Once upon a time there was a bowling ball who dreamed of being a fancy gentlemen. Bowling balls don’t usually have names, but he called himself H.R. Brunswick, after the letters he could make out on his side. All the other balls made fun of him for his aspirations, for it was a rather rough place. “Think you’re too good to have some fat butcher’s fingers in ya?”, the other balls would say. “Indeed,” was H.R.’s reply.
So every time he rolled down the lane, he imagined himself strolling through a sunny garden party. The crash into the pins was the trumpet fanfare of his arrival at a royal banquet. These dreams made him happy and sad, and he wasn’t sure why. One day, an earthquake struck the town, and the bowling balls at the alley rolled and rattled in their racks. H.R. balanced precariously on top of the wooden bar holding the balls in, until an aftershock tipped him onto the floor. At first he was scared on the floor by himself, but then he saw the front door had come open, and he became excited. “Perhaps I can find a copy of the Times,” he thought and rolled out the door.
Unfortunately, the bowling alley was at the top of a hill, and H.R. quickly attained an alarming speed. He flew off the sidewalk into the street, and knocked into the curb on the opposite side. H.R. pouted in the gutter. “I’ve been roughly jolted all day, and there doesn’t seem to be a tea shop anywhere nearby. The other balls were right to mock me.” Indeed, there was no tea shop in the strip mall H.R. now faced. Most of the stores were empty with “For Lease” signs in their windows. Only a convenience store and a sex toy outlet remained. H.R. looked left, right and all around, but all he could see was uninviting concrete. With a sigh, he chose left and started rolling in that direction.
After a few blocks, H.R. rolled by an alley that was behind a bar. There was a man smoking a cigarette and sitting on a crate beside the back entrance. He noticed H.R. "Aw, shit," he said.
"Profanity? There could be a lady in the vicinity," thought H.R. The man walked to the curb and picked H.R. up and placed him in an empty crate. “I’m being shanghai’d!” he thought.
"Hey, Johnny, we got some empty bottles around?", the man called into the back doorway.
From inside the crate H.R. could hear the clinking of glass and the scrape of it against concrete. "What could such ruffians want with me? Oh, I wish I had never left the bowling alley." The man who put H.R. in the crate reached down and picked him up. Now H.R. could see what the men were doing. At the opposite end of the alley, ten empty liquor bottles were arranged just like bowling pins. "Those aren't regulation," thought H.R., and then he was suddenly hurtled towards them. The man's aim was good, and H.R. crashed into the first bottle, knocking all of them over. About half of the bottles broke, and the rest hit the ground with a hollow clunk. H.R. crashed against a chain link fence, and both men cried out ecstatically.
"That was great!" said the man called Johnny.
"Damn, that felt good," said the other. "Let's go find some more." Both men went back inside the bar.
"I must escape!" thought H.R., but the only way out of the alley was to roll through the large pile of broken glass the strike had created. H.R. tried to roll carefully, but he could still feel dozens of tiny shards poking him. Slowly, he reached the curb, and slid off the edge back into the gutter.
He started rolling west without a thought. H.R. wanted to get away from that alley as fast as he could. Cars passed him, and children pressed their faces against the windows to stare and point. His trip down the street covered him in dirty water, nicks, and splotches of gum. After a mile, H.R.needed a rest.
“It’s so hot and sticky here. I’m beginning to think this isn’t London at all.” H.R. heard a loud noise behind him. He turned and saw a queer machine with giant bristles coming towards him. He had never seen a street sweeper before, and it’s size and sound terrified him.
“That’s not a ball return mechanism!” He tried to roll out of the street sweeper’s path, but the heat and gum made him stick to the pavement. With certain death approaching, H.R. tried to summon courage for a noble end, and began reciting “The March of the Light Brigade” to himself. “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward...” The spinning brushes passed over H.R., but he was far too heavy for the machine to pick up. Part of the street sweeper’s undercarriage bumped against the top of H.R. and pressed him against the curb. The sweeper became stuck, and the driver turned off the engine, and the whirring bristles slowly stopped their rotation and became quiet.
“Well, what’d I find today?” said the driver as he laid flat on his stomach to check under the machine. He saw H.R. beside the curb. “Aren’t you a big fella? Up into the cab with you.”
The driver picked up H.R. and tucked him under his right arm. He grabbed a handle with the other and pulled the both of them into the cab of the street sweeper. He placed H.R. in the seat next to him and started the engine again.
“Oh dear, now where will I end up?” thought H.R. worriedly. He and the driver went all over the city for the rest of the day, cleaning the city’s gutters, and collecting an assortment of objects left in the street. When the driver returned to the garage at the end of the day, he placed H.R. in a large duffel bag with the other items he’d found: a messy ball of wire, 2 different tennis shoes and a pair of boots, a stack of old magazines, and a radio alarm clock.
“It’s so dark and stuffy-this must be the end! He’s going to throw us all into the Thames.” But then H.R. felt he was being transported in another vehicle. After a while they stopped, and the man carried the bag out. H.R. heard a few doors open and close, and then the man said, “Where’s Amelia?”
“She’s in the backyard, Hun,” a woman’s voice answered. H.R. heard them pass through another door.
“Amelia, you want come take first look at what daddy found today?”
“Yes,” replied a small voice. H.R. saw the sun shine through as the bag’s zipper was undone. The silhouette of a small head appeared in the opening. “Some of it’s kind of smelly.”
“We’ll throw out whatever you don’t want to keep.” That phrase scared H.R. Where would he get thrown if he wasn’t to this child’s liking? She reached her hands in to pick him up.
“It’s heavy, but I’m really strong, so that’s okay,” Amelia said. Her dad smiled.
“You’re the strongest little girl I ever met.”
“Okay, I’ll keep him, and the magazines, and the clock radio for science experiments,” she said, carrying H.R. over to the area where she had been playing.
“That’s a great idea. I think we found something last week that will go perfectly with the bowling ball,” said her father.
“Oh yeah!” said Amelia, and she set H.R. down on the ground, and ran into a small playhouse. She emerged with a shabby, but still intact, black bowler hat. She put the hat on H.R. and lifted him into a small chair.
“Would you like some tea, Mr. Bowly?” she said as she sat down to continue her tea party.
“Finally! A civilized person to converse with,” thought H.R.
