The game takes a feathery touch - News, Notes & Quotes

THERE ARE SEVERAL variations of the sport of bowling. It's not just a ten-pin world--you also may have heard of duckpins, rubber-band duckpins, 5-pins, and candlepins. But when you enter the Cadieux Cafe, a neighborhood food and bar establishment on Detroit's upper northeast side, you'll encounter something completely different.

The Cadieux Cafe proudly boasts of being the only home of feather bowling is the United States. The game was originally a Belgian pastime akin to horseshoes and bocci, although little is known about the exact or gin of feather bowling.

Interestingly, the game is rarely played in Belgium, and visitors from the old country are often astonished to see the game preserved the way it is at Cadieux.

Feather bowling can be played by any number of participants. Players are divided into a red and green team and play with balls shaped like wheels of cheese (the wheels are colored to distinguish teams). A coin flip determines which team starts, and it then rolls all six of its balls, attempting to place them close to a feather protruding from the lane approximately 60 feet away. The "lanes" are made of dirt and are ditched in the center (higher on the sides and slanted toward the middle).

A common strategy is to place three balls close to the feather and then lay blockers with the remaining balls in an attempt to prevent opponents from having an easy path to it. After the first team rolls all of its balls, the second team either attempts to roll its balls closer to the feather or knock the other team's balls away from it.

Scoring is determined by which color is closest to the feather after all 12 balls are rolled. There is a one-point minimum and a six-point maximum per round. The game is over when one of the teams reaches 10 points.

An average game of feather bowling takes about 45 minutes. The game has become so popular at Cadieux that reservations for Friday and Saturday "prime times" generally must be placed at least six months in advance, at $25 to $40 per hour.

Feather bowling offers neither righthanders nor lefthanders an advantage. And while there is no governing body for feather bowling, there's one thing that sets the game apart from tenpins: Its lanes cannot be "blocked."

COPYRIGHT 2003 Century Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group