Ft. Polk/Leesville, LA pool rooms???
- Thread starter easy-e
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If you have the time, run down to Lafayette and play at White Diamonds, arguably, home of the best barbox tournament in the country.
It's a little over 2 hours or so away, but well worth it.
It's a little over 2 hours or so away, but well worth it.
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Well there's not much in Leesville, other than bars, strip clubs and tattoo shops, but I'm sure you could find a game somewhere in town.
The VFW hall has a couple of bar tables, but you have to be a member I think. You can go to Sharkies in Alexandria LA which is about 45 minutes Northeast of Leesville. Other than that you have to find a bar with a table or two. Watch yourself doing that, those bars are ruff as hell.
have to second this
I didn't know if there was anything around that I didn't know about but hitting the bars could be mighty expensive. A decent shooting stranger can find himself in a lot of trouble over a five dollar game, it doesn't have to be for big money. Easy to get into a fight or a cutting.
A couple of my running partners were from the Leesville/DeRidder area and they raise them pretty rough around there, they wear out their clothes from the inside out. Not saying that Easy can't handle himself but first you have to win the fight with fellows that would rather fight than eat ice cream, then you have to get the hell gone before the law shows up. The stranger is the one thrown in jail and the jail in Leesville was pretty famous last I knew, infamous that is.
I don't have a count but I've broken a dozen house cues, maybe a couple dozen, just to get to my truck after leading a parade out the door of bars like those back when I was young and dumb. You are probably a little better off with the strippers. If they are local girls they can throw a hog over each shoulder and walk off with them though. Some heavy duty Judies. (Damn, I hope Faye doesn't see this, I almost married a girl from DeRidder!)
Hu
I didn't know if there was anything around that I didn't know about but hitting the bars could be mighty expensive. A decent shooting stranger can find himself in a lot of trouble over a five dollar game, it doesn't have to be for big money. Easy to get into a fight or a cutting.
A couple of my running partners were from the Leesville/DeRidder area and they raise them pretty rough around there, they wear out their clothes from the inside out. Not saying that Easy can't handle himself but first you have to win the fight with fellows that would rather fight than eat ice cream, then you have to get the hell gone before the law shows up. The stranger is the one thrown in jail and the jail in Leesville was pretty famous last I knew, infamous that is.
I don't have a count but I've broken a dozen house cues, maybe a couple dozen, just to get to my truck after leading a parade out the door of bars like those back when I was young and dumb. You are probably a little better off with the strippers. If they are local girls they can throw a hog over each shoulder and walk off with them though. Some heavy duty Judies. (Damn, I hope Faye doesn't see this, I almost married a girl from DeRidder!)
Hu
Just as an added service to interested readers stay out of all the country bars in Northwest Louisiana. Those are some of the worst bars in the world, I shite you not. I had an old friend almost beaten to death for looking at someone wrong. I could tell you some stories about guys being tortured before being murdered in a joint called the Cove. Word to the wise don't gamble at the Cove. The only safe bars in this region are in Natchitoches. Shreveport/Bossier can offer a fairly hostile crowd as well. I thought I was going to get my throat cut in Bossier City one night.
good advice
There are some country style bars in the cities that I am sure are fine but it's good advice to stay out of the country and small town bars unless you can genuinely look and act the part. Of course I have found myself being an outsider when the bar I gambled in regularly was three miles away!
Louisiana is two totally different places, roughly divided by the I-10, I-12 interstates. North of there you are in redneck Louisiana, south of there you are in Cajun country. You can get into plenty of trouble either place but you have a lot better chance of seeing it coming in south Louisiana. The folks in north Louisiana will fight at the drop of a hat, and most of them wear hats. Good folks but many of them figure fighting is just part of the evening's entertainment.
True story: An older couple were arguing with a man. The wife had enough. She told her husband, "Henry hit him or I will!" Henry hit him. Henry was a good guy and a gentleman, he couldn't have his wife whipping up on a man while he stood by watching. I'd have given two to one betting his wife against the man sight unseen though.
