By

Francine Paino, aka F. Della Notte

Mundane worlds can become amazing when writers are plunged into them. Looking through old family photographs, I came upon a picture of a handsome young man whose start in this country could have been better. He worked as a pin-boy in a New York City Bowery bowling alley a hundred years ago. My story, The Runaway Pin Boy, was inspired by this long-deceased uncle’s difficult adjustment to a new country and culture.

 Francesco Libretti was born in Sassano, Italy, in 1910, emigrated to the U.S. in 1921, and by age 14, he began his short-lived career as a runaway who found work as a pin-boy in a Bowery bowling alley, but here, the similarity stops. 

But where did it begin, what was it like back then? How were the mechanics of setting up pins handled?  

Bowling. A sport that feels as American as Apple Pie is not an American invention. It’s traced back to ancient Egypt, 5200 years ago, in articles found in the tomb of an Egyptian child. Described in its primitive form, nine pieces of stones were set up, and a rounded stone “ball” was rolled to first make its way through an archway made of three pieces of marble. The sport spread from its Egyptian roots into Western Europe, and was brought to the U.S. by the first English and Dutch settlers. It gained popularity through the mid-1800s, played by men only, as it was not the clean family sport we enjoy today. Thus, it faltered when the do-gooders associated it with gambling. Any yet, by 1850, there were four-hundred plus bowling alleys in New York, earning the city the title “Bowling Capital of North America.”

The sport revived in the late 19th century and remained popular during the Great Depression, at least for those with a disposable income. Bowling was a game for  roughnecks and the wealthiest who could afford to build their own private lanes. For the common man the game took place in honky-tonk bars where lanes were built to increase income, with or without alcohol,  and by 1939, there were 4,600 bowling alleys across the U.S. 

Until 1952, when the automatic pin-setters were introduced, picking up and resetting the pins fell to pin boys, often called pin monkeys. They stood at the end of the lanes, perched on narrow ledges or standing up in trenches, waiting for the heavy balls to fly down and slam the heavy wood pins. The pin boys then scrambled to each lane, reset the pins, and gave the heavy ball a hard enough push to get back to the bowler but not hard enough to roll off the track and upset the player in any way. And if he did, there were consequences.

Pin boys were kids, mostly teens, and despite their young years, they were tough characters,  paid meager wages and often taken from the Skid Rows of cities, including New York City’s Bowery. It was hard labor and resulted in frequent injuries, including  broken ribs, severely bruised chins, arms, hands, and smashed fingers, especially when the bowler threw the ball extra hard and fast, just to see if they could make the pins fly.

In the 1830s, the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City opened three lanes, using clay instead of wood, but no matter the surface, the pin monkeys were at the end of every alley, hoping they wouldn’t be too injured to work again the next day or night. 

Although Child Labor Laws were codified in New York in 1913, these youngsters slipped through the net by lying about their age or being hired by unscrupulous owners. The lives of the pin boys in those early years of the sport were not enviable, but many were willing to endure physical and psychological pain in order to eat.

In The Runaway Pin Boy, the year is 1925, In the Lower East Side ghetto of New York City, known today as Little Italy.  Frankie Martone’s mother dies of consumption, and his alcoholic and destitute father abandons him. After witnessing what happens to other immigrant children without families, Frankie flees the authorities, deciding to fend for himself in the anonymity of Skid Row. He learns to beg, borrow, or steal. One night, while he rummages through a trash pail outside the Pin King bar,  a formidable man stinking with sweat and cigar smoke grabs him by the collar. 

“Whatcha doin’ there, boyo?” asks the barrel-chested man with a grizzly turned-up mustache.  Frankie didn’t answer, afraid his thick Italian accent would get him kicked down the street.

“You’re a straggly lookin’ thing, but I need another boy inside. Let’s see what you can do. “He flings Frankie through the door to the bar. “Hey Joe,” he yelled in his Irish brogue. “Broughtcha another.”

Turning to Frankie, he thrusts him forward and points to the trench behind the bowling lanes. Frankie sees a ledge of boys sitting and three more in the trenches. The thunder of balls rolling down the alleys, pins flying and falling, and drunks yelling was deafening, but Frankie understood what needed to be done, and jumped right in.   That was the first night of Frankie’s life as an overworked, underpaid, often injured pin boy determined to get out of this nowhere life on the fringes of Skid Row.