We bolted quickly out of Texas and into Louisiana and New Orleans, there to give Les Miserables (six and eight) a quick canter around the French Quarter, where the transexuals were having their photos taken with beery tourists and the hookers were paddling through the puke. Thought for the day:
"Now look kids. Remember what you have seen here today. There are worse jobs than Daddy's."
Warming to this theme, we sped to the batmobile and headed for St Louis. Beer, baseball and the International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum. Yippee!
I turn to Les Miserables (six and eight) and speak sternly. "Call me Homer," I say, "for today we are The Simpsons."
The International Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum is a glorious paean to the great game, a heartsong to moustaches. It even has a curator, Mr Dalzell. He is not here today, which is a pity as we have wagered that he will be wearing one of those short-sleeved, billowy bowling shirts to work. A red one with The Curator stitched up the back in squiggly, gold writing and Ace written in similar cursive above the breast pocket.
The IBHFM is sober and flat-out educational too. The first thing that greets you is a mock-up of a Stone Age hunter wearing a fur and leather version of a modern bowling shirt and preparing to throw a rock at some rudimentary skittles. It's a humbling moment to stand and gaze at our bowling forebears. The shirts looked dazzling then and they look as good now, but what is most informative about the tableau is that, apart from sideburn lengths and the crucial invention of lacquer, the game has been faithful to the hairstyle vision of the founding fathers.
We warm to the tenpin tribe. These are the people who darts players snicker at, and, forgive me, I have often enjoyed a snicker at bowlers myself. Never again. Bowlers are among the most oppressed peoples of the earth. Compared to bowlers, the downtrodden races like ourselves and the Jews have had it lucky. We are told that in Europe the earliest bowlers were "barbaric Germans", and worse, through the Middle Ages, jolly Father Trendy priests kept muscling in on the bowling scene trying to make it wholesome.
No way! Several English kings took action to outlaw bowling, and the noted liberal, Henry VIII, permitted only gentlemen with an annual income of over £1,000 to obtain skittle licences. That would still bar a lot of people on the American scene today. There was worse heartbreak though. The Romans brought the game into disrepute by luring their enemies into tight mountain passes and (yikes! Look out Robbie Keane!) rolling massive boulders at them. My Lord, what these people have been through. The French played quilles de neuf, and to circumvent the draconian laws were forced to bowl with cheeses while betting chickens on the outcome.
A neuf already, we cried. Nevertheless, we forced Les Miserables (six and eight) to take it all in. Compassion must be learned. There are worse fates than being driven across America on a sporting road tour in the middle of summer in a car with dodgy air conditioning and one CD. There are people worse off than you, kids. Bowling people. It's nice to be important, we say, but it's more important to be hypocritical. In the 1950, we learn, bowling was considered "a stylish movement". This should make the 1970s feel better about themselves.
The concealed purpose of our visit is to pay homage to the man whose genius may yet return bowling to its pre-eminent place in the affections of the world. The game is, as the booklet says, played on all six continents, but until Pete Weber the Wild Man of Bowling is more famous than Jesus, well, that won't be enough. Pete. Crotch-grabbing, expletive-spewing Pete, is from St Louis, but he's out of town today, which is a pity because we wanted to see his house. Pete made his first million in prize money quicker than anyone else in bowling and is almost there at his third million now. That buys a lot of classy interior decorating.
I reckon he has a big bowling ball-shaped bar in his living room and his hallway is a bowling lane. Anyway, there are two views on Pete. In the matter of rolling the big ball down the shiny lane and knocking over the big skittles, some people say he is a genius sans pareill and should be left alone. Or.
He is a boozy ne'er-do-well who can't run his mouth and if he wasn't the son of the Legendary Dick Weber (who, all agree, is real classy) they'd have had him out of bowling quicker than you could say scion, or "See ya hon".
Pete is poorly represented at the Museum. He is there in the Hall of Fame all right, with the regulation tash and big hair, and there is even tantalising mention of him being "flamboyant". But no hard evidence of his drunk bowling days or his cocaine snorting bowling days. Nowhere is one of his tirades of abuse against officialdom etched onto brass as an inspiration for younger bowlers. Bah!
We are at a loose end. Deflated. Then! Early in the last century, fat, faddish New Yorkers used to hire lanes by the hour and bowl ferociously just to lose weight. This seems like the perfect idea at the end of a Simpsons day. We go to the basement and hire the necessary pairs of brothel-creeping shoes.
"I am Pete Weber, wild man of bowling," I tell Les Miserables (six and eight) as I grab my crotch and swivel - in a fatherly way.
They both want to be the big cross lady that we were laughing at upstairs. Ah, Floretta McCutcheon, goddess of the game and role model to the generations.
Believe me, you didn't want to meet Floretta McCutcheon on a dark night. She could shot putt a bowling ball over the Berlin Wall. Even in the women's bowling hall of fame, where row after row of bad paintings stand eerily depicting the queens of the game, Loretta sticks out as a bad lot, a big, shifty kind of Mack the Knife character.
Floretta beat the Legendary Jimmy Smith in 1927 in Denver, and made a career out of it, touring for 17 years as a bowling broad. Presumably Smith never recovered or forgave himself.
Anyway, Pete Weber versus Floretta McCutcheon it was to be.
I won't embarrass Les Miserables (six and eight) or their hapless mentor by reproducing the precise stats from the game, but let's just say that this wild and crazy guy scored well into double figures. To the losers - All of us are in the gutter, but some of us aren't laughing at our Das.
"Soooo," I mused to Les Miserables (six and eight) as I repacked them in the car, "the old man doesn't look so shabby now." We revved up the Conway Twitty album and away with us in thoughtful silence.
"Bowling," I mused, "you are a lovely but cruel mistress - and now you are mine."