You’ve seen everything that’s playing at the movie theaters. There’s nothing good on TV. The clubs are too crowded, the bars too boring.

So you go bowling Friday night.

Over on lane four of the Western Lanes Bowling Center, Terence Harding and T.C. Thomas are preparing for the latest installment of a competition that’s been going on since 1986. The stakes are bragging rights and an occasional "beer frame." They come to the bowling alley about twice a month.

"All of the bowling alleys are full on Friday nights," Harding says. "This is probably the only one you can get into."

It’s 10 p.m., and about 40 people are still bowling on nine of the 24 lanes.

As the night advances, those with the youngest kids have departed. The only sounds in the alley are the satisfying thunk of ricocheting pins, the whirring of the automatic pin resetters and the occasional outburst at a bowling ball gone awry. There’s no wailing about the difficulty of fitting five fingers into three holes tonight.

Instead the alley is packed with twentysomethings, college students, teenagers, even a few families with older children. Most have stopped by after dinner, attracted by the alley’s location on Hillsborough Street, the cheap games and even cheaper beer, and the ready availability of lanes. There are no leagues at this time of night.

"We’ll usually go to a movie or a bar," Graham Donaldson, 27, says. "This is something different."

Bowling is a different way to spend a Friday night. But there’s a lot more going on here than just bowling.

Along one wall, a television shows children’s videotapes. Scattered throughout the alley are three pool tables, two pinball machines and seven video games. For the Nintendo generation who might find real bowling too, well, real, there’s even a video bowling game. It’s the one with the words "Bowling is Fun" in red and yellow letters. At the far end is the Cloud and Fire Express, also known as the C.A.F.E., a place for kids to hang out with no alcohol and no smoking allowed.

In the center of it all is Bill Goodwin, the self-described "Counter Man," who keeps an eye on the bustle. He collects fees, hands out score sheets (Western is one of the rare places where computerized scoring hasn’t taken over) and painstakingly explains the rules of bowling to a few foreign students. The change machine is broken and he’s kept busy supplying quarters for the game machines.

Goodwin works the late shift on Friday nights, from about 5 until midnight. He knows most of the regulars who come in the fall, but tonight he doesn’t see any familiar faces.

No, tonight the alley is full of people like 18-year-old Rama Moori and his friends.

"This is my first time bowling," Moori said. "And I’m leading!"

Bowl, baby, bowl.

Actually, there are few other sports where it’s possible to do so well your first time out.

There are 10 pins. One ball. Ten frames. Three hundred possible points.

Bowling is an ordinary person’s game. You don’t have to be an athlete to be good at it, although a little hand-eye coordination goes a long way.

It’s a sport unlikely to bring fame and even less likely to bring fortune. Quick, try to name a famous bowler. Hard, isn’t it?

The best-known bowlers are probably Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble who, when they weren’t hiding from Wilma and Betty at the Water Buffalo Lodge, spent their free time bowling.

For those of us who can’t manage a 90 mph fastball, dunk a basketball or throw a football in a perfect spiral, there’s something deeply satisfying about hurling a heavy object some 60 feet and watching the pins just scatter.

And there’s so much style involved.

Beginning bowlers tend to bowl in straight lines, with a sling-shot motion. But the more experienced bowlers, like Harding and Thomas, can make the ball hook and weave as they desire. It’s skill, not luck. And it shows.

Harding is brash, a showman. He’ll bowl, turn around with his arms outstretched, and smile impishly. Behind him, the ball crashes into the pins. Strike.

Thomas bowls strikes, too. But he is a graceful bowler, with a long looping motion. He bowls like he talks, with a quiet elegance. He’s Barney to Harding’s Fred.

But the best part of bowling isn’t even the bowling.

It’s the shoes.

There are precious few places where it’s acceptable, even encouraged, to wear shoes that don’t match. Short of moonlighting as a clown, bowling is probably the only chance you get to slip on such delightfully garish footwear. The red left shoe doesn’t come close to matching the tan right one and never will.

Sadly, the design of the shoes has less to do with freedom from fashion than it does with keeping the shoes from walking. So to speak.

"You’d be surprised, for college kids it’s a big hoot to walk out of here with rental shoes," Goodwin says.