Hu
There are some country style bars in the cities that I am sure are fine but it's good advice to stay out of the country and small town bars unless you can genuinely look and act the part. Of course I have found myself being an outsider when the bar I gambled in regularly was three miles away!
Louisiana is two totally different places, roughly divided by the I-10, I-12 interstates. North of there you are in redneck Louisiana, south of there you are in Cajun country. You can get into plenty of trouble either place but you have a lot better chance of seeing it coming in south Louisiana. The folks in north Louisiana will fight at the drop of a hat, and most of them wear hats. Good folks but many of them figure fighting is just part of the evening's entertainment.
True story: An older couple were arguing with a man. The wife had enough. She told her husband, "Henry hit him or I will!" Henry hit him. Henry was a good guy and a gentleman, he couldn't have his wife whipping up on a man while he stood by watching. I'd have given two to one betting his wife against the man sight unseen though.
Hu
Bossier City
A friend of mine was driving a company truck and forty foot trailer through Bossier City and felt a little dry. He stopped at what he thought was a bar for a brew or two to take down the road. He thought it was kinda funny when they pulled back a slot and looked to see who it was before opening the door but he headed on in. Turned out it was a house of ill repute.
Since he didn't have time to partake of services they charged him twenty bucks for the brew he drank there. He wasn't toting any of his own cash so he told them he needed a receipt. They gave him one, for Red Lobster Restaurant. He grabbed another beer for the road, another twenty dollar Red Lobster receipt. When he got back to town he still didn't have any of his own money so he had to turn in the two Red Lobster tickets to balance his expense sheet.
His boss called him the next day to inquire about the Red Lobster receipts. "Yeah boss, I was hungry and the Red Lobster was the first thing I saw." His boss asked him, two receipts $40 dollars? "Yeah boss, I was really hungry so I ate two dinners!"
This story is almost pool related. Mike was 6'-5" and a former oilfield roughneck. He had my back many a night while I was shooting pool.
Hu
A friend of mine was driving a company truck and forty foot trailer through Bossier City and felt a little dry. He stopped at what he thought was a bar for a brew or two to take down the road. He thought it was kinda funny when they pulled back a slot and looked to see who it was before opening the door but he headed on in. Turned out it was a house of ill repute.
Since he didn't have time to partake of services they charged him twenty bucks for the brew he drank there. He wasn't toting any of his own cash so he told them he needed a receipt. They gave him one, for Red Lobster Restaurant. He grabbed another beer for the road, another twenty dollar Red Lobster receipt. When he got back to town he still didn't have any of his own money so he had to turn in the two Red Lobster tickets to balance his expense sheet.
His boss called him the next day to inquire about the Red Lobster receipts. "Yeah boss, I was hungry and the Red Lobster was the first thing I saw." His boss asked him, two receipts $40 dollars? "Yeah boss, I was really hungry so I ate two dinners!"
This story is almost pool related. Mike was 6'-5" and a former oilfield roughneck. He had my back many a night while I was shooting pool.
Hu
aint no joke
got an old friend that was shot in the head in zwolle about ten years ago, I went to college up in Natchitoches and stomped all over north la, and I'm glad some of the football players and such that I knew used to come watch my back. To make it worse there ain't one person that can shoot a lick up there, so they see any speed they looking for some trouble. Many many times I'm sure I wouldn't have made it out of alot of those places if it wasn't for that backup, don't go in there trying to play pool and especially if you don't look like a S**t kicker. I'm very suprised they never killed my lil barking a**, then again quite a few places I went to also knew I was good friends with a navy seal who was a champion kickboxer over in tailand, so maybe that helped
Sometimes its who you know, thank god lmao.
I once had a place tell me "possum" was looking for me to play, I told them, "you tell em' Coon is comin for him" when i did show up "possum" didn't squirreled out of playing, but I met an old pimp named MR. BOB he looked just like my avatar(its really a pic of the real gray ghost a jazz pianist), lmao and had a gold suit, black hat, gold on every finger and around his neck...that was one smooth old as hell pimp.
