Some sports memories have little to do with the final score.
They live in the places where we spent our time—the neighborhood bowling alley, the sound of pins crashing, rented shoes sliding across polished floors, and Saturday nights surrounded by friends and familiar faces.
A bowling pin is an ordinary piece of sporting equipment. But years later, it can become a reminder of a place, a job, a person, or a moment we had almost forgotten.
That’s the essence of American Material Memory: the objects surrounding the games we played can preserve the stories of where we grew up and who we were becoming.
From the Artist:
I remember back when I was 16 years old, I worked as a pin-chaser for $2.25 an hour at The Colony Bowl in Algonac, Michigan. I remember working the back during Saturday night’s Moonlight Bowling League, and I’d drop a red pin in the number one position every time it was this girl’s turn to bowl. If she got a strike, she won money. If she got multiple strikes, I think she could win a trip somewhere. I had a massive crush on her, but she was such a bad bowler that she never got a single strike.
Everyone around her knew something was up because she was the only one, ever, to get 10 red head pins in a row.
What guys won’t do for the girls they have a crush on?
Some sports memories have little to do with the final score.
They live in the places where we spent our time—the neighborhood bowling alley, the sound of pins crashing, rented shoes sliding across polished floors, and Saturday nights surrounded by friends and familiar faces.
A bowling pin is an ordinary piece of sporting equipment. But years later, it can become a reminder of a place, a job, a person, or a moment we had almost forgotten.
That’s the essence of American Material Memory: the objects surrounding the games we played can preserve the stories of where we grew up and who we were becoming.
From the Artist:
I remember back when I was 16 years old, I worked as a pin-chaser for $2.25 an hour at The Colony Bowl in Algonac, Michigan. I remember working the back during Saturday night’s Moonlight Bowling League, and I’d drop a red pin in the number one position every time it was this girl’s turn to bowl. If she got a strike, she won money. If she got multiple strikes, I think she could win a trip somewhere. I had a massive crush on her, but she was such a bad bowler that she never got a single strike.
Everyone around her knew something was up because she was the only one, ever, to get 10 red head pins in a row.
What guys won’t do for the girls they have a crush on?
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