Nyssa man reflects on long bowling career
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Monday, November 17, 2008 10:32 AM PST
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| Larry Meyer | Argus Observer
Urban Schmidt shows a tournament program which has pictures of him as teenager, when he started bowling and as president of the Northwestern International Bowling Congress. |
NYSSA —Few people have experienced bowling the way Urban Schmidt, Nyssa, has and fewer people probably remember bowling before automatic setting machines,
Schmidt logged those experiences and more during his lifelong love affair with bowling. He has lived a lot of bowling history, at least in the Northwest.
Schmidt started his connection with bowling when he was a teen in the late 1940s, setting pins at the Lincoln Bowl in Tacoma, Wash.
“We usually set pins on one lane when we first started — in those day you had spots to put the pins on,” he said.
The pins were put in a triangle-shaped holder which was lowered and dropped forward to put the pins on the spots, Schmidt said. At first a bar was pushed to lower pins and later the pins were lowered by machines and he just pushed a button.
“We learned with experience to pick up three pins in each hand,” he said. “We made seven cents a game, later on we got to set two lanes.”
In setting pins in league or tournaments, pinsetters made 10 cents per game, he said and at one tournament he worked there was a shortage of pinsetters, so workers set three lanes at a time.
“It was a good way to keep in shape,” he said. “In league play we got done in less than two hours. Later, when automatic machines came in it took 30 minutes longer.”
Bowlers never bowled at the same time, but Schmidt said and one time a bowler double-balled a pinsetter who was picking up pins. — a person could get really hurt.
“The pinsetter came out of the pits and chased the bowler out of the building,” he said.
Another issue before the bowling alleys became automated was the foul line. Schmidt said someone sat in a tower overlooking the bowling lanes and ruled when a bowler went over the fouling line, flipping a switch to turn on a light and ringing a bell.
“Everyone knew who fouled,” he said and “The judge was very unpopular.”
Automatic pinsetters did not come until the late 1950s and after that all new centers were built for bowling, before that most bowling facilities were large buildings that had been something else, usually old dance halls, Schmidt said.
Having begun working at bowling alleys during high school it was usually on weekends and if it was a slow weekend, pinsetters got to bowl for free. Since bowling was mainly a fall and winter sport, Schmidt played baseball in the Tacoma city league also during the summer. He said he also had a job picking up golf balls at a driving range.
“I picked up golf balls in a cage golf carts, golf carts would try to hit me,” he said.
After graduating from high school, Schmidt went to work for this father, a small cement contractor. After working at job pouring cement for basement houses, he quickly changed to concrete finishing.
Whatever he did Schmidt never was far away from bowling.
He was a member of he “Whiz Kids,” while in high school, which won a lot of bowling tournaments. He said he got into trouble for bowling for money while still in high school, as a member of an adult team, but nothing came of it because he did not play high school sports.
Playing on the Heibdelberg team, he often led the team to victory on many tournaments throughout the Northwest. He won the Idaho State All Events Championship and clinched singles events through the Northwest and in Idaho.
During the early 1960s, he moved to Nampa, where he managed Bulldog Bowl, for a few years and became a member of the Idaho All State Team in 1964, won the Idaho State All Start doubles in 1963 and earned eight Nampa City Association titles. He moved back to Tacoma where he managed the Chalet Bowl. In 1976, he became the youngest person inducted into the Greater Tacoma Bowling Association Hall of Fame, just after he was inducted to the Northwestern International Bowling Congress Tournament. Two years later he was inducted into the Nampa Bowling Association.
“I quit bowling in 1986,” he said, because of health issues, having been a competitive bowler for a good 40 years.
Schmidt, 78, now lives in Nyssa to be near a daughter.
