By Vern Hee – Special to the Pahrump Valley Times

Terry Hiser has been bowling since she was 16.

She loves the sport and over the years has learned to bowl through watching others.

Seven years ago Terry took her patience and ability to learn through watching others and applied it to race car driving.

She said, “Michael her husband was working as a handyman at the time. He did some work for a man and traded the work for a 1939 Ford coupe with a 305 cubic inch engine. Michael came home with it on Thursday and then told me that I would be driving it in a race on Saturday.”

More on this addition to a busy schedule later.

Terry has enjoyed 19 ”great years” with her husband Michael. They came to Pahrump 10 years ago from Oxnard, Calif., after Michael retired from 3M.

Terry enjoys bowling on Wednesdays and Thursdays at the Pahrump Nugget.

“I love the exercise that bowling provides and the enjoyment of visiting with everyone. Bowling gives me a chance to come out twice a week,” said Terry.

Terry said she took up bowling when she was in high school; it was something she did on her own. She grew up in Kansas but continued bowling after high school.

Terry really learned more about the sport from her first husband. “He was a professional bowler; he would go out in the lane and point his finger out there and told me to throw to the spot. He would also tell me to try different spots to look at and taught me how the ball is supposed to go,” said Terry.

In her early years she averaged 150 and now it’s around 178. She said, “The most important thing he taught me was patience and you have to trust your ball.”

“I have changed over the years because I feel the lanes are totally different than the past,” said Hiser, when asked how the game has changed. ”The bowling balls have also changed since I was younger. So it was like learning all over again.”

Terry feels the main changes have been the way they dress the lanes, noting that, “Nowadays there is a lot more oil.

”There are different types of oil patterns and when you bowl tournaments they tell you what type of oil pattern they are using, so you have to change a lot,” said Hiser. “The lanes here at the Nugget are pretty easy to adjust to. I can usually adjust. I usually know after two or three frames what I am doing wrong.”

Like most bowlers Terry uses more than one ball depending on the condition of the lanes. She currently bowls with a Hammer and a Vertigo ball.

Terry still has yet to bowl a perfect game. She said has not quite mastered what she calls the “Freak out factor” of bowling 12 strikes in a row. She explained, “I know, I have bowled 8 strikes in a row. I let the people behind me freak me out and I usually blow it on the ninth frame.”

Now to racing …

The closest she had come to racing was doing donuts in the snow in Kansas and watching NASCAR on TV.

On the Saturday she debuted in a race car, she remembers telling her husband, “Guys I do not even know what the flag colors mean or anything! They simply said…. ‘Just push on the gas and turn left’ and I did that. I won that race and I took the championship that year.”

Terry was never concerned with her safety. Even after the death of Dan Wheldon in an IndyCar race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last fall, Hiser feels she is safer in the race car than she is on the highway.

“I am safer because of the suit, the roll cage, and the helmet,” she said.

In seven years of competition, Hiser said she has not been hurt, but that does not mean there were not some close calls along the way.

Terry said, “I have hit the wall, I have spun out, I have gone into the middle but I am still a cautious racer.”

Then four years ago at a race at the Death Valley Raceway in the Amargosa Valley, Hiser allowed her grandson to race with her in the car. He was 16 at the time.

She related, “During the race my car went over a racer’s tire and my car was thrown 10 feet into the air. I remember asking my grandson if he would race with me again and he said, ‘Hell, yes!’”

In her time on the track, Terry has won more than 35 trophies. Terry races two cars, a mini stock dual overhead cam Ford Escort and a 1939 Ford 305. Her top speeds on the track are about 90 miles per hour and more than 100 mph on the track in Las Vegas.

Michael spends a lot of his spare time working on the cars. The couple uses a lot of their own money to race but Terry has managed to get a sponsor now and again. She said, ” Last year our sponsor was O’Reilly’s Auto Parts.”

In between races Terry has learned over the years to check out her own car. The couple used to own an auto mechanic shop and she has learned a lot about cars since then.

“We used to own Done Right Auto. So if I hear something I can tell my husband what is wrong with the car,” said Terry.

Terry is far from the average bowling grandma. She plans on continuing to race and to bowl.

“I love it, I am racing and bowling more than I work.” said Hiser, smiling.