Fort Ord: Clancy and the Bowling Alley House

I don't think it was a common term, but I have heard a couple of people call them "bowling alley" houses.

When I was attending the Defense Language Institute, West Coast (DLIWC), in Monterey, California in 1983-84, studying Polish, my family and I were given quarters on Fort Ord. Because of the size of our family, three kids, two cats, and a dog...okay, the animals didn't count...we were given a four-bedroom home.

Originally there were not any of these on Fort Ord, and a lot of the housing was duplexes with only a couple of bedrooms. Each duplex had a carport on each end. However, over the years, the Army had the dividing walls knocked out of some of the duplexes and converted one of the carports into a master bedroom.

Since the original duplexes had a single hallway running the entire length of the house, when they took out the dividing wall, you wound up with one awfully long home with a verrrry long hallway running from the living room to the master bedroom. Hence the nickname, "bowling alley house".

It was nice on Fort Ord. Quiet, pretty, just minutes from Monterey Bay and downtown Monterey itself. One of the great things is that we did not have...or need...an air conditioner.

The kids liked the house, especially the pink-blooming ice plant in the back yard, which was long and narrow, like the house. However, Clancy liked it even better.

Clancy was our crazy cat. Lean to the point of scrawny and slightly mad, Clancy loved to run full-tilt down the hall, hit the living room floor, and slam on brakes. Trouble was, the living room floor was a very slick wood parquet. Although Clancy would go through the normal stopping process, on that floor it wouldn't work. Scrabbling madly, Clancy would slide at high speed across the living room floor and smash into the far wall.

Then, the mad Irish-cat Clancy would shake his head for a second almost like Tom in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and then he would run back down to the bedroom for another shot.

We had given him the name "Clancy" because he had that lean appearance and slightly mad look which reminded us of a man named Clancy with whom we had once worked.

Sadly, one morning I got up and walked into the living room and found Clancy dead on the living room floor. We had no idea what he died from, but I have often wondered if he took one trip too many down the hallway at the bowling alley house.