You remember Bob, marcus? That man had some style.
Grey Ghost
got an old friend that was shot in the head in zwolle about ten years ago, I went to college up in Natchitoches and stomped all over north la, and I'm glad some of the football players and such that I knew used to come watch my back. To make it worse there ain't one person that can shoot a lick up there, so they see any speed they looking for some trouble. Many many times I'm sure I wouldn't have made it out of alot of those places if it wasn't for that backup, don't go in there trying to play pool and especially if you don't look like a S**t kicker. I'm very suprised they never killed my lil barking a**, then again quite a few places I went to also knew I was good friends with a navy seal who was a champion kickboxer over in tailand, so maybe that helped
Sometimes its who you know, thank god lmao.
I once had a place tell me "possum" was looking for me to play, I told them, "you tell em' Coon is comin for him" when i did show up "possum" didn't squirreled out of playing, but I met an old pimp named MR. BOB he looked just like my avatar(its really a pic of the real gray ghost a jazz pianist), lmao and had a gold suit, black hat, gold on every finger and around his neck...that was one smooth old as hell pimp.
You remember Bob, marcus? That man had some style.
Grey Ghost
I've lived in NW La all my life and I've never heard of any of these places or the wide spread wild bars.
Sure there are some tough places up here, but every area in the country has them.
Oh well, it's usually people looking for trouble that find it.
Another great story of days gone by! You and JohnnyT have to be like 3rd or 4th cousins or something, what with all the mayhem you guys cause in bars!
This ALMOST got the rep, but instead, I repped the "Red Lobster" post cause I'd rather eat some breaded shrimp than an ol' Meucci.
You guys make soccer hooligans look like sissys!
ever drive hwy 71?
Many a Thursday night I took an eighteen wheeler up hwy 71. The Spot was gone by the time I was running my eighteen wheeler but there were a handful of other places, some having cars parked a full half-mile along the highway in the wee hours of the morning. The deal was explained when my dad leased one of those buildings years later. A small building had ten bathrooms, they went all the way across the back of it. The cathouses were wide open and no secret. Same with some in Opelousas and Lafayette. Bossier City had it's share of them too. Bossier was widely reported to be the clap capital of Louisiana. A few years before this time my partner and I left Port Allen headed to Houston at about 6:30 one evening. We stopped at pretty much every bar along the way for a beer and by 4AM we weren't quite to Lafayette. None of those bars were places you would have wanted to take your wife or best girl friend.
We haven't said the bars were wild, but they are a bit rough particularly in some areas around Shreveport and near the army base at Leesville. Might have changed a little since I ran them now and then from the sixties to the eighties but I doubt they have changed a whole lot. Running a wrecker for the city, state, and sheriff's office in Alexandria I saw dozens of people that had taken bad beatings in bars.
A big fellow in Alexandria made a hobby out of kicking a much smaller man's butt every month or so for several years. The smaller guy finally had enough and while the other man was peacefully drinking a beer after getting off work one afternoon he ambled up to him and popped him in the head with a .25 at point blank range. A friend quit having cook outs at his house near there when a man killed another guy with a .25 yet again. That was with one shot at about 75 feet, a heck of a lucky shot.
Another man I knew killed a man in a bar in Alexandria. It was ruled self-defense.
A former employee of mine was playing pool for two bucks a game. When he lost he swung a cue stick at the other player and missed. I was driving another employee home and he wanted to go by and check on Deedee the next day. When I saw him he looked like he had been ran through a sausage grinder, twicet! I told him it looked like he had some change coming back, that was at least a twenty dollar butt whupp'n.
A city boy from Baton Rouge had words with a friend of mine over a pool table. A few minutes later the city fellow broke a cue stick over AJ's back when he was bent over to shoot. AJ turned and hit him in the mouth, piling him up by the bar. When the guy woke up about fifteen minutes later he climbed up the bar until he was standing and asked the bartender for a napkin, he "had a busted lip". The bartender took a look at him, "you don't have a busted lip, all your teeth are gone!" AJ is a little fella too only about 5'-2" tall or so, almost that wide though.
