F&D Pro Shop’s glass door muffles the thunder of pins and bowling balls in a Denton bowling alley, as it has for nearly a decade. Like an attentive Old World craftsman, 63-year-old Fred Ferraro caresses the contours of a bowler’s fingers, fashioning a perfect fit.

For the DRC/Danny Fulgencio

Fred Ferraro of F&D Pro Shop demonstrates how bowling balls are drilled in his workshop at Denton’s Brunswick Zone bowling center.

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Ferraro’s own hands are grandfatherly and precise as a whirring drill press sinks three holes into the bowling ball.

Fitting the ball takes more than an hour.

A man enters the store. He buys bowling ball cleaner. Dora, Ferraro’s wife of 41 years, uses her fingernail to peel off the price tag and sticks it to a shelved, unpriced bottle of cleaner.

“You reuse the labels?” the customer asks.

“Those little things get expensive,” she says.

In a refuge built for recreation, in a sport with its own culture and peculiar personalities, the Ferraros and Brunswick Zone’s close-knit household now face a slippery economic dilemma: Bowling’s skidding popularity is provoking change across the knock-and-crash world of oiled bowling lanes.

The brick walls of Brunswick’s bar and lounge display 4-foot-tall, black-and-white bowling portraits from the 1950s. The images testify to a time before the population of sanctioned bowlers slipped from more than 4 million to fewer than 2 million.

Brunswick’s community has lost its traction. The global economic downturn has driven some local bowlers to relocate in search of work or quit the sport entirely. Even die-hards have been forced to adapt.

“The people that used to bowl three and four nights a week have dropped down to one or two nights a week,” Brunswick sales director Ashlee Hannah said.

To draw young blood through its sliding glass doors, the bowling center offers free lessons four times a week — hoping to nurture a new generation of bowlers before the sport’s golden generation enters its twilight.

Theories on the decline of league bowling compete with the easygoing banter heard across Brunswick. They include stiff competition for leisure dollars, social fragmentation and outsourcing of jobs once filled by blue-collar bowlers. One thing is certain: For many families, the demands of a $500, 33-week winter season might better be spent on domestic needs.

Denton’s Brunswick Zone was built in 1982, and many of its ranks have patronized the bowling center for decades.

“If you’re a bowler, you experience a certain awesome family feel,” Hannah said.

Bowling used to be a family affair. These days, though, people play pool where Brunswick’s lounge once housed a child care center.

An avid bowler of nine years, Hannah said Denton’s Brunswick Zone fortifies its community with regulars from as far away as Lake Kiowa, St. Jo and Bowie — distant places that don’t have bowling alleys.

A year ago, Hannah drove her car into a ditch, overcorrected and flipped her vehicle, snapping her neck. Wearing a halo brace, Hannah returned to Brunswick and was welcomed with a huge, pop-up Valentine’s Day card signed by bowlers. She still pins her hair to cover surgical scars from her injuries.

In addition to organizing leagues, Hannah books birthday, holiday and company bowling parties. She also solicits corporate reservations to bolster Brunswick’s revenue.

Acme Brick’s Denton plant once routinely booked parties at Brunswick Zone. But the subprime mortgage crisis wiped out orders for building materials. Since 2007, Acme Brick has temporarily closed 16 plants and laid off employees.

Budget cuts also have curtailed employee bowling parties, a business on which Hannah and Brunswick once could depend.

“[Companies] want to reward their staff, but they’re doing in-facility parties instead of going out,” Hannah said. “That’s what I’ve gotten a lot of this year.”

With diminished league participation and wavering reservations, Brunswick relies more heavily on “open play bowlers” who are simply out for a good time. That group includes children — and some adults — who relish flip-up gutters that ricochet a wayward ball toward the pins. To the dismay of bowling purists, weekend nights feature “cosmic bowling,” a dusky mix of disco lights and loud Top 40 music.

Weekday evenings offer discounted games to increase traffic.

Survival

On a Tuesday night, Joe Overman bowls with two college-age friends on Lane 29.

The scoreboard reports Overman’s name as “Dorothy,” a reference to The Wizard of Oz.

Each time, Overman stands on his toes and clicks his heels three times before rushing forward to lob the ball. A quirky ritual? Perhaps. But Overman’s average over five games hovers near 200. A perfect game is 300.

Overman has never bowled in a league or taken the game seriously. He hadn’t even picked up a bowling ball in two years.

“Bowling’s a special-occasion kind of thing,” he said. “Like going to the carnival.”

Brunswick would love to change Overman’s mind.

For the DRC/Danny Fulgencio

Dora and Fred Ferraro stand in their F&D Pro Shop at Denton’s Brunswick Zone bowling center.

