Roll With It
Travel Blog • Jenna Schnuer • 01.16.09 | 4:34 PM ET
Colonel Bowman’s hand. Photo by Jenna Schnuer“You the lady from New York?”
A loaded question if ever there was one. It’s drenched in the expectation that I’m some sort of big city snob out to prove that life outside NYC is no life at all.
But, once again, the question. This time it came in the Monroe County Marble Super Dome in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. I was there to spend four days with a group of guys who, daily, play game after game of Rolley-Hole marbles on the Super Dome’s dirt floor. With kids choosing Wii and X-Box over traditional games, Rolley-Hole probably won’t last through this century. Most of the Rolley-Hole crew has been shooting it out for 50 years or more.
Though some quiet chatting and talk of my ex—a Kentucky guy himself—seemed to put most of the marble men at ease, Colonel Bowman was a holdout. One of the Marble Dome’s elder statesmen, he usually stayed about 20 feet away from me. He pretty much left my questions about the game and life in Tompkinsville and the county’s best barbecue spot to everybody else. He always spoke loudly enough so I could hear him to quote him but he never spoke directly to me. When I finally got up the nerve to try playing Rolley-Hole myself, his color commentary came through loud and clear.
Like the hard-to-please boss I’d worked for years ago, I knew the only way to win Mr. Bowman over was to let him decide when I was OK. Throughout my sessions at the Marble Dome, I made sure he knew I was listening to him, but I didn’t chase him. I would have to wait for Colonel Bowman.
Then, the final morning, it happened.
“Anybody show you how to shoot one of these things?”
And, with that question, I knew I would always be welcome back at the Marble Dome. It seemed the lady from New York was OK after all.
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Freelancer Jenna Schnuer writes about travel, food, culture, books, and life's quirky bits (and bites) for publications including American Way, National Geographic Traveler, Southern Living, and many others. She also co-writes Flyover America, a site filled with quieter stories from around the U.S. Send Jenna an email or, if you're so inclined, follow her on Twitter.
Sophia Dembling 01.16.09 | 5:57 PM ET
The pressing question, of course: How’d you do at Rolley-Hole?
Jenna Schnuer 01.16.09 | 6:08 PM ET
Well, I was pretty bad. It is not an easy game. My marble went flying everywhere but where it was supposed to go. Or it just fizzled. Thud. Plop. But the hardest part of Rolley-Hole is the constant up and down; the next day I felt like I had done 50,000 leg presses with a million pound weight. Or something along those lines. The next morning, owing to my inability to walk without wincing, the guys had a good laugh.
Martha Barnette 01.16.09 | 7:45 PM ET
Who knew? I lived most of my life in Kentucky and never, ever heard of this! Thanks, y’all, for illuminating some of the highways and by-ways in our marvelous, yet-to-be-written-about flyover. There’s a whole lot of wonderful stuff out there that the coastal types miss.