My running partner stepped in when two brothers were fighting in a night club and one drug out a knife. Speaking of brothers, a former employee of mine and his twin brother fought like cats and dogs all their lives. One of them cut the other's throat in a bar. He lived through that and years later shot his brother off of a roof they were both working on, killing him graveyard dead.
A friend's brother was killed for firing an air barrel in a poker game in a night club. His brother came back from Chicago a bit upset about it and was cut up so bad that he spent over six months in the hospital. There was never a week went by without a handful of cuttings at that one place. A guy who staggered into the place across the street while I was shooting pool was cut bad. He made it to the bar and fell to the floor. He lay there for thirty minutes or so before somebody got tired of walking around him and they drug him out the way to bleed somewhere people weren't trying to walk. Hours later they decided he wasn't going to be able to leave on his own and finally called for help.
Three guys tried to mug an old man they had been playing pool with earlier. When the man fought a lot harder than they expected one cut his throat, killed him. Want more? One memory brings on another one and I can type up this kind of stuff for hours all happening in Louisiana north of the interstate and almost all in drinking establishments.
I'm not saying folks are bad people and most places you carried trouble outside but a stranger in these places would be well advised to watch his P's and Q's. I was in dozens of fights at these places when I was younger and started very few of them. I was quick to accommodate people when they wanted to fight and that was all it took. When I ran my businesses around Alexandria in the eighties I found people were still the same. The only way to not have trouble with people every day was to give somebody a good thumping three or four times a year. It wasn't because I wanted to fight or enjoyed it, it was simply a good business practice much like keeping a couple of guns handy.
I deliberately made this a long post to illustrate my point, the places aren't and weren't that wild, depending on what you consider wild, but they could be a wee bit rough. I knew a lot of country boys whose Saturday night plan was to go out, get drunk, get a girl, or find a fight. Maybe find a fight and a girl. One local handyman in Pointe Coupee reminded me of Jerry Reed. Tall and skinny and I don't think he ever won a fight. Didn't stop him from getting in two or three a month.
Hu
Many a Thursday night I took an eighteen wheeler up hwy 71. The Spot was gone by the time I was running my eighteen wheeler but there were a handful of other places, some having cars parked a full half-mile along the highway in the wee hours of the morning. The deal was explained when my dad leased one of those buildings years later. A small building had ten bathrooms, they went all the way across the back of it. The cathouses were wide open and no secret. Same with some in Opelousas and Lafayette. Bossier City had it's share of them too. Bossier was widely reported to be the clap capital of Louisiana. A few years before this time my partner and I left Port Allen headed to Houston at about 6:30 one evening. We stopped at pretty much every bar along the way for a beer and by 4AM we weren't quite to Lafayette. None of those bars were places you would have wanted to take your wife or best girl friend.
We haven't said the bars were wild, but they are a bit rough particularly in some areas around Shreveport and near the army base at Leesville. Might have changed a little since I ran them now and then from the sixties to the eighties but I doubt they have changed a whole lot. Running a wrecker for the city, state, and sheriff's office in Alexandria I saw dozens of people that had taken bad beatings in bars.
A big fellow in Alexandria made a hobby out of kicking a much smaller man's butt every month or so for several years. The smaller guy finally had enough and while the other man was peacefully drinking a beer after getting off work one afternoon he ambled up to him and popped him in the head with a .25 at point blank range. A friend quit having cook outs at his house near there when a man killed another guy with a .25 yet again. That was with one shot at about 75 feet, a heck of a lucky shot.
Another man I knew killed a man in a bar in Alexandria. It was ruled self-defense.
