Small World

I first started playing in Memphis, Tennesse, in the early 1970s. The poolrooms were gathering places for more than just players - there were gamblers, cardsharks, bookies, pimps, bums, drug dealers, shell-game hustlers ("find the queen", was popular for beating money out of turkeys), and a few murderers ... you name it, we had it, and the poolrooms operated 24/7, 365 days a year. No "date nights", no karaoke, and no "mixologists" behind the bar. Many of the local characters became familiar to me, and I could fill a book with stories about them. The hangouts were People's, Golden Cue, and River City Billiards. Sometimes Funland and the basement of Cherokee Lanes on Lamar. Maybe a few others, but I mostly hung out in the South Memphis suburb of Whitehaven (an oxymoron for sure). The Rack and High Pockets did not exist yet. Golden Cue closed in its heyday when the owners checked into the crossbar hotel. People's is still open for nostalgia, but nothing like before. Not sure what happened to River City. Cherokee and Funland are long gone.

Anyway, one of the fringe element who hustled 9-ball was a black guy who went by a name that sounded like "Armycade" when he pronounced it. So I said it the same way and that seemed fine with him. He was tall and relatively handsome, and you tended to remember him for his nice clothes, oiled hair, and gold front tooth. He wasn't the strongest player, but he knew how to pick his battles. And I suspected hustling pool was more or less just a pastime - he probably made the real money from other activities. He always seemed to have an "edgy" look about him, as if he needed to watch his back.

In 1976 I graduated from college, moved to Texas, got married, started an engineering career ... and stopped playing pool.

Fast-forward to the mid-1980s, I'm now divorced and playing a little pool on a table I bought for the house, and shooting some local tournaments with a guy I met playing in the rec center at work (actually it was Tom Ashworth, the same "Tashworth19191" who won the AZB Predator giveaway a couple of months ago - that should qualify as a "small world" example in itself!). Then Tom moved away and I sold my table, and forgot about pool again for several years. Sometime in the early 1990s my interest was rekindled and once again I started playing and hanging out at a few of the local joints two or three nights a week. I even joined a league.

One night, maybe around 1995, I was in Clicks watching some of the local Dallas action. Parked on the rail across the room was a man that I marked as a pimp or dealer, based on his clothes, company, demeanor, and bankroll. Our eyes met once and he smiled, showing a prominent gold tooth. I asked the bartender who he was, and he said “that’s Black Larry, he’s probably backing someone”. Well, it may have been 20 years and 450 miles, but I was pretty sure I knew this guy. I eased over and introduced myself, and asked if he was from Memphis. He got sort of quiet and looked around, then asked me why I wanted to know. I said I remembered a guy who looked like him, going by the name Armycade, from Memphis in the 1970s. Then I asked if he remembered a tall skinny kid with a long nose, usually the only white boy in River City after 2 am. He did, and we talked about the old days and the old Memphis characters. Turned out his real name was Larry McKay, but in Memphis he used to go by his middle initial and last name, “R. McKay”.

Larry McKay vanished from my circle several years ago, then I sadly learned from an acquaintance that he had a debilitating illness (stroke?) and was now confined to a nursing home somewhere in another state. Small world, though!
 
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Sorry in advance for the long story. The first part of the story was posted in a thread about 2 years ago.

In college (early 10970s), my fraternity house had a 9 ft. pool table. I was a hack, but loved playing and used it as a daily study break in the evenings. One guy in the house was a fairly good player, but his older brother Rick who visited occasionally was great. IMO, he remains as one of the best non-professional players I have ever seen play. One Saturday morning, Rick was visiting, but his brother was busy leaving Rick with not much to do. Beginning at about 8:00 AM, Rick started to teach me the only pool lesson I have ever taken. He spent an entire 8 hour day showing me the basics of pool. In essence, he covered just about everything in the books that were later to publish, Banking with the Beard and The 99 Critical Shots in Pool. I absorbed everything he said that day.

Since pool has been a major pastime for me, I always wanted to thank Rick for the day he spent with me and tell him how much enjoyment I have experienced as a result. I lost track of his younger brother Joe and repeated attempts to find Rick came up dry. In 2012, I tried again on the internet and managed to find his phone number. After a few attempts, I reached him and let him know at the outset that this was going to be an unusual call. He gave up pool just after that time and focused on a new business venture that became his livelihood and from which he eventually retired. A phone call out of the blue was clearly not on his initial daily agenda. But he appreciated the thanks for something he did 40 years earlier. As it turns out, he lived 3 blocks from my mother and step father.

The following is the continued story.

Last year, while visiting family, my wife and I went to the local pool hall. The room was crowded. I noticed two guys on a table near me, but did not recognize them. But I noticed that one of them was playing with a Sampaio cue, which is pretty unusual these days. Both Rick and his brother Joe had Sampaio cues back in the 70s. As I watched a bit more closely, I noticed that the taller of the two looked a lot like I remembered how Rick played. When his playing partner took a break, I went over and started up a conversation. It was Rick. I reintroduced myself and referred back to the call a couple years earlier. Then his playing partner returned from the restroom and asked, “How do you know my brother?” It was Joe, who was also back home visiting family.
 
Not pool related.

From mid-2007 through the end of 2012, I worked for a Japanese company. Last October, my wife and I took a 9-day vacation trip to Japan. Twice while in Tokyo, we bumped into past co-workers from that company. Incredible enough to bump into two people I knew in a city as crowded as Tokyo. Neither of them works or lives in Tokyo. The lab is about 40 miles outside of the city.
 
I found my grade school best friend (he left after 4th grade) on a mutual Facebook friend's list of friends. His home town is the same as mine, so I googled his name and found two addresses. The first was a business, which did not pan out. The second was a house not far from my home. I drove by several times during a weekend and did not see any activity. A couple days later, the garage door was open, so I went to the front door. He came to the door, and I greeted him by name. He did not recognize me at first.

Later, that night on Facebook IM, I asked him if he played pool, to which he responded "better than average". We met up for a session on a bar box, where I won easily. I later joined the Center where he usually plays on a 9 foot table. I have not been able to figure it out yet, so he has whooped me there every time we play. I am very happy to meet up with an old friend who is a challenge on the pool table. He has lived less than a mile away for the past 11 years.

I also got back to playing league again, first time since 1999. Our team is in first place with a nice lead. Tax season keeps me from playing the second half of the season, so I am hoping they hang on to the lead and maybe I can play the last night on April 15.
 
My youngest daughter took a vacation to Brazil a few years back. As usual on her nights on the town she and her friend will go out and look to play some pool. She found a real pool room and spent part of her evening with her friend knocking em around. Of course the girls got challenged and the boy/girl match play evolved. During play one of the guys said to my daughter that he liked the way she played and asked where she learned. One thing lead to another, and the guy at the table actually knew me, from the early nineties when my name got some exposure during the WPA's early years. Hearing that, we both felt good.:)
 
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