Really nice to see another real Jay Flowers case. I remember walking into pool rooms whether you said you had a Jay, a Flowers, or a Jay Flowers people knew what you had.
I guess the name JEF Cue case never rolled off the tongue.
JV
No it didn't. I only ever knew them as "Flowers" cases much later. For some reason when I lived in South Florida and played in all the pool rooms none of the players I can remember had one either. No one in Oklahoma had one either. Ironically the first time I ever saw a Jay Flowers case was in Germany after I sent my friend to Florida to spend three weeks playing on the Florida Tour. He came back as a Jay Flowers dealer.
I got teased when I was in South Florida for being the first guy in the pool room with a Porper Case. My girlfriend had bought me a Grey Porper 3x6, the square one. I had the "fanciest" case I knew of at the time.
Smorg mentioned that at one time even people in Baker's Billiards didn't know about Jay Flowers cases. And that's where Jay hung out. So I missed that whole era you describe where people walked in with a tooled leather case and people "knew" it was a Flowers. In all my travels I have never seen that many around. Just like I have not seen a lot of Justis cases in any one place either.
I don't know, other than getting teased about my "golf bag" when I walked to the Miscue Lounge with my grey Porper I can't really remember there being a lot of conversation about what type of case people had. I guess there must have been some around but back then I wasn't paying attention to what cues and cases people were using. Except for Adam Schick's Joss and someone else's Schon I tried. I clearly remember those two cues and falling in love with both of them.
Hell I didn't even know Whitten was in Florida until after I moved to Germany. I never saw a Whitten that I can remember until I moved to Germany. I never saw a single Justis in Germany and I think he started about the time I went into the Air Force.
But no, JEF or "JF" as Will thinks Jay meant it never caught on. They have always been referred to as Flowers or Jay Flowers whenever I heard them mentioned.
Too bad Nora Van Horn wasn't identified earlier for her contributions. It is such an interesting story that she did all the work on the cases. I am really glad that Chris Tate was able to get with Nora's son and grandson to get their side of the story.
And I find it fascinating that all these great cases with unusual designs keep popping up. Shows that Nora had quite a bit of diversity and whimsy in her tooling.
Great find as usual Greg. I think I would leave the case as is. You can't make it original at this point and nothing you do to it is going to make it unmodified and worth more.
