Enjoyed But Made Me Sad Too
A great old thread! I have to admit it made me sad thinking about the people like Hemi Cudas and some mentioned in the thread no longer with us. Lambert had also owned a pool hall on plank road. Old flat roofed building and the roof leaked in a new place every time it rained and got another table!
I was pretty severely underaged when I first started going to the hall on plank road, Shoppers Pool Hall named to go with the little strip mall the hall was part of and the Shoppers Fair big box store in the back. I quickly cultivated a taste for pool and beer and I had been an honored customer for years when Jessie came along and bought the tables and stuff and leased the building from Lambert. Jessie and Lambert played for the rent every month, one month at Greenway, one month at Shoppers. Jessie said he didn't pay rent very often!
Shoppers was my home away from home and while Jessie wasn't big on giving to others what he had learned the hard way or even selling it cheap he started mentoring me a little. I hadn't seen him helping anyone else except to protect his equipment so I was a little miffed thinking I was a wee bit better than that! Jessie noticed and never gave me another piece of advice. Instead he would come give the person I was playing a little advice, often stuff far too advanced to do them any good. I would use the advice later that session or in a day or two. Without fail I would look over to the counter and see Jessie grinning. I left town a couple years and when I came back Shoppers and Jessie were gone.
Good times at Shoppers and Greenway back when the world was young. There was a hall around LSU too, I don't remember the name. Down some stairs into a genuine hall and you called for the rack "boy", an old black gentleman. Fifteen cents a rack and us high rollers would give a quarter and tell him to keep the change. When I ran low on funds a time or two I thought about how many games those dimes would have bought but by then me tipping the dime was customary.
I think that old hall, a couple in Port Allen also known as West Baton Rouge, all still had ten footers and deep cloth. Heavy leather pockets that gave that deep thud when the balls hit dead center. Clay balls one place, I can't remember for sure about the others. I spent many an hour in Nick's Steakhouse too. The steaks had been good but when the strip went downhill the tables and chairs were all in a huge pile in the back and the ten footers were put in. They weren't in regular use by the time I found them. A few hardcore drinkers at the bar and I was usually alone in the dark in the back. I would turn the light on over one table and head to the back with my mixed drink at the ripe old age of fifteen.
Lots of memories indeed!
Hu
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