Small town chronicles, Hoyt Showler

Every Monday morning since September Hoyt Showler drives to the bowling alley in Imlay City to bowl in one of his three leagues. Hoyt has that gait of a former football player as he approaches me to tell me he’s been leaving the “dang ten pin” all morning. Sixty-five years of bowling and two 300 games under his belt and he still gets frustrated by that dreaded pin. Hoyt should have the insider’s scoop on pins, he used to set pins by hand at the four-lane bowling alley that was in the basement of the Masonic Temple. I tease him about his lack of experience.

Hoyt was born in 1941, just two weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His Parents were Don and Ada Hoyt Showler, he had an older brother Don, Jr. who also was a standout athlete at Imlay City High School and a younger sister, Paula. The family was living on Simmonds Rd. off Blacks Corners Rd. in Imlay Township when Hoyt made his debut. The youngster brought some levity to the hard-working family. Some of his antics, such as spreading mud all over his three-year-old body as he pulled his little wagon down the street, didn’t exactly endear him to his mother at the time. As he got older, he would go to Mill Creek to fish. The creek was altered, Hoyt recalled, when “Guys would come barreling down the road and throw a stick of dynamite into the creek and BOOM! Then they take off down the road at 80 miles an hour to avoid the cops.” The neighborhood kids would jump in and collect the stunned fish, throwing back the ones too small for dinner. Once they found a three-foot pike, it came through and swam away. I hear it’s still there to this day and its name is Walter.

They also swam in the creek. One time when Hoyt was about ten, he was wading along and a large rock about three feet in diameter moved and scared the bejeepers out him. Turns out it was a huge snapping turtle. It, too, might be still roaming around Black Corners and Weyer Roads some seventy years later. Mud puppies were another creature of the creek that the children were divided on. Some finding them “cool,” others running away when one was spotted.

There were only three houses on Simmonds Road, an elderly lady named Alice Johnson lived in one and the Watsons, a middle-aged couple lived in the other house. But around the corner on Blacks Corners and Weyer Roads lived the Stovers, the Gibbards and Sefcovics, providing plenty of playmates. The children attended Blacks Corners Country School, where they played baseball and other games during recess. Mrs. Teal taught about 20 kids from kindergarten up to sixth grade. After sixth grade most of the children went to Imlay City School. The Showlers moved to Bancroft Street where the K-12 School was located. A two-story house just across from the school was a change from the country house. The family hadn’t been moved in long before Hoyt’s adventurous spirit moved him to jump out of the window on the second floor. When asked why? The teenager answered “for the hell of it”. Fortunately, he was not badly injured, a twisted ankle maybe, Hoyt said. He remembers the old fire escape at the school, a metal slide that many kids went down not necessarily to escape a fire but rather “for the hell of it”. Even though he was now living in town, he still enjoyed hunting and fishing. He even went out and set a trap for a farmer who was having trouble with muskrats. He set the trap and was somewhat surprised at his quick success. The next day a big old fat muskrat was in the trap. He heard that Earl Sharrard was paying good money for the pelts. Hoyt was flabbergasted when he was paid $4.50. Compared to what he was making as a pin boy at the bowling alley this was twice as much! Of course, he decided this was easy money and set the trap again, and as he tells it, he “never caught another damn one in my life!”

Before the bowling alley was built out on M53, bowling was at a small four lane alley in the basement of the 1913 Masonic Temple building on Third Street. Teen boys were hired to set the pins by hand. They had to be quick and agile, grab the ball roll it up the track back to the bowler, clear the pins by grabbing as many as they could at one time, put them back into the metal pins that pop up to help center the pins, which then retract back into the floor. Later there was a rack with slots in which you put the pins. Some men threw the ball as hard as they could and deliberately before the pinsetter could hop back up on their seat, finding it amusing to send the young men scrambling. Hoyt colorfully recounted one man throwing the ball so hard he nearly broke Hoyt’s ankle. The teen was seeing red and THREW the bowling ball back at him. The man didn’t do that again. Showler earned $1.50 for three games. That wasn’t bad money for a kid in 1955 when a Coke at Dean’s Drugstore cost a nickel, a movie at the Deluxe Theater was 25-50 cents, depending on if it was a matinee or not. You could take a date to Homestead Restaurant for a hamburger and milkshake for a buck. At about 28 cents a gallon, you could get your car filled up at the corner of 53 & 21 by Art Swailes, the gas jockey at Hi-Speed (later known as Pure Oil).

