Yep...39 is too young for anyone to checkout. I'm a little foggy right now cause I'm coming off a four day bender. Not really a drinker, but the passing of George has really affected me. Life sucks sometimes, get a helmet. I'll never forget my time with George! We ran the roads quite a bit back in the day. I was on the road doing cue repairs year round at the time in my little Toyota motor home. I was all screwed up over my fiance breaking up with me. She "Dear Johned" me over the phone, and I flew over to Scotland the week before to try and straighten things out with her, to no avail I might add. Life goes on, so I am at the next tournament, the US Bar Table Championships in Palm Springs, CA in 1995. George and I had been on the road a few times prior, and had been developing our friendship for years. I called him and told him I was all twisted up, and he told me to hang tight. I told him there were a couple of guys going off out here around LA, and we should make a trip and see what we could do. So anyway, it goes down like clockwork. George gets there with his good friend and stakehorse "Gypsy." One of those nights, George & Stevie Moore had played scotch doubles against Tang Hoa & Keith McCready and won $5k. Now bear in mind I'm a basket case over this girl, but George had a way of bringing out the best in people that he was hanging with, and he sure did bring out the best in me. I mean, he got me playing $1-2k sets the first night out, and had me believing I could win too...and boy did we win! I had never played for that much money before, and he's got me doing it the first night all f 'd up over the girl. The next night or so, we went over to Aloha Billiards across town, and that's where the shit started to hit the fan. We walk in, and Leonardo Andam is playing Keith giving him the 8-ball for $5k. Got that? Keith loses with the owner of the poolroom staking him & "Mark" staking Leonardo. The owner doesn't wanna pay the money right now, he wants to keep it on the wire and just add it to the money he already owes. Apparently, weeks prior the owner Wayne had been playing spot shots with Mark for $35k a shot and lost 6 or 8 bets that way, and paid a large amount of it already. Okay, they argue for a while and it looks like a draw...the owner gets his way and Leonardo & Mark leave. Well, they ain't gone 5 minutes when Keith & Wayne are trying to match up with us. Well, we make a game, and Wayne goes over to the jukebox, pulls out a bag of money, takes out a thousand one-dollar bills, and posts it. We're playing a 1k set scotch doubles with a thousand dollar bills posted in the light. Have you ever seen a thousand dollar bills? As if that ain't funny enough, we're playing the last set for $3k, and there's three thousand one-dollar bills posted in the light! Alright, we clipped 'em for $5k. Cool! Back at the tournament the next day, my booth is set in the lobby facing the front door, and I see this big like 40' motor home pull up out front, and Wayne gets out and comes straight up to my booth and says, "I'm right in the middle of a divorce, and I want to play YOU for 100k against the motor home parked outside with 260 miles on it. It's got 5 slide outs, and all the bells and whistles!" You think I could get staked...no chance! Got that? Anyway, Stevie Moore beats Scotty Townsend and wins the tournament. Great tournament! Now George & the Gypster have to go home. I tell George I am going to Hardtimes Belleflower after Keith. He's been gambling out there quite a bit and if I had just the right player maybe we could bust LA. I mean, George is the perfect guy to do it because there ain't but two people he can play even at Hardtimes...Efren Reyes & Jose Parica! You know, we had a huge advantage because I knew how everyone played, and George was an excellent handicapper & gambler himself. I'd been hanging around LA on & off for about 2 years already, so I go to LA, and it's going down again just like clockwork. I call up George, and there's several other tournaments coming up out there anyway, so he flies out there and the rest is history.
Snapped off the LA crowd for about 30K+ over the next month or so. Keith McCready, Jose Parica, Efren Reyes, Dennis Hatch, Billy Incardona, and countless other great names of the game got involved in one way or another. At one point, we were playing scotch doubles with Jose Parica & Don Percy, and they were on their last barrel. Jose Parica (yeah, that's right, I didn't stutter, I said Jose Parica) had to post his cue to cover the bet...then wanted to borrow it back to play the set! Well, dammit, they won & we never did get that friggin cue. There wasn't a living human that couldn't get a bet. I can promise you this, his money was in action like no other whether he was playing, staking, or just along for the ride. That's why him & Keith got it on so well, because that's how they roll! I mean, Hard Times Belleflower in the early to mid-1990's was like the who's who of pool! And George was there with ME! We went into the most dangerous war zone in the pool world, and got out with the loot. We were cruising down the highway headed towards Santa Rosa for some ESPN tourney counting the loot & they were still trying to figure out what happened... Those were the greatest times of MY LIFE!!!
I'll tell you this, George "Ginky" SanSouci knew how to LIVE!