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The survival of many bowling centers hinges on revenue generated by open play bowlers, but they seldom buy from stores like F&D Pro Shop, putting a strain on the Ferraros’ business.

Among the wafts of greasy burgers and cigarette smoke, none of the 17 seniors preparing for the weekly nine-pin sweeper speaks of the recession.

Some of these bowlers wear knee braces. Some wear hearing aids. At age 71, Glenn “Tip” Bullock wraps his fingers with medical tape.

Bullock has bowled for 58 years, winning countless tournaments. As a teenager, he worked as a pinsetter before the widespread use of mechanized bowling lanes. Bullock laments skyrocketing bowling scores made possible by innovations in hollowed plastic pins and reactive resin bowling balls.

“I used to be one of five guys in Dallas who bowled an average over 200,” he said. “Now I bowl in entire leagues where the average is over 200.”

The nine-pin sweeper begins with a flurry as bowling balls rush down the lanes. The noise is symphonic: A hard strike explodes the pin formation with a raucous chord; someone rolls a single-note spare with all the discretion of a lone whisker nicked by a straight razor.

Bullock sits dejectedly after bowling an open frame — failing to post a strike or spare.

“I’ve got to get someone to carry me this game,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” says another bowler. “I can’t afford to rent a forklift.”

Each bowler sets up with tremendous concentration. Each knock of the ball against the lane signals the start of a personal victory or defeat. Some bowlers step back clenching their fists; others hold their palms wide open.

A woman pushes past the door at F&D Pro Shop with her bowling ball. Fred Ferraro jumps from his seat.

“Let’s look. Let’s look,” he says.

“I have arthritis,” she says.

“I remember that because I remember changing the angle here.”

He modifies the ball in his small workshop, telling the woman that he and his wife will soon visit family in New York.

Before opening F&D Pro Shop, Ferraro spent 10 years in sales. Though successful, he became increasingly unhappy, and when his employer chose to redistribute cultivated customers to a less experienced sales staff, he quit.

“I was becoming militant,” Ferraro said.

Then, Dora Ferraro, after getting cut loose by Halliburton, was axed by GTE.

The couple invested in their lifelong love of bowling. In 2001, they signed a business contract with Brunswick and began hawking wares in a rented commercial space they dubbed F&D Pro Shop. Business was great until the recession struck.

“Normally I spend $700 to $800 a quarter in slugs and grips, and this year I’m buying it as I need it,” Fred Ferraro said. He said he has no regrets about starting the business despite the last three turbulent years, claiming the economy “affects me only if I lay back and I let it affect me.”

During Monday night league play, Ferraro applies a similar idealism to bowling.

Speaking of himself and teammate Joe Kessler, Ferraro says, “Joe and I are the type of bowlers that don’t give the other team or someone who wants to beat us the permission to beat us. You beat us by bowling better.”

The Monday night league has dropped from 10 teams to six. Ferraro speculates that the league will not survive another season.

“Guys lose their jobs, guys get married … and then you don’t even see them in the bowling center anymore,” he said.

Kessler and Ferraro have bowled together since Kessler moved to Texas from Pennsylvania 13 years ago. He once bowled in three concurrent leagues but now limits his bowling to Mondays.

Kessler, 39, is an anomaly in a league where the 30-40 age group is an endangered species.

“I think that age group had kids and they were the most affected by the economy,” said Kessler, who is married with a 4-year-old daughter. “Because most of those were your middle managers. … [Now they’re] working late nights or unemployed or staying with their kids at home.”

After three games, Ferraro’s team loses. He sits before the scoring console recapping the team’s performance. His hands sweep through the air as he describes how ball traffic alters a lane’s character by moving oil around the bowling surface.

“You have to understand transition, or what’s called ‘change,’” he says.

Three months later, on a weekday afternoon, Brunswick Zone is brimming with bowlers but F&D Pro Shop is nearly empty. Fred Ferraro stands by a small, droning television. A young boy enters the store, gives Ferraro a hug and reports his 100-plus bowling scores.

“Not bad,” Ferarro says. “Not bad.”

Winter-league business once sustained the Ferraros through lean summer months, but this winter’s weak holiday sales have proven terminal.

After almost a decade of service to Denton’s bowling community, the Ferraros plan to close their store. Once their contract with Brunswick expires in May, Fred and Dora Ferraro intend to retire and lock F&D Pro Shop’s glass door for good.

The craftsman stands tall in his workshop. His days of fitting and drilling bowling balls are almost over. “It’s time,” he says.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is one of a collection written by University of North Texas journalism students as part of a feature writing course. This year’s stories deal with the challenges facing everyone in light of the global economic downturn. Other students’ stories will be showcased in Denton Up Close, an annual publication inside today’s edition of the Denton Record-Chronicle.