Showler’s dad and brother bowled at the “Temple” but Hoyt said he didn’t really start bowling himself until he got out of high school. He met his future bride, Sharon Upleger at the Bancroft School. In 1959 Imlay opened the “new” high school for grades 8th to 12th. Showler played basketball, baseball and football but football was his four-year sport. He remembers playing with the Clark twins, Skip Cameron, Gene Thompson, Doug Perkins, Terry Ignasiak, John Lengemann, Bob and Don Maison, Dick Goodrich, Roger Lomerson, Jerry Nagy. Lyle Powers and John Laskarides were among the coaches he recalled.

Before the new school was built, the football players had to walk to the football field from Bancroft Street. The football field had been located at the end of First Street, west of the baseball diamond, long before the school buildings were erected. There were cows grazing on the farm land that laid between the pickle factory and the football field. Hoyt recalled, “We had to get dressed at the school on Bancroft St. and carry our football equipment. We would go to the where the RR tracks cross Almont Ave., go down the tracks to Second Street and enter the field at the north end of the parking lot. We practiced or played a game and then had to walk all the way back to Bancroft. There weren’t any school buses to take us, we’d be tired as hell.” Hoyt was a 165-pound tackle, “blocking for our running back while chasing theirs.” Back then you played both defense and offense. Our running back was Jim Ward. We blocked for him the best we could. He later went on to play at UM and the Continental Football League.”

I guess those young 150-to-165-pound tackles did their jobs pretty well for the small-town star running back to get the recruiter’s attention.

Lyle “Cub” Powers coached Showler when he played ball for an American Legion fast pitch team. They played their games at Grettenberger Field, where the grandstand was built in the late 1930s by the WPA program. Hoyt was a power hitter. There used to be pine trees out in the field. He hit a few homers that sailed clear past the trees. Once he was playing centerfield. As he was running down a fly ball, he misjudged and was hit squarely between the eyes and broke his nose. “The ball hit the edge where the grass meets the infield, before I could get my glove up, it bounced up and BAM!” He was knocked out cold, they carried him to the bench, laid him out and after about 20 minutes, he came to. The game was completed and poor Hoyt had to get on his bicycle and pedal home to Bancroft Street. “I was woozy and my legs were like rubber!” No concussion protocol, no follow-up to the parents, just a pat on the back and sent on your way home. See ya tomorrow. But Hoyt still admires his coaches and like many of his generation, praises Powers as a good coach and teacher.

When not working at the bowling alley or going to school, you could find Hoyt at Ed Wagner’s Pool Hall on Almont Ave. between Third and Fourth St. It’s now a green space, having been torn down some 30 years ago. Showler was a pretty good pool player and some would say a pool hustler. “These old farmers would come in chewing tobacco. There were spittoons all over the place. Their aim wasn’t always good though. They missed the pots half the time. They would come in when it was raining and they couldn’t work in the fields, so they would come up for a game of pool.”

The demographic of the old pool hall ranged from pimply faced teenage boys; servicemen home from Korea, to overall-wearing vegetable farmers. It was the latter that Hoyt would play nine balls with. To make things interesting they challenged the teenager by playing for money. A quarter and up was the ante. One day the 16-year-old completely wiped out a local of his money. The next day the man came in, hollering at Ed “where is that damn kid that took all my money!” Hoyt chuckled, “Ed said, well he isn’t here!” “He wanted a rematch; he was so pissed, but I already spent his money on candy. Yup, I already spent his money!”

In 1957, Cedar Lanes was built on M53, where it still stands today. It had 8 lanes and attached was Imlay City Lounge, later called the Nite Owl. Hoyt started to bowl there after he graduated from high school in 1960.

He said there were times you “had to holler, hey you SOB get back here and bowl!” Hoyt laughed it seems the bowlers spent as much time on the bar stool as they did on the lanes.

To be continued. The next installment of our interview with Hoyt Showler will cover his young adult life. Harry Diehl, Vlasics, Clearlake Racetrack.

If you or someone you know would like to share their life stories, please email me at tct@pageone-inc.com, put “Small town Chronicles” In subject line. I would be honored to have a chat with you.