Bowling alley provides free bowling to teens

PARIS — Christmas was made a little more fun Friday, December 21, for 22 teens from families in the Oxford Hills area who may be having a little harder time this year making ends meet. Hobbs Lucky Lanes in South Paris opened up their bowling alley and provided pizza, soda and three full hours of bowling absolutely free to all 22 of these teens, along with some of the adult staff from His Place Teen Center in Oxford, who worked in conjunction with Hobbs Lucky lanes to make this special Christmas event happen.

Melody Hobbs, who owns Hobbs Lucky Lanes along with her husband, had been talking to one of the board members from His Place Teen Center back in November, explaining to him how she and her husband had been wanting to do something special this year for some teens whose families may be having a hard time and may not be able to easily afford a night out at the bowling alley for their children.

They then decided to work together to make this great event happen. His Place Teen Center provided the teens and Hobbs Lucky Lanes provided the free bowling, food and soda from 3 to 6 p.m. All of the teens, many of whom had never even bowled before, were very happy and thankful that Melody and her husband would do something like this for them.

After the bowling, most of the teens were then transported to the Teen Center in Oxford for a special Christmas event called "I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas," where the teens used special paint to make designs and write on white shirts that they then wore into the game room that was outfitted and only lit with black lights for the night of playing pool, air hockey, foosball and other games.