Katie Coffin
CNHI
RUSHVILLE —
Rushville Bowl has been doing business since 1960, but this summer they made a change in line with current trends — they went smoke-free. On May 1, the bowling alley that Jim Ephlin owns and operates completely outlawed smoking. He implemented smoke-free weekends in 1990 and this summer took the final step in the measure. “Now it’s just, ‘My God, it’s the year 2010,’” he said. “The tree has finally fallen on us.” He said there were several reasons he opted to go smoke free, one being that he felt it was a necessary business move. Many of the bowling alleys in towns near Rushville are non-smoking and Ephlin said that “bowlers will travel.” But witnessing some of his patrons’ discomfort in the smoke was the deciding factor. Rushville Bowl has a cooling system that circulates air throughout the entire building. At a child’s birthday party Ephlin saw a lady sitting at one end of the alley smoking while the kids were opening presents on the other, but the air system was spreading the smoke. “It was drifting across the kids, and that was the point I said, ‘Oh my, I’ve got to help these people,’” Ephlin said. “That’s the story that started smoke-free weekends.” “Many, many a person would tell me that when they went home their significant others knew they had been to the bowling center just by the smell of their clothes. They’d even say, ‘I’ve got to take a shower before I go back to my place or they don’t let me back in.’ It really just started eating away at me that I didn’t want my business looked upon that way,” Ephlin said. Ephlin said the summer was a good time to experiment with the measure because he doesn’t have as many bowlers during the warm weather months. He said so far he hasn’t heard a lot of feedback either way. Bob Nilo bowls four nights per week in the wintertime at Rushville Bowl. He has smoked for 40 years, but all the same, he says he agrees with Ephlin’s decision to go smoke free. “I have no problem with it at all. I think it’s for the benefit of the community,” Nilo said. “I can sit there for two and a half hours without a cigarette. Matter of fact, maybe it will help me cut down and even quit.” Ultimately, Ephlin said the decision was made for the benefit of his customers. “We thought the ‘Wow’ factor for the non-smokers would outweigh the disappointment of the smokers,” Ephlin said. “As the trends have changed, the people who enjoy smoking, they know it’s 2010 too. It’s just a very public issue.” And it’s a public issue that many towns and cities around Rushville have addressed. Columbus, Greensburg, Greenwood, Greenfield and Shelbyville all have varying degrees of smoking policies; Franklin has a comprehensive ban, meaning that it has a 100 percent smoke-free workplace law. Even though some places in town, like Rushville Bowl, have opted to implement their own smoking ban, the city of Rushville has not yet acted on this issue. “I haven’t heard that it’s being looked at,” Billy Ray Goins, president of the Rushville Common City Council said. “Nobody has brought it up to us so far.” For more information about smoking bans and to see what other cities’ policies are, go to www.in.gov/itpc/2333.htm and click on the link for “Indiana’s Smoke Free Communities.”