Dan White was kind enough to once say that some of the stuff I wrote reminded him of the works of the late, great Jean Shepherd, author of "A Christmas Story." It's a great compliment. I'm killing time while the bird roasts and it's been a few years since I posted this, so consider it a poor man's "A Thanksgiving Story." Hope you enjoy.
(insert flashback music)
Shortly into my high school years I procured a car, or more accurately, my father helped me procure a car, a ’65 forest green Mustang, and I broke free of the room within walking distance of my home that was my pool spawning grounds, The Billiard Palacade and I found myself swimming upstream (almost literally) to my new home-away-from-home, “up the hill” on Mission Street, a hollowed ground known to local pool players as “Town & Country Billiards.” I’ll never forget the first time I wandered in one night out of the foggy Daly City cold.
It was an old bank building that sat on its own corner, sort of like a miniature Flat Iron Building of New York fame -- it had that sort of triangular shape, just one story, though. You’d walk up a short set of concrete steps, through glass doors, and walk into the room, tables to your left protected by a black iron railing that curved around up to the front desk on your right. It was a pretty gaudy looking place with red velvet wall paper, white-sided National Shuffle Board tables covered with beige cloth, and Tiffany-style lamps over each 4 ½ foot by 9 table.
Arriving at the desk you’d usually be greeted by the owner, Stan Cleaner, a New York transplant who had seen it all and done it all. On one of the first evening forages I made into the room I was challenged by a young short haired blonde guy, playing with a Gina. He wanted to play 9ball. I sidled up to Stan and asked, “Do I have a chance?” And Stan, who had somehow already divined my place in the substrata of pool players in his room said in a very non-committal but totally committal way that my challenger was, “the best in house.” That I had no chance was unnecessarily unspoken. I passed on my opportunity to play Steve Votter, probably at the time, one of the best 9ball players in California.
Daytime visits there, with the large windows along one side of the room allowing the afternoon sun to filter in, are still vivid and magical to me in my memories of the joint all these years removed. One day I was playing on a table near the center of the room and was surprised to see the legendary Tugboat Whaley walk in. Ancient, slightly bowed, but still rosy-cheeked with pure white hair, suspenders in place he confidently shuffled in, opened up a beat up old black cylindrical leather case, pulled out his brass jointed cue and start hitting balls with a soft easy grace. Shortly thereafter I was again surprised when I saw Dorothy Wise, then several times Women’s U.S 14.1 Open champ, come in. Trim, grandmotherly, and coiffed, she put her own cue together and they began to spar, stopping occasionally for Tugboat to impart some bit of wisdom to Ms. Wise. I probably made two balls that afternoon as I strained to listen in above the juke box and glean what ever crumbs of knowledge fell from their table. On other days Tugboat would often play Dennis in the alcove behind the desk that had two tables -- only one of them, the one nearest the desk, was “the” table -- and they’d be on it playing a refined game of 14.1 for hours on end. Watching these two elegantly manage and dismantle rack after rack was possibly the incipient start of my love affair with straight pool.
As time went on, I came to know and assume my role amongst the whole cast of motley characters, most near my age, that choose to rush to the pool hall each day, rather than participate in other, more serious life-endeavors. Well I remember being overjoyed to be at the pool hall the Friday night of my senior prom. After all, pool was a lady whose company you could enjoy, savor, and didn’t have to buy a corsage.
Jerry, Dale, Devlin, Rico, 10-Speed, Bob Babba, Dennis, Vince, Steve, Jeff, Eugene, Bob Langstrom, and the rest now lost to memory... It seemed that for several years of my life it all revolved around getting to the pool hall as soon as humanly possible, being heartily hailed by my compatriots, and staying up until I could put off sleeping no more, or the demands of real life -- school, family, job -- could no longer be held at bay. Without any doubt I can categorically state that my major source of calories for more years than I now care to recall was the Landshire sandwich company. In particular, their “Special Hoagie,” which as a regular, I was allowed to go behind the desk and cook myself in the pool hall’s min-oven. I had it down to a science: taking it out of the pool hall frig, carefully removing the plastic wrap, placing it in the oven just so, for a precise amount of time, removing the piping-hot said culinary jewel from the mini-oven, slathering it with a golden brown mustard, and chasing it with an ice cold cup of root beer. Life could not possibly get any better.