A former employee of mine was playing pool for two bucks a game. When he lost he swung a cue stick at the other player and missed. I was driving another employee home and he wanted to go by and check on Deedee the next day. When I saw him he looked like he had been ran through a sausage grinder, twicet! I told him it looked like he had some change coming back, that was at least a twenty dollar butt whupp'n.
A city boy from Baton Rouge had words with a friend of mine over a pool table. A few minutes later the city fellow broke a cue stick over AJ's back when he was bent over to shoot. AJ turned and hit him in the mouth, piling him up by the bar. When the guy woke up about fifteen minutes later he climbed up the bar until he was standing and asked the bartender for a napkin, he "had a busted lip". The bartender took a look at him, "you don't have a busted lip, all your teeth are gone!" AJ is a little fella too only about 5'-2" tall or so, almost that wide though.
My running partner stepped in when two brothers were fighting in a night club and one drug out a knife. Speaking of brothers, a former employee of mine and his twin brother fought like cats and dogs all their lives. One of them cut the other's throat in a bar. He lived through that and years later shot his brother off of a roof they were both working on, killing him graveyard dead.
A friend's brother was killed for firing an air barrel in a poker game in a night club. His brother came back from Chicago a bit upset about it and was cut up so bad that he spent over six months in the hospital. There was never a week went by without a handful of cuttings at that one place. A guy who staggered into the place across the street while I was shooting pool was cut bad. He made it to the bar and fell to the floor. He lay there for thirty minutes or so before somebody got tired of walking around him and they drug him out the way to bleed somewhere people weren't trying to walk. Hours later they decided he wasn't going to be able to leave on his own and finally called for help.
Three guys tried to mug an old man they had been playing pool with earlier. When the man fought a lot harder than they expected one cut his throat, killed him. Want more? One memory brings on another one and I can type up this kind of stuff for hours all happening in Louisiana north of the interstate and almost all in drinking establishments.
I'm not saying folks are bad people and most places you carried trouble outside but a stranger in these places would be well advised to watch his P's and Q's. I was in dozens of fights at these places when I was younger and started very few of them. I was quick to accommodate people when they wanted to fight and that was all it took. When I ran my businesses around Alexandria in the eighties I found people were still the same. The only way to not have trouble with people every day was to give somebody a good thumping three or four times a year. It wasn't because I wanted to fight or enjoyed it, it was simply a good business practice much like keeping a couple of guns handy.
I deliberately made this a long post to illustrate my point, the places aren't and weren't that wild, depending on what you consider wild, but they could be a wee bit rough. I knew a lot of country boys whose Saturday night plan was to go out, get drunk, get a girl, or find a fight. Maybe find a fight and a girl. One local handyman in Pointe Coupee reminded me of Jerry Reed. Tall and skinny and I don't think he ever won a fight. Didn't stop him from getting in two or three a month.
Hu
Man, Ft. Polk. I used to work the JRTC TDY thing all the time. If I remember right, the strip club had a table in the back. Also check the clubs on post
edit.
also there used to be a club that had like 30 or more frozen daiquiri machines. attached to that place is a bar with some tables. (I haven't been there in a long time though)
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I am guessing you don't travel much down down to Sabine, Natchitoches, Red River and Winn Parish. Your not missing anything I assure you. Most bars have at most two old crusty tables with big tears and stains on them. These bars aren't wild party bars, they are bars where you can get yourself cut up over nothing. Bars like Hog Heaven, The Cove, Wildlife Tavern, The Cherokee and others like them all have had stabbings and all but one have had one or more murders. I doubt the locals have reformed themselves since I visited last. The pool halls in New Orleans are much safer by comparison, even the sports palace if its still open. Dunno? been a minute since I been back to those places.
As for Grey Ghost's post, yeah keeb I still remember old man Bob. The oldest pimp I ever met. He could shoot straight for being as old as he was. I wonder if that original gangsta is still alive. The bar tinder at Beaudions back in the day could play the hell out some 8 ball on the box. Too bad they changed locations and dumped the tables.
dam right, I remember the murders at the cherokee didn't they stab the owner to death and throw him in the beer locker???