Throwback

The long weekend has given Paul and I a surge of energy for making plans to do more things outside of the house. While talking about the things we wanted to do, we realized that we have lived here for 4-1/2 years and have yet to experience a New England pastime: Candlepin Bowling. Last night we sought to rectify that oversight.

We met Arturo and Sam at Sacco's Bowl-Haven in Davis Square. For those of you who are unfamiliar with candlepin bowling, it is similar to regular bowling in that you throw a ball down an alley and try to knock stuff down. The differences are that you throw three times each turn, the pins are straight and thin and the lanes don't clear out the pins between throws so you have the added element of the fallen pins when you are bowling.

Being in Bowl-Haven feels like a trip back in time. The alleys are really old and the scoring is all done manually. The vintage photograph on the wall didn't look all that different from the current state of the place.

After finishing our games of bowling, we headed over to Rosebud. Rosebud is a dining car that was built in 1941. The little dining car had a full bar and plenty of seats so we happily settled in until we closed the place down at the late, late hour of midnight. While we were there, the bartender showed me a book about diners of New England. Rosebud was on the cover and there were a few pages about the history of the restaurant on the inside of the book. I read that at one point the diner was a dive bar/strip joint. None of us could figure out how strippers could possibly dance in the tiny place and the bartender didn't want to discuss that part of Rosebud's history.