Pinsetter

As a 12 year old boy in 1954 in Kasson, MN  I followed my older brother Mike into the occupation of "Pinsetter".  Our Kraher's Market on main street had, adjacent to it, a bar,restaurant/bowling alley called "Clare Lynard's."  Clare owned the place and he was quite a respectable bowler who was often invited to bowl in various tournaments.  Getting to "work" for us was easy.

I found a nice photo of a bowling lane (not Clare Lynard's), at Dreamstime.com and purchased it for use as a reference in this pinsetting blog.

© Robert Byron| Dreamstime.com

Clare Lynard's bowling lanes had semi-automatic pinsetting machines which would nicely set down 10 bowling pins. This was a massive step-up in technology from the days when pinsetters (or "pin boys") had to position each pin on a spot on the lane!  The sepia image below was snapped at 1 A.M. at "Subway Bowling Alley", Brooklyn, NY April10, 1910. 

Early "pin boys"

[Note:  The "pin boys" photograph is part of a collection of Photographs from the records of the National Child Labor Committee (U.S.) The photographer is Lewis Wickes Hine, 1874-1940.There are "No known restrictions" on using the photo according to a "memory.loc.gov" site. ]

Whereas, the machines of the early 1950's would set down 10 bowling pins, they were not yet completely automatic.  This would come a few years later. Therefore, a human (usually boys or young men) would need to sit behind a machine to return the bowling ball, pick up the felled pins and pull a lever so the machine could set the pins in place.

This is how the pinsetter would work:  The pinsetter would announce to the bowler that all was ready to go. This meant that the pins were in place and that the pinsetter was out of the "pit" and safely sitting on a ledge behind the machine. After the bowler's 1st throw the machine would lower and pickup the pins that were not  knocked down, meanwhile another part of the machine would rake the lane and gutter of felled pins pulling them into a "pit" behind the machine.  The machine would then replace the non-felled pins in place on the lane. 

The pinsetter then jumped into the pit, lifted the ball onto a concave platform and pushed the ball down a ramp where it fell through a chute and rolled in a trough back to the bowler. Next the pinsetter quickly picked up the felled pins and tossed them into the appropriate empty slots on top of the machine exactly above where the pins had been felled.   After a while a good pinsetter could pick up 2 pins with each hand squeezing the necks between the fingers and toss the pins into the correct slots quite accurately.

Finally, the pinsetter quickly jumped onto the brick ledge behind the machines, and carefully watched the 2nd ball of the bowler so that flying pins didn't hit a shin.    After the pins fell from the 2nd ball, and the machine had swept the still standing and felled pins into the pit, the pinsetter lifted the ball to return it, picked up the pins and tossed them into the appropriate slots on the top of the machine and pulled a lever to set down all 10 pins again.  

If the 2nd ball wasn't a spare (not all the pins had been knocked down) and if the previously felled pins hadn't been tossed into the correct slots, pins would try to set on top of standing pins and the machine would jam until the pins were manually removed very much irritating the bowlers.

A starting pinsetter would set pins on one lane only.   An experienced pinsetter (which I was after a while), set pins on two adjacent lanes, for example, for  men's and women's bowling leagues.  The men's leagues were most dangerous because the balls were thrown with great speed and hit pins flew everywhere, especially on spare throws.  However the 3 game league series moved at a nice rapid pace.  

On the other hand, the women's bowling leagues were frustratingly slow because their bowling balls took forever to reach the pins and because they were prone to do more socializing between throws. We always admired those women who threw a fast ball. The 3 game series for women's teams lasted some 30 to 60 minutes longer than a men's series.  Setting pins for the women, however, was usually not dangerous.

At the end of a 3 hour evening, I was tired and thirsty.   I received a $5.00 bill for my work, and with part of it, bought a quart of regular and a quart of chocolate milk at the bar.  I took these to my apartment home above Kraher's meat marked next door, mixed the two quarts of milk together in a glass pitcher and over the course of the next hour drank all the milk!!

There weren't many positives to pinsetting other than to say to someone you had a job.  The negatives were the sometimes unsavory environment, low pay, the heat next to the machines, the constant odor of grease and cigarettes and the constant worry of getting hit by a ball or bowling pin.  Usually we could get out of the way of a ball if we were in the pit, by listening for the sound of the ball hitting the wood as it was thrown.   In this case, we quickly jumped on the ledge.  Other annoyances were machines breaking down angering bowlers, and pinsetters getting sick in the middle of a 3 game bowling league or not showing up at all.  

It was a great day when fully automatic pinsetters started arriving in about 1955.   They still needed close attention because they often broke down, but human pinsetters were (fortunately) out of a profession!