One day in the mid-1980s, some kids were cutting through the woods at the land to get to the town over the hill. They were going bowling! It was a big party in town and they didn’t want to be late. They figured hiking as the bird flies would be faster than taking the long route down straight country roads.
Oh how wrong they were.
Halfway there, one of them started complaining. Their ball felt heavier and heavier as they walked, and they couldn’t bear it anymore. It was so heavy! They still wanted to bowl, but they decided it would be easier to rent a ball than carry it the last five miles. In the middle of the woods, they plopped it on the ground, took a good look around, memorized the trees, then kept on walking.
They never found it when they came back looking for it, no matter how hard they tried.
This is my grandpa’s idea as to how a bowling ball ended up in the middle of the woods on the land.
Plausible?
Not really.
Here’s the origin story of that story:
One day, while I was working on the massive border project (it’s done now! the border is fully marked!), I was searching for the next survey flag. I knew I was mostly going in the right direction, but was desperately hoping it wasn’t in the middle of the multi-flora rose thorns off to my right. I had enough little scratches from them already.
I crossed the creek and was sweeping back and forth on the other side, searching for a little bit of pink ribbon that marked the property line.
I nearly toppled head over heels on a bowling ball. It was half-sunk into the dirt about twenty yards from the creek and about a quarter of a mile away from any road. Smack dab in the middle of some random woods. Around it, there was evidence of a washout from a big rainstorm, which I think is how it got uncovered.
How in the world did a bowling ball get here?
My mind started going through all kinds of wild scenarios as I dug it up and hauled it back to the cabin with me (murder weapon was top of the list).
Later that weekend, I was at a show of E’s band and chatting with folks about the bowling ball. We were all coming up with wild ideas on how it got there, each more silly than the last. One zoomed in on the photo, got the model number, and started digging. He reached out to the company who manufactured it and, incredibly, got a response.
Our mysterious 16 lb bowling ball was manufactured in 1982 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Originally, I had thought I’d make a ‘true crime podcast for people who hate true crime’ about it. A spoof investigation,interviewing armchair experts on their theories of how it got there. But that’s a lot of work.
Instead, I’m going to write up folks’ theories right here in this blog. Maybe a series of short stories? Who knows what form it will take.
Welcome to Bowling in the Woods.
Now At A Farm 