9BallPaul
Banned
"Tangled up in Blue" was the first track on the groundbreaking Dylan album "Blood on the Tracks" in 1975, when I first started playing pool with my pal "Binghampton Mike."
Not a name any of you will recognize. I gave it to him when our pool rivalry began 42 years ago. We both had a jones for Mexican food and started playing on bar tables at the Riviera Lounge in Glendale.
Got word of Mike's death today and I'm a little heartsick, so forgive a sentimental thread. Yeah, I'm tangled up in blue.
The two of us shared an old house on East Colfax Avenue in Denver, where we played the stereo as loud as the law would permit, drank copious amounts of beer and struck up a pool rivalry that lasted until a few days ago. In those days, a guy named Nixon was president.
Started thinking tonight about all the guys I played with as a youngster growing up in Denver, and unless I'm wrong, I'm the last guy standing. My old mentor Fat Marty passed forever ago. What the hell? I'm only 63, and that birthday won't happen for another month.
Mike and I loved to match up at the Family Fun Center in north Denver and enjoyed challenging the regulars. And we maintained a lifelong pool rivalry that continued on his home table, then mine, and always in the bars. The competition extended to pingpong, trout fishing, basketball, skirt-chasing, and anything else that guys do. Even -- maybe especially -- leg wrestling.
Mike wasn't anybody you'd recognize as a pool player, unless you lived in Steamboat
Srprings, Colorado, for the past six years. If you did, he probably beat you out of a pitcher on the old Dynamo at the Long Branch Saloon.
We last played on my home table a few months ago. Long session. We pretty much quit even.
Anyone left out there from the old Denver days?
Not a name any of you will recognize. I gave it to him when our pool rivalry began 42 years ago. We both had a jones for Mexican food and started playing on bar tables at the Riviera Lounge in Glendale.
Got word of Mike's death today and I'm a little heartsick, so forgive a sentimental thread. Yeah, I'm tangled up in blue.
The two of us shared an old house on East Colfax Avenue in Denver, where we played the stereo as loud as the law would permit, drank copious amounts of beer and struck up a pool rivalry that lasted until a few days ago. In those days, a guy named Nixon was president.
Started thinking tonight about all the guys I played with as a youngster growing up in Denver, and unless I'm wrong, I'm the last guy standing. My old mentor Fat Marty passed forever ago. What the hell? I'm only 63, and that birthday won't happen for another month.
Mike and I loved to match up at the Family Fun Center in north Denver and enjoyed challenging the regulars. And we maintained a lifelong pool rivalry that continued on his home table, then mine, and always in the bars. The competition extended to pingpong, trout fishing, basketball, skirt-chasing, and anything else that guys do. Even -- maybe especially -- leg wrestling.
Mike wasn't anybody you'd recognize as a pool player, unless you lived in Steamboat
Srprings, Colorado, for the past six years. If you did, he probably beat you out of a pitcher on the old Dynamo at the Long Branch Saloon.
We last played on my home table a few months ago. Long session. We pretty much quit even.
Anyone left out there from the old Denver days?