The real sign of a serious bowler isn’t someone who brings his own ball. You can tell someone is in for the long run when he brings his own shoes.

Thomas has his own bowling shoes, but they haven’t done a lot to help his game, Harding teases.

Thomas does not protest. Instead he asks Harding, "How bad are you going to beat me tonight?"

Harding doesn’t answer. He just bowls.

Both are excellent bowlers and the strikes pile up. Harding finishes with 200, Thomas with 175. Harding has carried the night, as usual.

He wins at bowling and basketball and just about everything else. With one exception.

"Usually I win at horseshoes," Thomas says. "But he’s blessed with good luck."

It’s the shoes. It’s gotta be the shoes.

From the moment the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand, its red stitches spinning frantically, until gravity slams it down with a thump into the glove of the catcher kneeling before him, Shaw watches it.

In a split second, he’ll decide whether the ball came in too high, too low, too far to the inside or too far to the outside to be a strike.

At the same time, Shaw eyes the runner on third, watching to see if he’ll take one step too many toward home plate. If the runner goes, Shaw will make that call, too. Safe or out.

For Shaw, calling bases and balls is all in a night’s work. He’s an umpire for the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department’s summer youth leagues.

But unlike most of his colleagues, Shaw’s barely older than the kids playing. He’s a 21-year-old college student. And umpiring is his summer job.

This night he’s working a tournament game between all-star teams from Raleigh and Cary. He’s dressed in his uniform of a light blue shirt, gray slacks and black shoes, just like the umpires in the major leagues. Because he’s behind the plate, he wears a chest protector under his shirt, a face mask and a black baseball cap worn backward.

At first, the game looked like it would be competitive. But Raleigh has been on a tear since the second inning and is threatening to run away with the game. If at any point the Raleigh team can score 10 more runs than Cary, the game ends.

Raleigh’s ahead 12-3. One run to go. The bases are loaded.

Shaw scrubs at the plate with his foot, trying to clear away the dirt that has accumulated. Sweat streams steadily down his face and dust swirls around his feet. He points to the mound, his signal for the pitcher to throw. Then he crouches behind the catcher, kneeling on his left knee and waiting for the pitch.

It’s a familiar feeling, this waiting. He’s spent three summers as an umpire waiting for pitches. And a lifetime before that.

Shaw’s father played catcher for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So Shaw played catcher too, first in the Parks and Rec youth leagues and later for the Broughton High School squad.

He would have played at Appalachian State University, where he will be a senior this fall, but he cut a 2-inch

gash in his catching hand on his grandmother’s tobacco farm the summer before his freshman year. The wound healed, but when he tried to play ball, it ripped back open.

Because he couldn’t bear to be away from the game, he turned to umpiring.

He took a class in sports officiating and worked some intramural games at Appalachian State. When he came home, he sought summer employment as an umpire. He was young, but Parks and Rec agreed to give him a shot. Three summers later, Shaw still spends many of his evenings on Raleigh playing fields.

"It started as a summer job, and now I just do it because I love it," he said.

He prefers to work games like this one, a Pony League game, because the level of play is so high. In games with older kids, the 14- to 18-year-olds, he can feel the heat of a pitcher’s fastball and have "at least a little fear for my life" if the catcher doesn’t catch the pitch. Younger kids, he says, "can barely get the ball over the plate."

While the older players have trouble getting the ball over the plate, too - pitchers from both Raleigh and Cary have sent pitches soaring above his head several times - they also throw some of their pitches very fast and very much on target. Shaw has called quite a few batters out on strikes tonight.

But being an umpire is more than just calling balls and strikes.

When a new catcher enters the game, Shaw checks to see that he’s wearing all the necessary safety equipment.

"Do you have your cup?" he asks, a little too loudly.

The catcher nods, and the crowd laughs. Shaw turns and deadpans, "Gotta make sure."

In between innings, Shaw talks with the players and sometimes offers advice. Even the older players have lots to learn, and when he can, Shaw tries to help them improve their games. "Especially the catchers," Shaw says.

He’ll show a catcher how to properly send his signals and help him with his throws. Shaw thinks he might want to try coaching one of these days.