Over the eight or so years I spent living there, the troupe that hung together survived countless adventures and, statistically, many of us should be dead or permanently maimed now (or at least done serious jail time). I remember the afternoon Crazy Bob Langstrom came into the pool hall, ecstatic that he had just purchased a brand new “Sterling Moss Green” Triumph 6. Now basically, this is a British vehicle that closely resembles a tin metal soap box on wheels with an engine with enough torque to get most cars airborne. Bob wanted to take someone (it was a two-seater) for a spin and show them what the car could do. Everyone just sort of looked at each other, studied their feet for what seemed like an eternity, hands in pockets, until I finally, innocently chirped, “Sure. I’ll go.” Now maybe it was because I hadn’t hung out at the pool hall for long enough at that point, or maybe I was just being stupid again (a frequent state of mine in those days), but somehow, for just that moment, I had failed to recall that there were reasons Bob Langstrom was known as *Crazy* Bob Angstrom.
We took off from the pool hall at about 70 miles an hour through a mixed residential/business neighborhood and hit California Highway 280 doing 80 mph. (This is when I started to get a little concerned.) Bob took it up to 110 on a rather busy public highway up through the Sierra Hills until I pretty much started to look the same color as his shiny new car. The coupe de grace was coming down the off ramp at 90 miles an hour and having to decelerate fast enough to not fly through the stop sign at the end of the exit ramp (and cross-traffic), which is about when I actually, physically, felt the blood totally drain from my face from the negative G’s.
But, through the grace of God or pure dumb luck, we survived intact and without judicial punishment, all the countless late night runs though the mountains to play blackjack in Lake Tahoe or Reno. You have to remember: this was before the advent of “boats." Going to Tahoe, or Reno, or Vegas was special. Free non-stop booze; single deck blackjack (double deck was rare); friendlier game rules and machine odds; you were paid off in real no-kidding silver dollars; and the cocktail waitresses always seemed happy to flirt with you a bit. For whatever reasons, it was a richer, more exotic experience than going to a casino five minutes away from your house.
(continued)
Lou Figueroa
(insert flashback music)
Shortly into my high school years I procured a car, or more accurately, my father helped me procure a car, a ’65 forest green Mustang, and I broke free of the room within walking distance of my home that was my pool spawning grounds, The Billiard Palacade and I found myself swimming upstream (almost literally) to my new home-away-from-home, “up the hill” on Mission Street, a hollowed ground known to local pool players as “Town & Country Billiards.” I’ll never forget the first time I wandered in one night out of the foggy Daly City cold.
It was an old bank building that sat on its own corner, sort of like a miniature Flat Iron Building of New York fame -- it had that sort of triangular shape, just one story, though. You’d walk up a short set of concrete steps, through glass doors, and walk into the room, tables to your left protected by a black iron railing that curved around up to the front desk on your right. It was a pretty gaudy looking place with red velvet wall paper, white-sided National Shuffle Board tables covered with beige cloth, and Tiffany-style lamps over each 4 ½ foot by 9 table.
Arriving at the desk you’d usually be greeted by the owner, Stan Cleaner, a New York transplant who had seen it all and done it all. On one of the first evening forages I made into the room I was challenged by a young short haired blonde guy, playing with a Gina. He wanted to play 9ball. I sidled up to Stan and asked, “Do I have a chance?” And Stan, who had somehow already divined my place in the substrata of pool players in his room said in a very non-committal but totally committal way that my challenger was, “the best in house.” That I had no chance was unnecessarily unspoken. I passed on my opportunity to play Steve Votter, probably at the time, one of the best 9ball players in California.
