By Solomon Crenshaw Jr. | For the Birmingham Times
Ruby Taylor says activity is her secret for being 100 years old.
“It’s important to keep moving your body,” the Pleasant Grove resident said. “That’s how I reached this age, by moving. Just don’t sit in your house and look at the walls. Go out. Exercise. That’s very, very important.”
Toward that end, Miss Ruby, as she is called, can be found nearly every Monday evening at Tuscany Lanes & Café at The Bridge, the multipurpose complex on the campus of Faith Chapel non-denominational church. Every week with her green, 10-pound bowling ball. Every week wearing her Dexter brand bowling shoes.
“I’ve been bowling for a long, long time,” Miss Ruby said prior to a recent league competition. “I started bowling when I retired and I retired at 62.”
Besides bowling, Miss Ruby likes to sit on her front porch to get plenty of sun and fresh air and walk around her neighborhood. She also exercises at home and at the Dolomite Senior Center.
“Once a week they have a lady to come up there and give us exercise (lessons),” the 100-year-old said. “I happen to go on that day that she comes. We raised our arms and legs. It’s very pleasant. You get out of the house.”
Miss Ruby also plays games — like dominos, cards and checkers — during her visits to the senior center.
A Perfect Game
The youngest of five siblings was born on May 7, 1926. She was the guest of honor of several birthday parties, including one that featured cupcakes prior to bowling at Tuscany.
After graduating from Westfield High School in 1944, Miss Ruby lost her steelworker father, and she left the metro area for New York. She worked as a seamstress in a factory there until retirement and returned to metro Birmingham.
Upon her return, Miss Ruby started bowling at Vestavia Bowling Lanes in Vestavia Hills. It was there that she recorded a perfect game of 300. She has bowled at Tuscany Lanes for about a decade.
“When she first started bowling, I was basically running the bowling center,” Carlton Martin said. “Now, I manage all events at The Bridge. But at the time, I was just doing bowling stuff. It was probably 2015 when we started the bowling league. She’s been bowling in the bowling league since we started.”
These days, Miss Ruby’s bowling average is about 10 more than her years of life, 110.
“It’s not much,” she said. “I don’t bowl like I used to. You know how your bowling average goes down.”
But she has had her moments, like the night, about two years ago, she rolled a 204.
“She had just gotten her eyes dilated, and she wound up bowling a 204,” Martin said. “I think everybody said, ‘I’m getting my eyes dilated before I come next week.’”
The centenarian laughed when someone suggested she might aspire to become a professional bowler.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I’m just bowling now for exercise, to get out of the house.”
More Than a Teammate
Members of the Tuscany Monday Night League have Pleasant Grove resident Oscar Madison to thank for Miss Ruby joining the league and continuing to be active in it.
“I met her, and I was telling about bowling here, about the church and what have you,” Madison said. “I just invited her here 10 years ago. I’ve been bringing her here and bowling. She’s been on my team, my bowling team.”
Members of Madison’s Special Ops team wear camouflage bowling shirts, a tie to his military service in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.
“He impresses me to come on and keep going,” Miss Ruby said of Madison. “I threatened to stop two or three times because I figured I was too old. He said, ‘As long as you can pick up the ball,’ [you can bowl]. He impresses me.”
Madison said he didn’t have to twist her arm.
“She came and she just loved it,” he recalled. “We adopted her.”
For Madison, who lost his mother Annie Madison around the time Miss Ruby joined Special Ops, Miss Ruby is more than a teammate.
“She’s like a mother, a grandmother to me,” he said.
Is there a disadvantage to having a 100-year-old on the team? Madison said absolutely not.
“As a matter of fact, it’s to our advantage,” he said, recounting the night Miss Ruby topped 200. “One of the (opposing) guys was down here and they won a championship here before. They were sitting just friendly talking trash against each other here. She was sitting there, and they were bowling, and she bowled a 204 on him. He looked at her, got his bags and walked out.”