These are the things he loves about umpiring. It’s having to deal with the people off the field that he hates.

Kids get angry at you, coaches get angry at you, and, worst of all, parents get angry at you.

"It’s the parents that give us the most trouble," Shaw said. "They rant and rave when their kids get a bad call."

The parents of the Cary team certainly have given him trouble. As the Cary team’s chances on the field dwindle, its fans have increased their heckling of Shaw.

"He just ain’t going to call a strike," screams one parent.

"We should show him the rulebook, show him where the strike zone is," a coach mutters, watching his team collapse.

Sometimes the spectators move beyond muttering and into violence. Trouble can erupt quickly.

At a game Shaw was working a few weeks back, one team’s shortstop was intentionally walked. As the shortstop made his way around the bases, he said something to the other team’s coach. The coach responded in kind. And before Shaw knew what was happening, the shortstop’s father had grabbed a baseball bat, run onto the field and attacked the coach.

"You gotta relax. You gotta relax," Shaw kept telling the father as he broke up the fight. "You don’t need to do this."

While fights don’t happen often, they can be quite serious. During a game in Chapel Hill last year, a coach attacked an umpire, beating him up so badly that the umpire’s chiropractor compared his injuries to those from a 75 mph head-on car crash.

Parents who are out of control on the field set bad examples for the kids who are playing, Shaw says. He makes it his job to keep that from happening.

"As an umpire, you’ve got to take control," he says simply.

Shaw does not take challenges to his authority lightly.

"People need to realize that if you make the umpire mad, no matter how impartial he is supposed to be, you can’t win," Shaw said.

In his three summers of umpiring, Shaw says he’s made only one mistake that haunts him. He called a runner out on a force play when the fielder should have had to tag him. Shaw did run that play over, because he was clearly in error. But on judgment situations, he always sticks by his call.

"You cannot ever let them question your call," Shaw said. "If you do, they’ll eat you up."

He knows the rulebook inside and out from all his years as a player, so he’s pretty confident making rules-based calls. He does have one little problem, though.

"The only thing that really plagues me is that sometimes I forget the count," Shaw admits.

On the nights when he’s not calling a game, Shaw works as a shucker at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar. One day a man who had umpired games that Shaw had played in recognized him there.

"He told me that I should go to umpiring school," Shaw said.

He appreciates the advice but is unlikely to follow it. Although Shaw went through a stage where he thought he wanted to be a professional umpire, he’s wary of all the traveling they have to do. He may change his mind again, but for now, he’s just having a good time.

"When it stops being fun, I’ll quit. Just like [Michael] Jordan," Shaw said. "If it ever gets to the point where I’m saying, ‘I wish it will rain,’ I’ll stop."

So for now, umpiring is only a part-time job. And his full attention is focused on the three Raleigh baserunners and the Cary pitcher, who has already thrown three balls. Shaw points to the pitcher and then waits.

The pitcher winds up and throws.

The batter doesn’t swing and all eyes turn to Shaw, who makes the call.

It’s a ball. The pitcher has walked in the winning run.

The game is over.

Just another night on the job.

Decades ago and thousands of miles away, Sgt. Chuck Boyd flew the UH-1 over the jungles of Vietnam for the Army. These days he flies over the woods and forests of North Carolina for the Highway Patrol, searching for a very different enemy: marijuana.

During these summer months, the height of "drug season," Boyd and three other pilots will each spend roughly three days a week scouring the state for patches of marijuana that have been tucked away in the middle of corn fields, bean fields and just about anywhere else that water flows.

While aerial drug searches may seem to have little to do with patrolling highways, bureaucracies work in strange ways: The helicopters Boyd flies were given to the Highway Patrol. And the drug searches don’t cost North Carolina taxpayers a penny.

Because, in a curious way, they are North Carolina’s own peace dividend.

For 18 years, the Highway Patrol had a single helicopter, a blue-and-white Bell Jet Ranger that flew all the manhunts, all the high-speed chases, all the state fairs, all the stock car races and all the other events where 200,000 people or more were expected to take to the highways. Until 1986, the Highway Patrol even had to share the Jet Ranger with the state Department of Commerce.

