that I was back in Oxnard, with my dad. we went to the bowling lane
where my parents worked when I was a youth. the building has been
standing unused for many years and is in disrepair.

for some reason we decided we wanted inside. all the doors were
locked and I got in an argument with my dad over whether I was
capable of picking one of the locks (of course he could). there
was some power panel or whatever in the back of the building with
a juniper branch growing infront of it. I started looking at that.

the doors to the main east entrance opened and 2-3 people came out.
they looked asian-american. they were talking business as if one of
them was showing the others the place. we went over and talked to
them and the larger gentleman brought us back inside.

it looked very different from my recollection. instead of a raised
concourse with 32 lanes on the south side of the building, it was
mostly flat inside. at first I didn't think there were any lanes at
all. we started talking and the big asian guy told us of his plans to
reopen the bowl. he started the lanes up on automatic recycle and
that's when I realized - there were 17 lanes on each side, north
and south. the pin sweepers looked weird.

[considering my dream now the reason they looked weird was that instead
of late-50's Brunswick pinspotters the lanes had modern AMF pinspotters.
the sweeps were blue & white. but I don't recall anything from the front
of them, it was blank.]

both my dad and I wanted to do something - my dad wanted to roll a ball;
but with the lanes recycling I told him he couldn't. I wanted to run & slide
on the approaches, which I had noted were in surprisingly good condition.
the asian guy wouldn't let me, even though I was in rental bowling shoes,
becuase I had been wearing them outside.

we started talking with the asian guy about how we would like to help
out repoening the place, both by contributing work & expertise and by
buying into the enterprise.

wait. that's not true. there were black numbers on the front of the
pin spotters. lane numbers, but they weren't in order. lane 17 was on
the left of the south side - lanes 18-34 were on the north side.

but the numbers weren't in order.