A good read....enjoy.
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3919633/at-100-a-pool-table-named-big.html
He first saw her through the smoke in a crowded pool room, and he loved her lines.
Bertha was in her mid-30s, a little heavy.
He liked that. Fast action, he figured.
It was a night right after the war, 1947, in the Kling & Allen Billiard Parlor in the old Dixon Hotel at 12th and Baltimore.
Don Brink, 19, just a kid, headed her way. Yeah, there were guys around her, but there were always guys around Bertha. They would come in with their fancy clothes and fat wallets and clean shaves, each thinking they could tame her, make her a lady.
Then it would be morning. Those white shirts soaked with bad luck, the cash gone like scattered leaves on a lonely street and their faces rough enough to mar the finish on the mahogany bar.
Big Bertha? Fresh. Ready to do it all again. Just before 11 a.m. a day last week, Mickey Brandt, late 50s, faded Hawaiian shirt, tousled hair, unlocked a door on 63rd Street in the Raytown business district and went down 12 concrete steps to the last of Kansas City’s old-fashioned pool halls.
Raytown Recreation was dark and quiet, yesterday’s cigarette smoke and talcum powder still in the air. Brandt flicked a light over the table closest to the door. And the biggest one in the place. Ten feet long and 5 wide.
Good morning, Big Bertha. She just turned 100, but awoke like sunup hitting a spring meadow.
For the first half of her life, she was belle of the ball at Kling & Allen, the swankiest joint on 12th Street. She was there the day it opened in the fall of 1912. Johnny Kling, the Kansas City-born owner, was a champion billiards player and a catcher for the Chicago Cubs. He ordered specially designed tables from Brunswick. Google “Kling table” and see what comes up.
Bennie Allen, Kling’s nephew, won several world billiards championships. Bertha was his personal practice table — he kept her in his upstairs suite at the Dixon Hotel.
For marquee exhibitions, Bertha — the name wouldn’t come until later — would be disassembled, taken down to the main floor and set off in a special area surrounded by a black velvet curtain.
The great Willie Mosconi played on her. So probably did every other champion, road player and hustler who came through town in those 12th Street glory days.
Now, at the century mark, Bertha is at home on the worn Oriental rug at Raytown Recreation.
Who owns the place?
Don Brink. That kid who fell in love with her that night in 1947 and who would go on to become one of the best three-cushion billiards players in the country is now 84. After buying the place in 1970, one of the first things he did was get rid of the jukebox.
“You don’t dance in a pool room,” he said.
Then he got to wondering what happened to all those pool tables down at Kling & Allen, which closed in the mid-1950s.
One, he learned, ended up in the basement of a Leawood home.
“So I call the guy,” Brink said.
No. The man didn’t want to sell. Not many 10-foot tables around. Besides, she was special and beautiful and all men wanted her and she was his.
But Don Brink, an old Navy guy, wasn’t the kind to give up on love.
He called again the next year.
“You know what?” the guy said. “Nobody plays on it. Give me a nine-foot table and $500 and she’s yours.”
While the Kling & Allen parlor of his youth played to billiards’ high life of fine brandy and cigars, Raytown Rec was more of a working-class venue — not many high-rollers came through the door. More of a soda pop and beef jerky place. He wasn’t rolling in dough.
But Brink wanted this link to his past.
How bad?
“Bad enough to pay $500 I didn’t have,” he remembered last week.
Bertha, with her three pieces of inch-and-a-half slate laid edge to edge and each weighing 375 pounds, arrived at Brink’s place on Oct. 1, 1975, and hasn’t budged since.
The table’s partial specs, according to a Brunswick catalog: “Sides made of 5-ply construction, faced with butt walnut and paneled with swirl mahogany. Sides are dowelled and bolted into legs to assure perfect rigidity. Rosewood skirting and inlaid with satinwood and ebony trim.”
And, of course, her measurements. Bar tables are often 7 feet long. Eight feet is common for home use. A lot of 9s in pool halls.
