General Discussion

Tommy_Carcetti

(43,153 posts) Fri Feb 3, 2017, 05:45 PM Feb 2017

You guys are getting it all wrong. It's actually called the Bowling Greens Massacre.

The Bowling Greens was the name of an extremely successful bowling team from Mason City, Iowa comprised of four brothers: Earl Green, Bob Green, Phil Green and Billy Green. Together, they formed a seemingly unstoppable powerhouse in the North Central Iowa Summer Bowling League that won six consecutive league championships from 1949 through 1954.

However, what happened on the fateful evening of June 27, 1955 would shake the close-knit bowling community of Cerro Gordo County forever.

It was a tragedy of unmistakable proportions. The four brothers were scheduled to compete in the famed Shibboleth Open that night. All four men planned to arrive at the Mason City Lanes separately an hour before the tournament was slated to begin. Yet for reasons that challenge the faith in the almighty of many, God choose to pick all four men off one by one in most cruel of fashions.

It was Phil Green who was the first victim. While driving his milk delivery truck, a cat ran out in front of him. As his widow would attest, her husband was an avid animal lover who could not stand to see any creature in peril. He quickly swerved his truck to avoid the creature, but was unable to avoid the stately oak tree that would greet the front of his truck. Police announced Phil dead at the scene.

Next to go was Billy Green. A highly superstitious man, Billy had bowled seven consecutive games over 250, which he attributed to the fact that he had neglected to shave on the first day of his lucky streak. As such, Billy had developed quite a finely coifed beard during the time. However, as he refused to be beholden to slovenliness, he insisted that the beard remained neatly trimmed with a pair of scissors he kept by his sink. After taking a shower before preparing to head off to the lanes, Billy walked towards the mirror and grabbed his scissors. What he forgot was the discarded remnants of his bar of Lifebuoy directly below him. Maneuvering to trim his beard, he inadvertently stepped on the soap on the floor. He lost his footing, and the scissors in his hand were rammed directly into his throat. Undoubtedly his last moments bleeding out were most painful and he likely cursed the facial hair that up to this point had given him so much good fortune.

Unlike their brothers Phil and Billy, Bob Green and Earl Green both made it to the Mason City Lanes that evening, but they would not escape the night's fate. Earl arrived first, and not seeing any of his brothers at the time, proceeded to start a practice round of his own to hone his game. While clutching a can of Heileman's Old Style in his right hand, on the sixth frame he approached the ball return to take his lucky ball that he had nicknamed Marsha. As luck would have it though, while shampooing the rug, the alley's maintenance man had ripped a seam in the carpet that morning right below the ball return. Unlike Billy's fatal fall, Earl's stumble over the shorn rug was quite mild. But it was enough to send his Old Style flying toward the ball return, soaking the mechanism. Not one for expertise on electronic machinery, Earl didn't see the harm in reaching for Marsha as the suds bubbled and fizzed on the return. What awaited him was a shock, quite literally a deadly one that was powerful enough to stop his heart. People around him called for help and rushed to his side, but it would not turn out well.

In a cruel twist of fate, Bob Green arrived at the Mason City Lanes on the opposite eastern side of the building, as opposed to the western side he usually came in. As such, he missed the legion of paramedics wheeling his brother Earl out the door on the western side in preparation for what would be an ultimately futile ride to the hospital. Not seeing his brothers there, and being rather hungry at that, Bob proceeded over to the lane's concession stand and ordered himself his regular choice of a hotdog with fries. Unbeknownst to Bob, however, that week the lane had ceased its orders from its regular hot dog supplier, Walter and Sons Family Farms, and had instead gone with the more economic option in Stenson's Pork and Meat. Stenson's had a notorious reputation of trying to lower the overhead by cutting quality control, and in what would blossom to a statewide pandemic, it released upon the unsuspecting public dozens of trichinosis laden frankfurthers. Bob was naturally unaware of this fact, and finished the dog and the fries in good order. What first he suspected as nothing but a routine visit to the lane's lavatory ultimately manifested itself into something way more horrid. Guests at the lane standing outside the door were horrified by the sound of Bob's projectile vomiting echoing against the tiled walls. Eventually, the lane's manager mustered the bravery to burst through the restroom door, only to find Bob splayed on the floor, completely unresponsive and covered in his own half-digested stomach contents.

By the scheduled 8:00 pm start time of the 1955 Shiboletth Open, none of the Bowling Greens remained alive on this earth.

The community was rocked to its core. The remaining North Central Iowa Summer Bowling League season was cancelled, and the pall of the death of the Bowling Greens refusing to leave, it officially disbanded the following year. The entire city was awash in mourning, unable to comprehend the unspeakable tragedy that had befallen four of its proudest citizens. Perhaps a silver lining to the story might be found in the fact that a local doo wop band, Frankie Ford and the Kickers, penned a memorial anthem entitled "The Ballad of the Bowling Greens", which rose to the top of the charts in the Midwest and provided the group with notable but brief time in the spotlight before internal squabbling befell the band.

Officially, the deaths of all four of the Bowling Greens were ruled accidents--cruel, horrific and freakish but entirely explainable accidents. Some of the Bowling Greens contemporaries in the league, however, still subscribe to a much more nefarious theory. It is their heartfelt belief that what is known today as the Bowling Greens Massacre was not merely a series of horribly unfortunate events, but rather in fact premeditated foul play by the Bowling Greens' most heated rival, the Simpson Strikes. The Bowling Greens had defeated the Simpson Strikes by a mere two points in the 1954 league championship, and the Simpson Strikes emphatically protested that the Bowling Greens had incurred numerous technical violations during the tournament. The league--which the Simpson Strikes believed to be heavily influenced by the luster the Bowling Greens had provided over the years--refused to overturn the results, and many claimed that John Simpson (the team's senior member) had vowed revenge against the Bowling Greens at all costs.

To this day, rumors swirl that it was John's cat set loose upon Phil Green's truck; that he had placed the soap under Billy Green's sink; that he had paid off the lane's maintenance man to rip a hole underneath Earl Green's ball return; and that he had convinced the lane's management to switch to the poisoned Stenson's hot dog that Bob Green consumed.

But all that remains merely as rumors, rumors spread and possible exaggerated down through the generations, and authorities have repeatedly denied that the death of the Bowling Greens was nothing other than a terrible twist of fate. But whether it be merely a horrible cascade of entirely coincidental carnage, or cold hearted murder most devious, many in North Central Iowa to this very day shudder at the mere mention of the phrase that has come to memorialize the unspeakable tragedy: The Bowling Greens Massacre.

Now, why would Kellyanne Conway be talking about this? To be honest.....I have no fucking clue.