Never truly met the man but in a round about way I met my very best friend, the best man in my wedding, one of the world's purest souls because of him...
Don't remember exactly what year but it had to be around 2000 give or take. My buddy talked me into going to a one pocket event in NC with him. He said "come on LETS go play this event up in Goldsboro(about 5 hours from us)" I asked him what the entry fee was and he said $100. Well I had $145 so yeah let's do it. No thought at all to how I was going to eat or sleep for the 3 days but anyway, lets go!
So we get in the car and we are about 3/4 of the way and we pull over at a gas station and he asks me to go inside and grab him a Pepsi and get us some gas too. I didn't think too much about it but when I came out he asked how much I paid for the gas and it was the change from a 20. "ok thanks" is all I got.
We get to the pool room at like 2:30pm and signups start at 5:00 play at 7:00. I was excited! Was going to be my first one pocket TOURNAMENT. So I got some chicken fingers and sat at the bar while he scanned the room and he said "hey I think I can make a game with that guy over there, how much are we working with?" I was confused. Didn't know I was the money guy here. I said man I got like $10 after I pay for these tendies. He said "no man no way you got at least 100 more right, you were gonna play the tournament right? That's 100 right there" I was absolutely taken aback. I thought for sure he had at least enough money to cover his tournament and expenses but yeah, nope. "Man I only have like $110 I guess we can try someone cheap(but we could've done that at home *internal thought*)"
So I hand him the $100 and he goes down to talk to a guy. Then another guy. Then that guy points to another guy... Well now we are in action $50 a game 1pkt. Well my buddy loses the first game. Mind you he is a terrific player, truly. Next game the other guy misses his out ball and sells out my buddy makes him pay. They go on to play 2 more hours and my buddy wins 1 game in the end. Winner pays the time so we net like $22 lol.
By this time I'm pretty mad. I'm stuck 5 hours from home with no money(he held onto the $22 lol) and it's pretty clear I'm not going to get to play the tournament because I was dead money and he is likely one of the 5 best players. There were a lot of killers coming to town but my buddy is one of the killers too.
5pm I go pay his entry fee and the draw comes out at 6:30 and what do you know he draws Wade Crane in the first round. Race to 4 and Wade just played absolutely stellar to get up 3-0. Well, my man comes back and wins a marathon in the end that came down to the final ball. That's it, just 1 match tonight come back tomorrow at noon says the TD over the intercom.
Sooooo, now what? Well we have $32 between us. No place to stay and I owe $17 on my bar tab. I guess we are going to sleep in the car. Thankfully the pool room is open til 5 and only closed 6 hours a day. I'm so mad internally but I'm trying to keep it together.
My buddy's phone rings and it's this guy from back home. He asks what we are doing and then when my buddy hangs up he says "my friend BH is on the way up!" all excited like. So around about 5 hours later he meets us at the pool room. Well I was hitting a few balls while they talked so I don't really know what was said but my buddy comes over and says hey we got a room down the street. Finally some relief from the hell this weekend was going to be lol.
Next day I'm hanging around the pool room finally start talking to BH after we met back there and he (didn't know me from anyone) right away asked me "are you good?" So I just tell him flat out that I'm busto and with no hesitation at all he hands me 200 and says just get me back whenever, don't sweat it. At that point in my life I had never seen such generosity and I'll never forget it. I was very thankful to say the least.
So a couple hours later this guy walks up to BH and it's obvious they know each other well. Before you know it they are playing gin. Well they played Gin for 2 days straight basically the entire time. I spoke to BH as much as I could when they were on breaks and eating etc but he was entrenched in the Gin game.
My buddy winds up finishing like 4th. Loses to Shannon Daulton and James Walden both in tight matches. Shannon won the tournament.
BH is still sitting there playing Gin and not interested in conversation so I said bye, see you back home and left. My buddy I came with and I head home.
I don't see BH for a couple weeks and when he comes back around I paid him the $200 and bought him dinner the moment I saw him and he had forgotten about it completely it seemed. So we are talking and he hinted that one of the reasons he chose to come up to that event was he thought there'd be some great players and that possibly "some folks from around home(New England) might even be around"
He then proceeds to tell me he lost like $5000 playing gin against this malaka Billy the Kid.
Anyways thanks for reading this rant
