Paula Merritt / The Meridian StarAshlyn Davis turns to celebrate with her uncle Wesley Miller after releasing the ball on a frame at the Family Bowl Lanes Thursday night. The lanes will close on Dec. 31 with no announced plan to reopen elsewhere.

By sometime next week the echoes of flying bowling pins will have faded away and only ghosts of bowlers past and the odor of well-oiled lanes and rental shoes will remain at Family Bowling Lanes on North Hills Street.

That is sad news and not only for the bowlers who will have lost their last public lanes in Lauderdale County. Leagues of bowlers and open bowlers alike will have to drive a distance or have to hold onto hope that maybe a new bowling facility will open sometime in the future.

But we mourn the loss of Family Bowing Center more than the loss of a sport.

A bowling alley is a melting pot where a community mixes and bonds – or at least shares a scoring table and a horseshoe of benches for a couple of hours of marking strikes and spares.

Not everyone can be a classic league bowler and roll 300 games and 800 series. But most of us have spent some fun time together at a bowling alley since that first day as a child when we could lift a bowling ball, two-handed, and roll it between our legs and down those shiny maple lanes.

Since then, some bowled with their families, couples bowled on dates and years later came back with their families, churches bowled by the bus load, senior citizens bowled so not to be alone, the guys or girls had a night out, and a few bowlers became very good and wore fancy shirts.

People who lived in mansions bowled next to people who lived where no maintenance was afforded. Bowlers shared a scoring table with people of other races and religions. Republicans and Democrats bought a round for each other.

We learned to talk with each other, be civil with each other and laugh with each other. At the end of the day, we realized we had something in common, even if it was only that heavy round ball that drifted into the gutter and made us swear or smile.

We mourn the loss of Family Bowling Lanes for all of that and more.

Meridian has few places like it where we all come together. There’s no minor-league ballpark where we can all rally behind the same team over the course of a season, no entertainment venue where we spend time talking with anyone except the ones we already know.

We tend to be fragmented by neighborhoods, schools, houses of worship and clubs and we fail to recognize our commonalities as we stare into our electronic devices, looking for reinforcement of the beliefs and likes we already hold.

When we see or hear an opposing idea, we’re quick to close our eyes and ears and we lash out in disagreement, having lost that practice of bowling together.

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We are sometimes reminded of that fragmentation when a letter arrives at our office, almost always unsigned, critical because we report news that reader doesn’t like or we allow the publication of numerous points of view. The letter writer hopes we will go out of business, or worse. If only the writer would sign his or her name so we could talk.

But we take heart when signed letters to Santa arrive at our office, because they are filled with hope.

We share a couple of those letters because we want to believe Santa reads The Meridian Star, and we want him to know that:

• Forrest would like table tennis, a basketball, a basketball goal, chocolate, a paint set, a football, baseballs, a slime kit and a watch.

• Sage would like to know if reindeer eat cookies? And she has been a very good girl this year so she would like a Maui doll from Moana, please, and a princess doll, please.

• Hayden has been a very good boy and would like a truck, a robot, a space ship, a pirate boat and Doctor Who. Oh, he also promises to leave milk and cookies for Santa and milk for his reindeer.

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We add our own wish that Santa brings them bowling balls and a new bowling center so we can all go bowling together and learn how to get along.