But thanks to a great bureaucratic giveaway, it now has an entire fleet.

In the midst of base closings and budget cutbacks, the Pentagon decided it had too many helicopters. So in 1991 it decided to give away the ones it didn’t need anymore.

The surplus helicopters were awarded to law enforcement agencies across the country that promised to use them to fight drugs. The agencies were provided with federal grant money and permission to use the proceeds from the sale of drug dealers’ property to pay for the helicopters’ operation.

Over the past three years, the Highway Patrol got 10 working choppers, plus plenty of spare parts.

From as far away as Texas and from as close as Fort Bragg, the Highway Patrol assembled a new fleet of two UH-1 Hueys and eight OH-58s, the military version of its trusty old Jet Ranger. Two more UH-1s and another OH-58 were salvaged for parts.

The helicopters have been gradually repaired, refurbished and repainted. The machine guns and missiles were taken off. New landing skids, flight range-extenders and special radios that can reach any sheriff and police department in the state were added.

A flight team was culled from the Highway Patrol’s ranks to staff the additional flights.

The missions over Eastern North Carolina were given to Boyd, who had already been flying the Jet Ranger out of Raleigh. Another pilot, Sgt. Al Paterno, was chosen to fly the missions west of Greensboro from his base in Salisbury. During drug season, two part-time pilots join them.

Last year, their first year with two full-time pilots, the patrol captured 1,911 pounds of marijuana.

On days he’s flying drug missions, Boyd arrives at 7:30 a.m. at the Department of Commerce’s heliport, where the Raleigh-based helicopters are stationed until construction on the Highway Patrol’s hangar is completed.

He fills out some paperwork, checks the weather and inspects the aircraft.

These choppers are military issue, and the amenities are sparse. There’s no autopilot, no padded seats, no soundproofing. It gets so loud during flights that the pilot and the passengers have to talk over an intercom to hear each other. Some helicopters still sport military green and U.S. Army insignias. Five of the OH-58s from Fort Bragg even flew in the Persian Gulf War.

What they may lack in luxury, they make up for in precision. In the hands of a skilled pilot, Boyd says, these helicopters can land in the same tracks they took off from.

As he walks around the helicopters, Boyd checks for fuel leaks, engine burns, "foreign matter" in the intakes, and any sign that the helicopter is not fit to fly. Boyd is on call 24 hours a day, so the helicopters must always be ready.

He points to the Huey to demonstrate. It’s fully fueled. On the passenger’s seat rests his form-fitting, white flight helmet; his radio headset is nestled inside. The keys are in the ignition. From the time a call comes in, he can be in the air in less than two minutes.

When Boyd completes his inspection, he’s ready for takeoff. He’s usually in the air by 9.

He claims not to have a favorite helicopter, and when a mechanic asks on a recent day, "Which one you gonna run?" he selects the Jet Ranger.

As the mechanic lowers the hangar door, Boyd straps in and slips his flight helmet over his short crop of graying hair. He punches a few buttons along the console, flicks some switches along the ceiling.

"Clear!" he barks as he starts the rotors.

The helicopter begins to rock back and forth, with the rotors spinning so fast that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The scent of burning fuel wafts through the cabin.

Takeoff is soft. The nose dips and the helicopter accelerates upward across Tryon Road, soaring over the barbed wire fence, past the trees and emerging in the clear sky above the Highway Patrol’s training center. The engine’s whine and the rotors’ steady thumping are quickly forgotten.

"This is a helicopter," Boyd announces over the intercom.

The search for marijuana has begun.

Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass.

No matter what you call it, the Highway Patrol sure finds a lot of it. Over $1 million worth of plants this year alone, says Col. Robert Barefoot, the head of the Highway Patrol. Last year the Highway Patrol captured 11.1 percent of all marijuana seized in North Carolina - more than doubling the 5 percent it captured five years ago.

In his office on the second floor of the Archdale Building in downtown Raleigh, Barefoot has a framed photograph of the Huey, with $12,000 worth of marijuana draped over the tail.

When asked about the picture, he calls the helicopter "beautiful" and speaks about the machine in much the same way a fawning father would about a son or a daughter.

