I went on the road during that era with a true road warrior, mostly down South, and even found myself in a couple of action games. One in Greensboro, North Carolina stands out. The place was nothing but action, wall to wall tables, and it was there I saw something I’ll never forget: Seattle Sam Trivett crawling up on a table on all fours to make a shot. I laughed so hard I couldn’t control myself, had to run outside just to catch my breath.
The bars down South back then weren’t like today’s sports bars. Each one seemed to have dozens of tables, sometimes even a snooker table. My road partner preferred the quieter pool rooms, but he didn’t have Keith’s kind of personality, the knack for reading a room, getting someone to play, and keeping the mood light while the cheese was on the line. That part of the hustle was left to me, and I learned quick how to get action with the best player in town.
It wasn’t all wins, either. We were walking into rooms blind, sometimes forced to play with a bent metal house cue. You’d never bring your own cue in the joint because it would give you away. And when the house pro showed up, well, the game was on. We won more than we lost, but I knew the Western Union phone number by heart. More than once we had to call home for money because he—or we—had gone bust.
Some memories still stand sharp:
- Having a gun pulled on me in Dalton, Georgia. Legal or not, I’ll never forget it.
- Watching a man sob in the parking lot, rent money gone, and feeling no joy in that win.
- Falling in with a steer in Alabama whose whole family stole meat for a living, even the kids. It made me uneasy.
- Seeing a wild ring game of 9-ball on a snooker table at Baker’s in Tampa, FL, one of the oldest poolrooms.
- Meeting Grady Mathews, driving a sharp Cadillac with a pit bull puppy riding shotgun, who took us to dinner and picked up the tab.
- Beating a girl out of $100 with adrenaline in my veins, and it was pure fun.
- Partying with carnival folks in Florida, some of the kindest, most genuine people I ever met on the road.
Oddly enough, it was through this same road warrior that I crossed paths with Keith years later. He had gone out to California, and Keith was his steer. Keith told me later some of those road stories gave him the hardest laughs of his life, like Geese flying alongside a car on the highway and joking,
“I’ll just masse around this one up ahead.” You had to be there, but Keith thought he was hilarious.
For me, those golden years on the road were full of excitement because I was so deeply into pool, but after seeing a man crying in the parking lot over lost rent money, the thrill of laying down lemons to steal a win began to fade.
Keith and Scotty were thick as thieves. I remember Keith once disappeared for a week with Scotty during an IPT event in Reno, leaving Pots and Pan in his hotel room. To this day I don’t know what they got into, and I probably don’t want to. Their friendship, though, was rock solid. When Scotty lost his other half, Keith called him right away, knew he was short on cash, and asked me to drive him to Western Union where he wired Scotty $500 to get through the hard stretch.
That’s the kind of bond players of that generation shared. Through all the laughs, busts, and long nights, they built friendships that lasted a lifetime.
Photo I took July 2006 in Las Vegas. They clean up nice, don't they?
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