Adieu, Skyway, when bowling was king
Historic bowling alley at Parkdale and Melvin is closing its doors after decades
There were times, Helen Nalborczyk remembers, when they’d hand out tickets on a Saturday night at the Skyway Lanes, and bowlers would wait in lin — sometimes an hour or two, sometimes longer — for their numbers to be called, their turn to play having come around at last.
League play was booming and robust. Stelco, Dofasco, Westinghouse, Procter & Gamble — all the big economic drivers of this city’s roaring industrial hustle — had leagues. And, of course, Hamilton City 10-Pin, the oldest continuous bowling league in North America, called Skyway Lanes home too — until yesterday.
Bowling was king. Especially Skyway Lanes, on Melvin, one of this city’s flagship bowling alleys.
Skyway Lanes closed its doors April 26.
Helen, finally retiring after 54 years in the business, has sold the place and, at the end of next week, will hand over the keys. She’s not sure what the new owners’ plans are.
People don’t much line up any more. (Now they line up for hours to pay $200 for a ticket to opening night of an Avengers movie.)
Bowling alleys are sometimes characterized as having a kind of mood ring property, their changes of fortune reflecting larger transformations and transfers of heat in the surrounding society and culture.
In any case, you can trace the decades in the layers of changing fault lines.
Chris (Christine) Nalborczyk, Helen’s daughter, remembers working at Skyway Lanes for much of her youth, and in the ’70s she’d come home after a shift “reeking of smoke.”
Whether you were contributing to the cigarette-mosphere yourself or simply walking through it, the smell clung to your clothes.
“It was like a wall of smoke,” she recalls. Of course, that was true almost everywhere.
“You could smoke on airplanes back then,” says Helen, and we shake our heads. Oh, those 1900s.
Drinking came to Skyway Lanes in 1978 but, say Helen and Chris, it was no secret that bowlers long before that were smuggling bottles in their bowling bags. Remember when everyone had a bowling bag?
There were other profound changes. Automatic scoring equipment, which became more and more computerized.
“We had lots of tournaments,” says Chris, “and (before automation) I had to write down all the scores (frame after frame) and add them up right away” across the whole chart.
She playfully credits that — and her mother’s naturally good head for numbers — with her career choice: accounting.
As we sit and talk on one of the last days, amid the rumbling surf and crash of balls rocketing along the floor into the clustered pins, the memories flow.
Wanda Bailey has bowled at Skyway Lanes for 49 years, Sunday league, and she won the Centennial Year Ontario Girls Double Championship in 1967. She won’t get to celebrate her 50th anniversary.
“There are so many stories here,” she says. “So many friendships. We’ve been spoiled.”
That was due in no small part to the family feel that Helen and late husband Ed Nalborczyk always instilled.
Skyway Lanes was built in six weeks in 1957 by the original owners, and Helen and Ed bought the place in 1965.
It was a struggle at first, says Helen.
The Melvin/Parkdale area was “outskirts” back then. But Skyway kept growing and growing.
“The peak was when Stelco was at its peak and bowling was the thing to do,” says Helen.
“When the VCR came on, things changed. You could rent two movies, add some popcorn and stay in for the night.”
Ed was the “frontman,” says Helen. She did bookkeeping, business management. They made a great team.
He died in 1994, in his 50s. His funeral drew large crowds.
“I thought I’d run it for another five years,” says Helen.
“But somehow that turned into 25 years.” Now, it’s time.
No matter what the ups and downs of the bowling business are, Helen and the Nalborczyk family have kept Skyway Lanes healthy and, well, a home away from home for so many Hamiltonians.
It will be truly missed.