A&B Bowling Supply Co. saw its last official day of business a week ago, although Neil Mortenson has yet to lock the front door or put up a closed sign. This means people are still coming in for bowling balls and shoes and the paraphernalia associated with each. Neil sells what he has handy, but Terry Nakayama wanted a golf trophy engraved — an A&B sideline — and was out of luck.
“Sorry, we’re out of business,” says Neil’s wife, Patty. She’s expecting what comes next: “What? Oh, my God! How come you’re going out of business?”
“They take it personally. ‘Where am I going to go now? What am I going to do?’ ” Patty says later. “I’ve been preparing for this for months and months, and I just don’t know what to say to people. It’s harder than you can imagine.”
“It’s the hardest decision I ever made in my life,” Neil says.
As family lore goes, Neil’s grandpa won the business in a poker game. This is a good story. It’s not true, but it’s a good story.
“It gets embellished,” Neil says. His grandfather, Burns Alverson, opened A&B in 1959. He went by Burns but invoked his full name, Arthur Burns, when deciding what to call the business. “And the initial A gets you first in the phone book,” Neil says. Remember the phone book?
The poker game did take place. It was a family game, and Burns suggested to his son-in-law, Neil’s father, Wayne, that he take over half the business. By the end of the game, it was the whole business. By 1966, Neil’s parents were in the bowling-supply business.
Wayne and Dot moved their digs from Carr Street to the current location at 7885 W. 16th Ave. in Lakewood. Neil went to work for them right out of high school. “So, basically, I haven’t filled out a resume since 1972,” he says. He and his brother, Terry, took over the business in 1989.
When A&B closed last week, it was in its 52nd year and third generation. Or, as the bowlers might say: A&B, born in the Manhattan Rubber past, died in the reactive urethane present.
That was long enough to bid farewell to Varsity Bowl, Northgate, Sloan’s Lake, Bowl-ero, Green Gables, Celebrity and Applewood lanes, just to name a few.
It’s not longevity alone that makes an institution. Nor is it the passing of principle and practice through generations, although continuity is key. It is, as Patty says, personal. The bowling world is not a big place. Just about everyone in the business knows Neil and Patty, knew Wayne and Dot. Some even remember Burns. Bowling alleys ordered their supplies through them. Bowlers stopped by to say hello when they were in the neighborhood. This is what the making of an institution requires: the transformation of a transaction into a relationship.
“There’s a boatload of really nice people in bowling,” Neil says, and if you know Neil, you know he didn’t say “boatload.” “They are just the salt of the earth. You get a lot of blue-collar people. A lot of cops. A lot of firefighters.”
Between Internet competition, the limping economy and the steady decline in bowling leagues — league teams buy; open players usually rent — the business was suffering, Neil says. They had to lay off their embroiderer, most of their ball drillers and their main employee in shipping.
A year ago, someone came by looking for a building to buy. No one here is selling, Patty said. But she called him back in June. He was still interested, and the offer was good.
The past several days, the Mortensons and Jeff Zajac, who has been with them 12 years, have been cleaning out decades of accumulation. They’re down to only a few bowling balls now, 16-pounders, but they have shoes, lots of gloves, wrist braces, old-school bowling shirts, desk clocks, resin figurines and more. They plan a big sale in the front parking lot Friday and Saturday. After that, Zajac will go work for a pro shop.
Neil and Patty intend to spend the winter skiing.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
