This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, November, 2022
“O Captain! My Captain!” was Walt Whitman’s most popular poem while he was alive and, now that 130 years have passed since Whitman died, we can say it remains his most popular poem. Published in 1865, this poem was one of four Whitman wrote in tribute to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America, who had recently been assassinated.
This is all common knowledge. What is less known is that Whitman’s poem is actually a parody of another poem written years prior. “O Captain! My Captain!” has always stood out from Whitman’s other work because of its style and rhyming scheme, but a recent discovery shows we finally know why: he was using the style of another poet and changing the words in tribute to his fallen president. Call him “Weird Walt” Whitman.
The original poem, “O Lane Man! My Lane Man!” was written in 1840 by I.T. Sunfair, an aspiring bowler who was never able to make a cut but would not stop trying because he knew it wasn’t his fault. He bowled at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City and competed with a few other guys who showed up for a one-day event hosted by the hotel general manager—who also acted as lane man—every weekend.
Whatever the cut was, Sunfair would miss by just a few pins despite rolling it better and with far more accuracy and knowledge than any of his competitors. This remained true even with the advent of the non-champions events in the 1850s. Sunfair knew he was the best player who ever lived but he didn’t have any of the official accolades to prove it. Also, as there was no national governing body at the time, none of those accolades would’ve meant anything anyway. Sunfair knew the only reason he couldn’t win was because of the lane conditions.
Sunfair was also a visionary. He knew what bowling would eventually become, with automatic oiling machines, multiple squads of bowlers, endless qualifying and the like, but he knew one thing would stay the same: the lane man.
Two months ago, on a construction site in New York, a crane operator found an old bowling ball. Stuffed inside its cracked thumbhole was a ravaged piece of paper with Sunfair’s unmistakable handwriting on it. When the crane operator realized what he’d found, he threw it in the trash, bowling ball and all. The first bowler who happened by that trash can yanked the ball out and wondered to himself whether it was clean through the heads before picking up in the midlane and hitting hard in the backend. He was certain it was all those things. Then he made the poem public.
Here, for the first time in print, is Sunfair’s original poem that inspired Whitman’s much more famous piece:
O Lane Man! my Lane Man! the morning squad is done,
Now strip and oil every lane, from sixty down to one,
B squad is here, A squad has beer, the bowlers all complaining
Through tired eyes of every fan, and C squad still awaiting;
But O oil! oil! oil!
With the faintest hint of blue,
And on the lane my ball roll dies,
All because of you.
O Lane Man! my Lane Man! rise up before the dawn
Drive in—for you the doors are locked—the dew still on the lawn
For you complaints and diatribes—for you the schlubs a-shouting
For you they call, the angry lads, their hate-filled faces fuming;
Here Lane Man! dear oiler!
That rag that you imbue!
The carrydown that’s so unfair,
Is all because of you.
My Lane Man does not answer, his buttons have been pushed,
My oiler does not hear a sound, detractors have been shushed
The lane machine is on fifteen, its quest to strip and oil
From morning strikes to daytime yikes the players all recoil;
I bowled the best but got no breaks
So I once more am through
Missed the cut, my lane man friend
It’s all because of you.