Len Suhr recently joined ”Handlebars” Van Vooren and the other sporting immortals who will be celebrated as long as there are still a few crossroads taverns left where Flemish-speaking immigrants once drank.
”Kind of boring to watch, ain`t it?” observed Wilber Bender with a hint of pride, just before Suhr and his teammates won the 1988 World Championships of Rolle Bolle on a Saturday in early August. ”This is a game of hick towns where there`s nothing else to do, and old-timers with a need to hold something in their free hand while cradling a beer in the other.”
As Bender, the sport`s reigning historian, was explaining its acquired-taste appeal, Suhr took a hard rubber disk, 8 inches in diameter and 2 1/2 inches thick, and sent it rolling toward an opponent`s bolle, 30 feet away.
By knocking that other black cylinder out of scoring position, Suhr not only clinched his team`s victory, he also sent a wave of nostalgia crashing over the 67-year-old Bender.
”When he lets one fly like that, Len reminds me of Handlebars,” Bender said. ”He got the nickname because of the long, droopy mustache that used to flop around when he bowled, and back around `38 and `39, there wasn`t another player who could hold his own with old Handlebars. Now Len is as close to a superstar as we`ve got.”
By day, Bender recalled, Van Vooren might have been just another of the anonymous immigrants who then labored in the foundaries and mills of Moline, Ill., about 55 miles west of Princeton. But at the quitting whistle, Handlebars` fellow Belgians would admiringly follow him down to Van Collie`s Tavern on Moline`s 3d Street, where he ruled supreme over the rolle bolle court.
”Back then, every tavern on 3d Street had a court, and Handlebars and the others would run along behind their bolle, chattering away in Flemish, sort of giving it final instructions,” Bender said. ”My father took me there so I could see the game he`d played, growing up in the old country. Of course, that also gave him a chance to down a brew or two.”
Now Van Collie`s and the other workingman`s taverns that once lined Moline`s riverfront are shuttered, as the district awaits renovation, and condos and fern bars might soon stand on ground that Van Vooren once made famous. The closing of any rolle bolle court is a sad occasion, Bender noted, because there never were many to begin with.
Rolle bolle, he explained, was the sport of one group in a tiny nation. Belgium is divided between the Flemings, whose native language is a Dutch dialect, and the French-speaking Walloons. Rolle bolle, a Flemish passion, was carried to this country, starting at the turn of the century, by immigrants from that linguistic community.
”Most of the Flemish wound up farming this part of western Illinois and over into Iowa. There`s also a colony up in Minnesota and one in Canada,”
Bender said. ”Wherever they settled, there`d be a tavern or social club with a rolle bolle court out behind, just like they might pitch horseshoes alongside another country tavern.”
Indeed, rolle bolle is something of a combination of horseshoes and lawn bowling. Each end of the court is marked by a stake and, as in horseshoes, the object is to have your bolles wind up closer to the stake than the other team`s. But it is a game of bowling rather than tossing, albeit the object is a cylinder rather than a ball, as it is in bocce, the Italian verson of lawn bowling, or boules, the French variety.
Just to make things interesting, Bender pointed out, a bolle`s inside and outside diameters are slightly different. Because of that beveled edge, Euclid notwithstanding, in this sport a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. Instead of aiming directly for the stake at the other end of the court, a player must send his bolle rolling through a curved path for it drop on its side near its target. Mastering the game`s geometry can take years of practice.
”It helps to have a beer or two to loosen up beforehand,” Bender said.
”Matter of fact, Edmund Driessen, another old-time champ, used to stagger onto the court, pretending he was a lot shicker than he was, just to throw a scare into his opponents.”
To knock a bolle away from the stake, a player switches techniques, aiming his own bolle straight ahead, so it will go crashing into his opponent`s at top speed and remove it from scoring range. That tactic is called ”shooting,” and to be competitive a team must include a top-notch shooter among its three members. A game alternates between rounds of
”bowling” and ”shooting” until one side makes 8 points, and when shooters and bowlers are evenly matched, it can take some time to run up that score.
”I don`t much like going to the Canadians` matches, because they bowl at a turtle`s pace up there,” Bender said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it had just taken 10 hours under a blazing Middle-American sun to determine this year`s world championship.
A decade or so ago, observed Don Miller, the tournament`s superintendent, the competition annually attracted more than 100 teams. This year 70 showed up, representing towns such as Mineral, Ill., Victor, Ia., and Holland, Manitoba.
”Folks get old and move away,” Miller said of the decline in entries.
”Last few years, they`ve been holding their own rolle bolle competition in St. Petersburg, Fla., and I heard they`re putting in a court in some retirement community in Arizona.”
Yet in one respect, the sport has broadened its base in recent years. Until about a decade ago, noted Sid Douglas, whose team won the women`s title, rolle bolle was a male preserve. When a Flemish community gathered for a picnic or church social, the women were relegated to a variation on the game, in which they tried to roll bolles through a pair of stakes but didn`t do the ”shooting” that provides the sport`s intermittent moments of excitement.
”It was about as thrilling as the old `women`s baskeball,` where you could only dribble twice,” Douglas said. ”Finally, some of the women stood up and told their husbands: `If we don`t play, you`re not going down to the tavern anymore.` ”
In combination with the sport`s declining numbers, that ultimatum finally led to the establishment of a women`s division for the world championships. Now some regional tournaments also include mixed competition, Douglas noted, though some male players still are uncomfortable with the sight of a woman on a rolle bolle court.
”Some of the husbands don`t believe their wives really understand the game, so they`d signal them how to play their shots,” Douglas said. ”The tournament finally put in a rule against coaching from the sidelines. But take a look: You`ll see how some of the old-timers still see us as trespassers.”
Most aficionados, though, welcome any recruits to rolle bolle`s declining ranks. In Belgium, the game survives only in isolated rural districts, reported Marvel Schafbuch, of Kosta, Ia., who made a sentimental journey there seven years ago.
”When we asked about rolle bolle in Brussels, people didn`t know what we were talking about, until one fellow told us the name of a village where it`s still played,” Schafbuch said. ”It took two trains and two buses to get out there, and those folks were just as surprised to learn we`re still bowling in Iowa.”
Indeed, for some fans, it is the sport`s endangered-species status that keeps them coming to the Bureau County Fairgrounds, where the tournament is held. Al De Paul always shows up, bringing the bolles he has made in the basement of his Geneseo, Ill., farm home and offering them for sale out of the trunk of his car.
”At $20 or $30 apiece, I don`t make any money at this, considering a bolle will last a lifetime and how few players come into the game anymore,”
De Paul said. ”It`s a labor of love, you might say.”
Phill Emerson, the groundskeeper, nodded his agreement, then started pulling the stakes up out of the tournament ground`s 40 courts. The quality of the playing surface greatly affects a rolle bolle game, Emerson noted. So to ensure that nobody gets an advantage over other competitors, the fairground`s courts are used only twice a year, for the state and world championships. Yet all summer long, Emerson commutes here from his home in Sheffield, 16 miles away, to weed the courts and water down their limestone playing surface.
”It`s a heritage thing, you see. I`m a full-fledged Belgian on both sides,” Emerson said of his self-imposed labors. ”Yet like most of us, I can`t speak a word of Flemish, so rolle bolle is the main thing we got to remember our grandparents by.”
