In Muscatine on Tuesday, January 19, 1954, Dale’s diary says I got a job setting pins at the bowling alley. This was prior to automatic pinsetters; I sat at the back of the “pit,” manually put balls in return chutes and hand-racked the pins. It could be dangerous, since a pin would occasionally fly past your head. Above is a video that shows a manual pinsetter (there’s an opening ad that’s pretty interesting, but you can skip it).