Hunter- that window cue is nice. I don't think there are too many of those.
Craig- I agree that looks like an Abe Rich cue. I've seen a few with similar rings, woods, etc.
Did you refinish with a lacquer (like Abe)?
Were you able to save the wrap?
~Beau
He used to dip his cues and hang them. The drying area had like a stalagmites where old finish had dripped from years of hanging cues. I used to hang around his shop a lot when I was a kid. We had a very bad argument some years ago and he was one to hold a grudge. Then one day I was at the pool room And a friend was on the phone with him and I guess mentioned my name. The guy called me over and said Abe wanted to speak to me. He asked me how things were and made small talk. I was glad we got what had happened behind us. I only saw him once again when I was in Miami before he died.
I have one interesting story about him. I was at his shop one day and a guy with a pool room in Naples Florida came in to buy some cues. After picking out maybe two dozen cues Abe made up a receipt and gave it to the guy. The guy started making him lower offers for the cues and wanted to bargain with Abe. Abe said that was the price. Then the guy continued making like counter offers and Abe started putting the cues back in his big closet where he kept the cues. The guy then said all right like he was annoyed and was getting out the money when Abe told him the cues were not for sale any more and to leave. The guy walked out kind in shock. I was surprised because it was close to a $2000.00 sale. Abe didn't care, he was insulted and that was that.
He could be very obstinate at times something I learned when we didn't talk for many years. What it was over was he wanted to sell me his shop. He wanted $30,000 for it but in my mind he didn't really have anything to sell and certainly not for $30,000. He had a lot of wood but little equipment and not equipment I would want to use, He tapered his shafts with sort of a centerless grinder where he put his shaft in and with hand pressure created the taper. It was all so primitive and I didn't want the place. He really got angry at me and said all that everything I had learned from him was like stealing and he said worse things to me. I was not there trying to learn to build cues I thought we were friends. I would bring him lunch and we would talk and so on. I knew him since I was 16 when he had the shop in the back of his brothers wood turning shop Rich Woodturning. Either way I was glad we made up and very sorry when I had heard he had passed. He was an original for sure.
The one thing I learned from him in terms of the cue business and maybe life a little bit was this. He built cues every day with or without orders. He would finish a cue and say "I am a richer man now, I turned some wood worth very little into something of value". That is the way he looked at it. That closet full of cues was worth something whether it be today or tomorrow of even if they were just wholesaled. He felt like he had the ability to sort of print his own money with his skills. Much different from the clock puncher who only makes others rich for a small salary that can be taken away.
I am paraphrasing of course he may have said it more profoundly with his accent, but it was a lesson and theory of life I never forgot. The ability to be self-sufficient, not dependent and live from ones own talents is a gift even if one never becomes rich from them. His words are worth remembering when building a cue, when it is completed as Abe would say "You are now a richer man".
Henry Thoreau Said,
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
I don't think this is the case with the craftsman. He leaves something behind he created where nothing existed before.
He is not forgotten and remembered by many who never knew him.
