Candlepin

In The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a favorite film noir of mine from 1973, Robert Mitchum plays a working class gunrunner with a heavy Boston accent, pulling robberies and murders in places like Quincy, Weymouth, Cambridge, Dorchester, Southie. My neighborhood. It's always nice to see shots of home from long ago, when the urban decay of the 70s was something that we all thought was just the way things were. The bank they robbed in the opening sequence was one where I used to have a savings account when I was a teenager.

There's a nighttime scene in the parking lot of a bowling alley at Neponset Circle where I used to bowl. Mitchum pulls his car into the parking lot, huge neon signs behind him overhead – Ten Pin! Candlepin!

I had to explain to my wife what candlepin bowling was, that it was played with bowling balls the size of shot puts without any holes for your fingers.

"You roll it like a bocce ball," I told her. "It was a Boston thing. It was invented in the 1880s in Worcester, Massachusetts and became the most popular bowling around that area. We didn't even know what the other kind was." I probably shouldn't have lied to her with that last sentence but I wanted her to understand just how much candlepin bowling meant to us all back then.

They used to film a TV game show there called Candlepins for Cash and one time, when I was there to do some bowling, they were taping an episode and I ended up getting a spot in the audience. I must have been with someone but I don’t remember who. The show was hosted by a local sportscaster named Bob Gamere. Everyone knew him. He was a popular guy with mischievous eyes and the show was a hit. He would talk to the contestants for a few minutes before they bowled to loosen them up, laugh with them a little, get some personal information to help soften up the audience and give it someone to root for.

I was sitting in my audience chair, watching the crew get the cameras and lights ready, eyeing the countdown to showtime, when suddenly there he was, standing off to the side holding a microphone. Bob Gamere. From TV. He had that look, that smile, a kind of polish, with everything in place and nothing to fear, and I knew my life would never be the same again.

He was waiting, his machinery idling, and when the announcer introduced him he walked out in front of us, beaming and waving, and nobody clapped.

The smile fell apart. He got a look on his face like he’d just caught the dog pissing on the carpet. His microphone drooped, and as he walked back to the side to do it again, sagging a little, his mouth tighter than before, the director took a moment to educate us on the proper interpretation of the applause sign. They didn't have an electric applause sign like some of the national shows did. It was just a piece of white cardboard that said "APPLAUSE" on it.

“When I hold this up, everybody clap!”

It made so much sense. Why hadn't we done it? I looked over at Bob Gamere. He was staring vacantly at something inside himself. I couldn’t figure out how he would ever get it back, that sparkle, that untouchable smile.

But he was ready to try it again. We all were. We were all part of the show now. Let’s go. The announcer came in the same as before. The sign went up. The applause and the resurrection. Oh, how we loved him. Good old Bob Gamere. He held his microphone like the staff of Moses before him and spoke to us as if we’d been friends all our lives. We laughed at everything he said, agreeing with every bit of it, ready for any sacrifice.

Years later, after the show had ended and after drinking had ruined a few jobs for him, Bob Gamere was arrested in his home for emailing child pornography to some friends. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

He’s back home now, an old man with a different smile, banned for life from being around children and the internet. Even the "APPLAUSE" sign can't save him now.

June 12, 2015