These local alleys created striking memories

My father started my love for bowling when I was very young. After we moved from Brooklyn to Queens, we finally settled in Centerport in 1967 when I was 5. I remember as a teen in the mid-1970s, riding my white 10-speed bike to Century Lanes on Wall Street in Huntington. Now, it’s a supermarket.

A wizened old man would come over to give me bowling tips. His name meant little to me until I came across a bowling book in a yard sale. The man wrote that book in the 1950s. It was Andy Varipapa, an all-star bowler from Brooklyn who taught people on Long Island.

I recall once when my friend Doug bicycled with me to bowl. Later, when we came out from the lanes, our bicycle tires were slashed. Our chain locks apparently were too strong for the vandals. Nearly 50 years later, Doug still hasn’t let me forget that sorry situation.

In school, we played in leagues, first for Oldfield Junior High School, then Harborfields High School, at East Northport’s Larkfield Lanes, which is still operating, and Commack Vet Lanes, since renamed Bowlero Commack. Bruno’s Commack Bowl, a non-league, late-night favorite, shut down over 20 years ago.

When I received my driver’s license in 1978, I was the designated (and only) driver. Later, I’d meet at the lanes with my friends, who could drive themselves. We would jump around to many alleys. The lanes had different personalities. Century was where I grew up, Larkfield had a small-town vibe, Bruno’s was fun for late night and Vets was usually for league play.

We added our own twist to the sport: “full contact” bowling. In and after college a friend preparing to roll his ball might have an incoming “missile” — a shoe, glove or another object — thrown at him just to disrupt his shot. Was drinking involved? Let’s just say I was the designated driver, and Larkfield and Melville lanes then had the best bowling bars.

My one killer shot, with my usual 16-pound ball, was prompted by my friends yelling, “Do the up in the air with backspin to the right.” They’d goad me into this straining shot. It would sail into the air a long distance with the proper spin, and it would make the pins explode, usually for a strike.

In fact, that’s how I’ve pitched, although slower, in high-arc softball since high school — and still do, on our team “The Bozos.” It includes Doug and two others from our elementary school, the Broadway School in Greenlawn, now the Harborfields Library, in an over-40 division Huntington league.

When starting at Suffolk County Community College in Selden, I couldn’t believe one of the “gym” electives was bowling at the AMF Centereach Lanes. It’s still around. I broke a noteworthy score of 200 only a handful of times, though, with a 226 lifetime high, I never came remotely close to a perfect 300 game.

I don’t get out to the lanes quite as much anymore. The next time I travel to my father’s house in Tucson, Arizona, we’ll head to a lane. Hopefully, it would be with my brother Gary and my 11-year-old nephew, Theo.

And occasionally it’s nice to join Doug and his son, who’s 28. We bowl at Larkfield Lanes. That’s where Doug never fails to remind me of the slashed bicycle tires of a bygone era yet again.

READER ANDREW COLEN lives in Coram.