Julie Coble brought years of laughter to Lucky Strike Lanes

Julie Coble (in purple shirt) is serenaded by a gorilla during a birthday celebration at Lucky Strike Lanes in 1996. Image by Del Stone Jr.
In September 1991, I joined the Friday Nite Early Mixers, a bowling league headquartered at Lucky Strike Lanes in Fort Walton Beach.
That first night was a lesson in humility for me. My brand-new ball wouldn’t hit the big side of a barn, I couldn’t keep score fast enough. And there was this woman who kept laughing. …
She laughed all night long – a trail of unconstrained mirth that caused everyone around her to laugh, too. I went home with the certainty that whoever she was, she was having a darned good time.
Later, I would learn her name.
Julie Coble.
Later still we’d bowl on the same team. We’d bowl in tournaments. We’d hang out, talk on the phone, and do all the tings good friends do.
I’m one of hundreds of people who can say that about Julie. She was everybody’s friend, and that’s why she laughed. Her heart held that much.
She was a terrific bowler. She threw a backup ball that would slide into the 1-2 pocket and produce a lethal scattering of pins. But you wouldn’t ask her to pick up the 7 pin. Her ball would either drop into the gutter or slide to the right.
The pin she made sure to get was the 5 pin, the one right in the middle. The “sex” pin. Pick up the 5 pin, and romance was in your immediate future. Miss it, and you’d be sleeping on the couch. She rarely missed it.
We teased her about that, a subject that elicited embarrassed peals of laughter and a blushing, unspoken acknowledgement that there were some things she wouldn’t share, not even with her very good friends. And being her very good friends, we teased her even more.
But Julie was more than our bowling friend.
She was a wife and a mother. She was an award-winning newspaper carrier. She had an uncanny knack for winning games of chance, like bingo, raffles and cards.
She could pick up at 4-10 split, or take on a lame tournament partner and roll a 600 series.
Best of all, give her a bowling alley full of grouchy people, and she’d have ’em laughing till they cried. She knew, and loved, everybody. And everybody knew, and loved, her.
About two years ago, Julie discovered she had inoperable cancer. The news cast a pall over the bowling alley.
But Julie simply carried on. This would not stop her, and indeed, it did not. Until a short while ago, she appeared at the bowling alley every Friday night, laughing and bowling. When the chemo took her hair, she got a wig and kept right on going. When she could no longer heft her 14-pound ball, she bought a lighter ball.
Through the worst of everything, she laughed. It was a humbling thing to see. Her heart was larger than any of us could imagine.
Julie died Saturday night. She would have been 46 on March 18.
It is impossible to remember Julie without remembering how much she loved this world and her life. We are all sad, but somehow, as I think about her, I find myself trying to smile.
Whenever Julie told somebody goodbye, she’d sign off with, “See ya, Sweetie.”
So for all of us, I say:
We’ll see ya.
Sweetie.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .