Under The Glass The world through my lenses

Mason’s

As I mentioned earlier this week I did not have much of a chance to capture photos over the weekend. The reason for this was because my daughter turned 8 years old. We had a birthday party at Mason's bowling alley.

Candle pin bowling is somewhat unique to this area and not found in all parts of our country. The more popular form of bowling is 10 pin where you have a much larger ball and shorter pins. At one point in time in my life I was very involved in candle pin bowling. I use to run a league that consited of 12 four person teams. We would bowl once a week paying a minimal fee. At the end of the season we would have a banquet with the fees collected and award prizes to the winners.

Growing up we had five candle pin bowling alleys between the towns of Leominster and Fitchburg. Two of them have closed down for good. Birthday parties and bowling leagues are about all that are keeping these open. Mason's in my opinion does a little better than the others. This is due to the fact that they also have arcade games and pool tables.

My generation would use a bowling alley as a place to hang out with friends. These days it seems that kids hang out at places such as facebook.com and world of warcraft. With sms you no longer need to go to a place such as a bowling alley to interact with your friends. With all the gaming console systems out there who needs a bowling alley with pool tables and pinball machines. I'm afraid that these bowling alleys are going to continue to be a dying breed.