Only the tough ones played the arcade - News, Notes & Quotes

IT WASN'T A PLACE for sissies. At Arcade Lanes, you had to lug your ball up 19 uninterrupted steps to get to the second floor, and then you'd find yourself in an antique-cluttered scene that was reminiscent of bowling as it was a half-century ago.

Arcade, an eight-alley house in the St. Louis suburb of University City, was destroyed by fire in mid-July, and among the witnesses were mourners weeping along with owner Jim Lampson.

"I was giving a friend a bowling lesson about six in the evening when we saw flames on the roof," Lampson says. "I called the fire department and then went out with a fire extinguisher. The firemen made me go down a ladder."

Among the people who frequently climbed those 19 steps in the 1960s were suspicious men from ABC headquarters in Milwaukee. About all Lampson had to offer league bowlers was a chance to shoot high scores, and the 300s and 800s did accumulate.

"I never doctored the lanes," Lampson says, "but they didn't believe me. After a 300, I'd box up the pins and leave the lanes just like they were. The St. Louis inspectors would OK everything, but sometimes the ABC thought they found something wrong.

"They disallowed about 10 perfect games, but later they approved some of those. We had around 300 high-score awards altogether."

The Don Carter-led Budweiser team of the '60s bowled in the All-Star League at Arcade for a couple of years. One night, trying to make up for a league session they had missed because of exhibitions, the Buds bowled two teams at the same time, moving constantly from lanes 3-4 to 7-8, and won five out of six. Later, the ABC passed a rule against simultaneous matches.

To get to the lanes--Arcade did have automatics--bowlers had to maneuver around such keepsakes as a gasoline-powered washing machine, 100-year-old sets of golf clubs, a wooden saddle, and an RCA Radiola (a combination Victrola and radio). Lampson's P.A. system was a pair of loudspeakers from Sportsman's Park, where baseball's St. Louis Cardinals and Browns once played.

In recent years, Arcade relied mostly on open play and corporate private parties.

Lampson is 78, but he has no plans to retire. "I have a farm in Krakow, Mo.," he says, "and I'm going to invite families to go fishing. I already got the instructions on how to build a lake."

COPYRIGHT 2003 Century Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group