Daytime visits there, with the large windows along one side of the room allowing the afternoon sun to filter in, are still vivid and magical to me in my memories of the joint all these years removed. One day I was playing on a table near the center of the room and was surprised to see the legendary Tugboat Whaley walk in. Ancient, slightly bowed, but still rosy-cheeked with pure white hair, suspenders in place he confidently shuffled in, opened up a beat up old black cylindrical leather case, pulled out his brass jointed cue and start hitting balls with a soft easy grace. Shortly thereafter I was again surprised when I saw Dorothy Wise, then several times Women’s U.S 14.1 Open champ, come in. Trim, grandmotherly, and coiffed, she put her own cue together and they began to spar, stopping occasionally for Tugboat to impart some bit of wisdom to Ms. Wise. I probably made two balls that afternoon as I strained to listen in above the juke box and glean what ever crumbs of knowledge fell from their table. On other days Tugboat would often play Dennis in the alcove behind the desk that had two tables -- only one of them, the one nearest the desk, was “the” table -- and they’d be on it playing a refined game of 14.1 for hours on end. Watching these two elegantly manage and dismantle rack after rack was possibly the incipient start of my love affair with straight pool.
As time went on, I came to know and assume my role amongst the whole cast of motley characters, most near my age, that choose to rush to the pool hall each day, rather than participate in other, more serious life-endeavors. Well I remember being overjoyed to be at the pool hall the Friday night of my senior prom. After all, pool was a lady whose company you could enjoy, savor, and didn’t have to buy a corsage.
Jerry, Dale, Devlin, Rico, 10-Speed, Bob Babba, Dennis, Vince, Steve, Jeff, Eugene, Bob Langstrom, and the rest now lost to memory... It seemed that for several years of my life it all revolved around getting to the pool hall as soon as humanly possible, being heartily hailed by my compatriots, and staying up until I could put off sleeping no more, or the demands of real life -- school, family, job -- could no longer be held at bay. Without any doubt I can categorically state that my major source of calories for more years than I now care to recall was the Landshire sandwich company. In particular, their “Special Hoagie,” which as a regular, I was allowed to go behind the desk and cook myself in the pool hall’s min-oven. I had it down to a science: taking it out of the pool hall frig, carefully removing the plastic wrap, placing it in the oven just so, for a precise amount of time, removing the piping-hot said culinary jewel from the mini-oven, slathering it with a golden brown mustard, and chasing it with an ice cold cup of root beer. Life could not possibly get any better.
Over the eight or so years I spent living there, the troupe that hung together survived countless adventures and, statistically, many of us should be dead or permanently maimed now (or at least done serious jail time). I remember the afternoon Crazy Bob Langstrom came into the pool hall, ecstatic that he had just purchased a brand new “Sterling Moss Green” Triumph 6. Now basically, this is a British vehicle that closely resembles a tin metal soap box on wheels with an engine with enough torque to get most cars airborne. Bob wanted to take someone (it was a two-seater) for a spin and show them what the car could do. Everyone just sort of looked at each other, studied their feet for what seemed like an eternity, hands in pockets, until I finally, innocently chirped, “Sure. I’ll go.” Now maybe it was because I hadn’t hung out at the pool hall for long enough at that point, or maybe I was just being stupid again (a frequent state of mine in those days), but somehow, for just that moment, I had failed to recall that there were reasons Bob Langstrom was known as *Crazy* Bob Angstrom.
We took off from the pool hall at about 70 miles an hour through a mixed residential/business neighborhood and hit California Highway 280 doing 80 mph. (This is when I started to get a little concerned.) Bob took it up to 110 on a rather busy public highway up through the Sierra Hills until I pretty much started to look the same color as his shiny new car. The coupe de grace was coming down the off ramp at 90 miles an hour and having to decelerate fast enough to not fly through the stop sign at the end of the exit ramp (and cross-traffic), which is about when I actually, physically, felt the blood totally drain from my face from the negative G’s.
But, through the grace of God or pure dumb luck, we survived intact and without judicial punishment, all the countless late night runs though the mountains to play blackjack in Lake Tahoe or Reno. You have to remember: this was before the advent of “boats." Going to Tahoe, or Reno, or Vegas was special. Free non-stop booze; single deck blackjack (double deck was rare); friendlier game rules and machine odds; you were paid off in real no-kidding silver dollars; and the cocktail waitresses always seemed happy to flirt with you a bit. For whatever reasons, it was a richer, more exotic experience than going to a casino five minutes away from your house.
(continued)
Lou Figueroa
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