Bertha is 10 by 5. That’s 50 square feet of green. That’s big for anything you don’t have to mow.
“Intimidated,” Steve Hassell, Brink’s son-in-law, said of players the first time they see Bertha.
Not long ago, four men from Louisiana came in. They had read about Bertha on a pool website. One of the men had a business meeting in Kansas City. His three buddies came along.
“They had to play her,” said Brandt, who has worked at Raytown Rec off and on for 30 years. “Someone from out of town is always coming in here for that.”
Brink said that Nick Varner, a champion player from Owensboro, Ky., came in one day and ran 71 balls.
“He said it was the best table he’d ever played on,” Brink said.
Better players prefer tough tables, Hassell said. Luck is minimized. Longer tables and tighter pockets are less forgiving.
At Raytown Rec, most young players stay away from Bertha. Just like they do the Belgian-made Verhoeven heated billiards table. They shoot eight ball on the back tables.
Bertha is used almost exclusively for one-pocket. Simple game: Each player takes an end pocket; first to eight balls wins.
It is a chesslike game, lots of defense. Leaving your opponent no shot is as important as getting a good one for yourself.
“See that,” Brink said last week as he watched a game from a chair on the raised platform. “He did exactly what he wanted to do — knocked two balls away from the other guy’s pocket.”
“That was luck,” Brandt, a ranked tournament player, said of his opponent’s shot.
John Krajczar smiled. “I’m lucky a lot.”
These two would be considered regulars at the big table. Most are older, retired guys. They get a one-buck break from the regular rate of $4 an hour.
Play starts shortly after the 11 a.m. opening and goes through the afternoon.
Brink’s son, Doug, runs the place at night. Closing time is when the last players leave.
“Usually 4 or 5 a.m.,” Brink said.
Then the basement pool hall goes dark and quiet.
It’s the hardest time for Big Bertha, a gal of smooth lines and fast action.
Even at 100, she waits for the morning light, and for more guys to come calling.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3919633/at-100-a-pool-table-named-big.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3919633/at-100-a-pool-table-named-big.html
He first saw her through the smoke in a crowded pool room, and he loved her lines.
Bertha was in her mid-30s, a little heavy.
He liked that. Fast action, he figured.
It was a night right after the war, 1947, in the Kling & Allen Billiard Parlor in the old Dixon Hotel at 12th and Baltimore.
Don Brink, 19, just a kid, headed her way. Yeah, there were guys around her, but there were always guys around Bertha. They would come in with their fancy clothes and fat wallets and clean shaves, each thinking they could tame her, make her a lady.
Then it would be morning. Those white shirts soaked with bad luck, the cash gone like scattered leaves on a lonely street and their faces rough enough to mar the finish on the mahogany bar.
Big Bertha? Fresh. Ready to do it all again. Just before 11 a.m. a day last week, Mickey Brandt, late 50s, faded Hawaiian shirt, tousled hair, unlocked a door on 63rd Street in the Raytown business district and went down 12 concrete steps to the last of Kansas City’s old-fashioned pool halls.
Raytown Recreation was dark and quiet, yesterday’s cigarette smoke and talcum powder still in the air. Brandt flicked a light over the table closest to the door. And the biggest one in the place. Ten feet long and 5 wide.
Good morning, Big Bertha. She just turned 100, but awoke like sunup hitting a spring meadow.
For the first half of her life, she was belle of the ball at Kling & Allen, the swankiest joint on 12th Street. She was there the day it opened in the fall of 1912. Johnny Kling, the Kansas City-born owner, was a champion billiards player and a catcher for the Chicago Cubs. He ordered specially designed tables from Brunswick. Google “Kling table” and see what comes up.
Bennie Allen, Kling’s nephew, won several world billiards championships. Bertha was his personal practice table — he kept her in his upstairs suite at the Dixon Hotel.
For marquee exhibitions, Bertha — the name wouldn’t come until later — would be disassembled, taken down to the main floor and set off in a special area surrounded by a black velvet curtain.
