Memories of past opponents

[Ralph Kramden]

Is there any one person that you remember playing against in the past?
Back in the 60's there was a older guy that hung around the local pool room. A couple of times a week after school let out he was always willing to play and take some left over lunch money.
He was quite a character. He walked with a slight limp and smelled bad. He wore flannel shirts with the sleeves either missing or rolled up.
No one knew his name but we called him "Peeps".
Why did we call him by that knickname? He always wore two pairs of glasses when he played.
He wore 1 pair and kept a second pair in his shirt pocket. When he played he would take out the second pair and put them over the ones he had on.
Someone would ask Peeps if he wanted to play and out would come the other pair of glasses.

 

[ShootingArts]

Leaving out some of the better known ones . . .

The hippie: I once knew at least his first name, long forgotten now. He was always zoned, didn't have a nerve in his body. He was very tall, very thin and had the eyes of an eagle. Impossible cut shots were his stock in trade. We hooked up maybe a dozen times. It started drawing a crowd every time we played. Sometimes he won, sometimes I did.

Old Joe: An ancient old player in a ratty old bar. He wore a sport coat with miraculous powers. The bar only served beer so Joe kept half pints of Old Crow in his jacket. I have seen him in the bar for twenty hours or more and never run out of whiskey nipping on the bottle every five or ten minutes. I'm pretty sure that the jacket was some kind of mobile distillery. Joe played slow, Joe moved slow, Joe never shot a ball hard enough that it didn't trickle down the bevel of the hole going in. The bad thing is that Joe could run out on you. When he did it was fifteen minutes or more of long drawn out torture!

Jackjaw: Jackjaw remains one of the best shooters I have ever seen and he was a natural. Never practicing and only playing sporadically. It made more sense to hook up as partners than try to beat him so that is what I did. I don't remember him trying to teach me anything but just trying to hang with him for six months brought my game up to another level.

Steve: Always up for something new and different. I played him both shooting one handed, both shooting one handed with brooms, shooting with mops, and a single game of eight ball on a bar table for $80,000 amongst other crazy games.

Becky: The first female I met that could flat play pool. Gorgeous and stacked too so I wisely only played her for small bets. No way I could have focused on pool anyway. I saw her take a lot of money off of chumps that thought they could beat any girl.

Just a few that come to mind.

Hu