Lange’s “Heavy Weights” Bowling Team, photograph courtesy of the St. Charles County Historical Society
Until 1905, bowling balls were made from lignum vitae, otherwise known as ironwood, which is so dense it sinks in water (yet, curiously, is commonly used in shipbuilding). Left unpainted, ironwood is a deep, radiant brown reminiscent of wild honey. The Victorians, always up for an unnatural effect, sometimes painted bowling balls (and bocce and skittle balls) India-ink black, which faded to aubergine after being repeatedly rolled and caressed between some sporting gent’s sweaty paws. Browse a bin of antique postcards, flip to the “Bowling/humorous” tab, and you’ll see that in the 19th century, nothing was thought to be funnier than the conflux of bowling, mustache wax, jackanapes, and men of a certain size. German illustrator Arthur Theile, though best know for his katzenschule (“cat school”) postcards, often drew caricatures of heavy men in popping suit vests, cigars in their front incisors, hurling decidedly unbouncy bowling balls toward the tenpins. The modern imagination has fixed bowling in the midcentury world of ball polishers and atomic starbursts; with the exception of antique cartoons and a few photographs like this, we forget that bowling was the sport of the German immigrant, newly affluent—and happily corpulent—thanks to a job in industry.
