For 60 years it's featured duck-pin bowling, the last such place in town.
For 60 years it's featured duck-pin bowling, the last such place in town. Back to the full article.
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The re-setter of the duck pins must have a never-a-dull-moment job! Thanks for this great review of Koz’s Mini Bowl, Michael Horne!
Some Roman Coin photos got in the mix.
@Carson. Thanks I’ve corrected this now
Sounds like a fun & unique spot. Nice find.
My comment concerns the Journal shack out back and what such places meant to many a young boy.
There was a time just over a generation ago when enterprising teens (mostly boys) like me could earn walking around money, or better, working in those shacks.
In addition to their daily use as a drop spot as the author describes, they were also used to “build” the Sunday papers, which had many pre-published parts. I was part of the crew that worked 4-5 nights a week during high school building the Sunday morning paper.
These pre published sections, such as Arts, Food, the magazine & advertising inserts would arrive at the shack after 10 pm most nights & we’d labor for several hours “subbing” the paper.
Some nights the presses ran late & it would be 2 or even 4am by the time these parts would arrive. On such a night we would have race to finish our work in time to make it to school the next morning.
Fortunately, the stacks of already partly built Sunday papers were comfortable enough to sleep on, so we wouldn’t show up at school without at least a few hours sleep.
By Saturday night the whole Sunday paper would be ready but for the 2 or three sections that actually had news. Those arrived no earlier than midnight. Handling the fat Sunday paper was an all night job until the paper was out the door by 5am
Working the shack at North Avenue & Cambridge as I did then, taught me what real work was, helped to build my young body, introduced me to many a memorable character & made me feel part of a noble enterprise.
That was when The Journal was counted among the best newspapers in the entire country. And its editorial page was unabashedly liberal paper. Hard to believe, I know, but true.
I vividly recall the big stories of the day passing through my hands as we rushed to help get these vital sources of morning news to the front porches of the neighborhood.
I say vital because at that time no one got their “real” news from TV or even radio, which were then, as now, unserious news sources. They read it in the paper.
Today’s Jounal Sentinel is a faint and dismal shadow of itself & every bit as tawdry as TV news.
Getting back to the shack & its role in the distribution of the news, to my knowledge no similar work opportunity exists for 14 to 17 year olds today. More’s the pity.
And that “noble enterprise?” Well, that is a story with a truly sad ending.
This is one of my favorite places in Milwaukee. There is no better Saturday afternoon than mini bowling with a few pitchers of beer.