The Blanco Bowling Club

The six lanes behind the cafe on Fourth Street in Blanco play nine-pin, a German game that survives commercially nowhere in the world except a cluster of Central Texas counties. The pins stand in a diamond rather than a triangle, the one in the middle is painted red, and teams of six bowl six frames instead of ten. Knocking down all nine pins scores nine. Knocking down the eight around the outside and leaving the red king pin standing scores twelve, which is the shot everyone is trying for. No manufacturer has ever built an automatic pinsetter for the nine-pin diamond, so the pins are still set by hand, usually by local teenagers working the pit. Bowling here is not a novelty revival either; the leagues have run without a break since the doors opened. Construction started in 1947 and the place opened in 1948, built and run by Roland and Viola Bindseil. They sold to C. A. and Florence Weeaks in 1965, and in 1967 a group of Blanco residents bought it outright and turned it into a member-owned club, which is what it remains. League play is for members; the cafe at the front is open to anyone, and is arguably the bigger draw. It is known across the Hill Country for enchiladas and for lemon and chocolate meringue pies built several inches high. Fewer than two dozen nine-pin clubs are left in Texas, nearly all of them within a hundred miles of here. Most began the same way: German-descended communities that arrived in the 1840s and 1850s built a dance hall, a bowling alley and a shooting club at more or less the same time, and the bowling is the part that outlasted the rest.