The great Willie Mosconi played on her. So probably did every other champion, road player and hustler who came through town in those 12th Street glory days.
Now, at the century mark, Bertha is at home on the worn Oriental rug at Raytown Recreation.
Who owns the place?
Don Brink. That kid who fell in love with her that night in 1947 and who would go on to become one of the best three-cushion billiards players in the country is now 84. After buying the place in 1970, one of the first things he did was get rid of the jukebox.
“You don’t dance in a pool room,” he said.
Then he got to wondering what happened to all those pool tables down at Kling & Allen, which closed in the mid-1950s.
One, he learned, ended up in the basement of a Leawood home.
“So I call the guy,” Brink said.
No. The man didn’t want to sell. Not many 10-foot tables around. Besides, she was special and beautiful and all men wanted her and she was his.
But Don Brink, an old Navy guy, wasn’t the kind to give up on love.
He called again the next year.
“You know what?” the guy said. “Nobody plays on it. Give me a nine-foot table and $500 and she’s yours.”
While the Kling & Allen parlor of his youth played to billiards’ high life of fine brandy and cigars, Raytown Rec was more of a working-class venue — not many high-rollers came through the door. More of a soda pop and beef jerky place. He wasn’t rolling in dough.
But Brink wanted this link to his past.
How bad?
“Bad enough to pay $500 I didn’t have,” he remembered last week.
Bertha, with her three pieces of inch-and-a-half slate laid edge to edge and each weighing 375 pounds, arrived at Brink’s place on Oct. 1, 1975, and hasn’t budged since.
The table’s partial specs, according to a Brunswick catalog: “Sides made of 5-ply construction, faced with butt walnut and paneled with swirl mahogany. Sides are dowelled and bolted into legs to assure perfect rigidity. Rosewood skirting and inlaid with satinwood and ebony trim.”
And, of course, her measurements. Bar tables are often 7 feet long. Eight feet is common for home use. A lot of 9s in pool halls.
Bertha is 10 by 5. That’s 50 square feet of green. That’s big for anything you don’t have to mow.
“Intimidated,” Steve Hassell, Brink’s son-in-law, said of players the first time they see Bertha.
Not long ago, four men from Louisiana came in. They had read about Bertha on a pool website. One of the men had a business meeting in Kansas City. His three buddies came along.
“They had to play her,” said Brandt, who has worked at Raytown Rec off and on for 30 years. “Someone from out of town is always coming in here for that.”
Brink said that Nick Varner, a champion player from Owensboro, Ky., came in one day and ran 71 balls.
“He said it was the best table he’d ever played on,” Brink said.
Better players prefer tough tables, Hassell said. Luck is minimized. Longer tables and tighter pockets are less forgiving.
At Raytown Rec, most young players stay away from Bertha. Just like they do the Belgian-made Verhoeven heated billiards table. They shoot eight ball on the back tables.
Bertha is used almost exclusively for one-pocket. Simple game: Each player takes an end pocket; first to eight balls wins.
It is a chesslike game, lots of defense. Leaving your opponent no shot is as important as getting a good one for yourself.
“See that,” Brink said last week as he watched a game from a chair on the raised platform. “He did exactly what he wanted to do — knocked two balls away from the other guy’s pocket.”
“That was luck,” Brandt, a ranked tournament player, said of his opponent’s shot.
John Krajczar smiled. “I’m lucky a lot.”
These two would be considered regulars at the big table. Most are older, retired guys. They get a one-buck break from the regular rate of $4 an hour.
Play starts shortly after the 11 a.m. opening and goes through the afternoon.
Brink’s son, Doug, runs the place at night. Closing time is when the last players leave.
“Usually 4 or 5 a.m.,” Brink said.
Then the basement pool hall goes dark and quiet.
It’s the hardest time for Big Bertha, a gal of smooth lines and fast action.
Even at 100, she waits for the morning light, and for more guys to come calling.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3919633/at-100-a-pool-table-named-big.html#storylink=cpy