And why not? He has largely overseen the formation of the helicopter fleet. He hopes to eventually have enough helicopters deployed so that the Highway Patrol can reach any part of the state in less than 45 minutes.

For Barefoot, the decision to accept the helicopters was not a difficult one.

There was the cost, for one thing. While non-drug missions in the helicopters are paid for out of the Highway Patrol’s budget, just as they were when the patrol had only the Jet Ranger, the drug flights are essentially free.

"We have all these helicopters in operation at zero cost. Not a penny," he says. "We take great pride in that."

Then there are the other benefits.

Helicopters are used in searches for missing children, Alzheimer’s patients and fugitives.

They dramatically simplify high-speed highway pursuits. No automobile can outrun a Huey cruising at its top speed of 140 mph.

They ease the pressure on the National Guard, which also maintains a helicopter squad to assist in drug busts, such as the two in Durham County last week.

They improve the Highway Patrol’s relationship with sheriffs and police departments, who get to share in the glory of helicopter-led arrests.

But most importantly, they terrify North Carolina’s criminals.

"When they see this helicopter overhead, they are afraid to come out. They hunker down," Barefoot says.

"And if they do, we catch them."

The Jet Ranger has reached a cruising altitude of 300 feet and a speed of 20 to 30 mph. As Boyd turns it in a lazy loop around downtown Raleigh, you can see the depth markings on pools, the words on highway signs, the "street people’s" cabin in the woods of Tryon Hills.

From this height, a trained pilot can spot a single marijuana plant standing 14 inches or higher. The green of marijuana is a fairly distinct color. If you know what you’re looking for, that is.

Boyd has seen plants as tall as 20 feet and found fields of thousands of plants. He doesn’t like to talk about past drug busts though. Nor does Sgt. Paterno, the other full-time pilot.

Paterno explains that he’s often harassed by those he busts. Bragging about his adventures would just make it worse.

He’s already gotten so many nasty calls at home that he’s had to change his number. Someone damaged his car’s paint job with a key. Bags of trash have been thrown into his yard. His mail box has been blown up repeatedly.

It takes a certain resiliency to be a helicopter pilot.

Like the helicopters he flies, Boyd spent considerable time in the military before joining the Highway Patrol.

When the Vietnam War broke out, Boyd enlisted in the Army and signed up for the Warrant Officer Flight Program. It was the only way he could fly in the war without a college degree.

Boyd flew Hueys and other helicopters during two tours of duty in Vietnam and served as a flight instructor at the Army’s helicopter school in between.

When his enlistment in the Army was up in 1971, he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had served on the Highway Patrol for 39 years and had retired the previous year.

Boyd spent the first 15 years working the road, the last nine in the air. Although he had occasionally flown Hueys in the National Guard, he never expected to fly them day in and day out again.

"It was like putting on an old glove. It felt like I had never been out of it," he said. "Once you get enough flight time, the aircraft becomes part of you."

And he gets plenty of flight time. He searches for drugs for six to eight hours a day, stopping every two hours to refuel. He has a computer on board that uses satellites to calculate his position and then gives him a list of the 15 closest airports.

He pays for the fuel with credit cards.

In a clump of woods between the Farmers Market and N.C. State’s Centennial Campus, Boyd spots a few plants of marijuana, hidden by some trees. He pulls the Jet Ranger into a tight circle, craning for a better look.

Like most of his finds, it appears to be a personal stash.

"This is what flying for marijuana is about," Boyd says. "You can find it anywhere, the middle of town, someone’s back yard. Just about everywhere I go, I’m looking at the ground."

When he spots marijuana, he punches a button on his computer that records the coordinates. Sometimes, if there’s a place to land, he or another patrolman will go down and retrieve the marijuana. If there’s not, like today, he will call the land owner and have it destroyed. If they find a lot, planning for a bust begins.

"No one plants it on their own land," he explains. "They always go on someone else’s land and plant it."

Boyd circles a few more times, trying to discern a path in the trees that leads to the marijuana. He can’t make one out. He decides to return home.

When he sets the helicopter down, Boyd indeed lands within five inches of the tracks he had taken off from. He could have landed in the tracks, he insists, but chose not to.

"I meant to do that," he says. "Otherwise, it kills the grass.