Many of the members here have been very fortunate to have been exposed to some of the greats from days gone by. Some are getting exposed to todays' greats. Some will be exposed to tomorrow's up and coming stars.
In some small way I must admit that I am somewhat envious that you've all had that type of exposure.
As a child, I recall an ABC's Wide World of Sports program that featured Mosconi and Fats playing against each other.
Metropolitan cable was just beginning and cow cable was a thing of the far future back then and dish was still just a dream so watching pool and billiards on TV was just not a thing on the 3 channels of aerial antenna syndicated TV back then.
Being from the very small town that I am from and having very limited exposure to a game that was introduced to me at an early age (I know that appears to be a little contradictory), I developed an automatic love for the game immediately and as I continued to age and found myself with life in general getting in the way of table time which caused me to take a long sabbatical from it, but I have come full circle and returned to it.
In our small towns, we never had the road players or pros stop in and play at our frequent haunts. We grew up with the old bar ways of shooting 8 ball but never an opportunity to meet and greet the greats of the game.
I sit back and lurk and read most of everyone's stories and often wonder what it was like for all of you to have been there standing next to or near or even playing against some of them and can still only dream a small town boy's dreams of being right there along side if for nothing else just the experience and satisfaction of perhaps just shaking their hands.
Please keep all of the great stories coming. New and old as there is always something worthwhile in the stories for those of us who can only be so far removed from what really takes place.
Kudos to y'all.
In some small way I must admit that I am somewhat envious that you've all had that type of exposure.
As a child, I recall an ABC's Wide World of Sports program that featured Mosconi and Fats playing against each other.
Metropolitan cable was just beginning and cow cable was a thing of the far future back then and dish was still just a dream so watching pool and billiards on TV was just not a thing on the 3 channels of aerial antenna syndicated TV back then.
Being from the very small town that I am from and having very limited exposure to a game that was introduced to me at an early age (I know that appears to be a little contradictory), I developed an automatic love for the game immediately and as I continued to age and found myself with life in general getting in the way of table time which caused me to take a long sabbatical from it, but I have come full circle and returned to it.
In our small towns, we never had the road players or pros stop in and play at our frequent haunts. We grew up with the old bar ways of shooting 8 ball but never an opportunity to meet and greet the greats of the game.
I sit back and lurk and read most of everyone's stories and often wonder what it was like for all of you to have been there standing next to or near or even playing against some of them and can still only dream a small town boy's dreams of being right there along side if for nothing else just the experience and satisfaction of perhaps just shaking their hands.
Please keep all of the great stories coming. New and old as there is always something worthwhile in the stories for those of us who can only be so far removed from what really takes place.
Kudos to y'all.
). After he got a college degree, he went to fight in WWI in France. He used to tell stories about the trench warfare. After the war he went on to do numerous things such as teaching school, coaching high-school basketball, was a Postmaster in U.S. Postal Service, worked in the Texas prison system as an agriculturist teaching inmates how to grow their own crops. In between all that he actually had a job selling Fuller brushes from door-to-door at one time. He grew his own vegetables in an enormous garden out back of his house in Buffalo, Texas. Raised chickens for eggs/meat (needless to say, with the wide variety of organic food available coupled with my grandma's cooking abilities, dining at their house was always something I looked forward to doing). My grandfather was the one that taught me how to fish, how to play dominoes, and introduced me to my first ever baseball glove! He could spin a good yarn too. Storytelling was one of his greatest attributes. Even well on up in years, he could always remember the year, month, and DAY that an event happened in his stories.