I used to play on a ten foot table in an old hall that only had ten foot tables. The owner saw me reach a hand in a corner pocket and gauge the thickness of the slate. "It is only two and a half inches thick."
The object balls were clay. Sometimes these sets had an ivory cue ball but if these ever did they were gone either to wear or theft. He kept each set of balls with one table. My favorite table had a seriously wonky seven ball and a four ball about half as bad as the seven.
Thick directional cloth on the tables and no air conditioning. A huge fan cut into one wall sucked in the air straight off of the Mississippi River, about a mile wide there. I noticed my hand didn't reach around a cue stick. Heavy cues and you still had to have a stroke. First time I played there I had some balls fail to reach a pocket.
Damn, I loved that old place!
Hu