years, we all called him Whitey, had kept it. It was the scorecard from the very night my Frank rolled a strike and then asked me out over a pitcher of root beer. Whitey had saved it, and clipped to it was a note in his blocky hand.
He wrote that behind the counter of a bowling alley you see the whole life of a town, the leagues, the first dates, the kids who grow up and bring their own kids. And he wrote that on certain nights, when he saw something start, a couple that had that look, he saved their scorecard and hid it in the ball return of the lane they bowled on.
For forty-six years, Whitey watched this town fall in love over rented shoes and pitchers of root beer, and every time he had a feeling about a couple, he tucked their scorecard into the guts of the ball return, so that the machine that gave the ball back every night was also quietly holding onto the night two people found each other.
His note said lane six had seen more first dates than any lane he ever ran, and that Frank and I bowled on it the night we started, and that if the old machine ever came home with one of us, we should have the scorecard back.
Frank and I had forty years. Whitey had a feeling about us in 1964, over a pitcher of root beer, and the old fellow was right.
I have got the scorecard framed on my basement wall now, next to the ball return, Frank and me and a strike in the tenth from the night it all began.
And I have gone looking for a few of the other couples whose scorecards were tucked in there beside ours, because Whitey had hidden more than one over the years. I found a pair still married after fifty-eight years and drove them the scorecard from their first date. They laughed and cried and put it on their refrigerator.
I bought back the old ball return off lane six because the mechanism jammed. It came full of the first dates of my whole hometown, saved by a bowling alley man with an eye for love that lasts, and I have been the one lucky enough to roll them all back home.