A recent thread about Meucci cues got me thinking about my Meucci, as well as a couple of other special cues I’ve had pass through my hands over the years. Somehow, it all seems like just yesterday…
(insert flashback music)
I was living in San Francisco, my home town, in the late 70’s, graduating from college by the thinnest of margins (having majored in pool), and killing time waiting for the USAF to finally put me on active duty. I’d been commission a 2nd Lieutenant, but there were so many guys in the pipeline they told me to get lost for a couple of years until the backlog cleared and I could come on active duty.
So, I was working the swing shift at Wells Fargo headquarters in downtown SF and playing a lot of pool when all of us at the pool hall started to notice the sporadic appearances of these funny looking pool cues everywhere. They all had a lot of plastic inlays and skinny shafts. BUT the thing that really got us all salivating were the countless reports of how much spin you could get on the ball with a Meucci. (Pool room scholars of the time would spend endless hours in Talmudic-like debates about the proper pronunciation. “It’s ‘May-oo-chee;’” “No, ‘Mew-chee;’” “”I think it’s ‘Moo-key.’” And so it went.) Regardless, we all recognized that no matter what you called them, these pool cues really spun the rock in a way no other pool cue of the era could.
Then one day a pile of Meucci brochures appeared at the pool hall desk and we were all *really* hooked. They were 8x 10 color brochures that folded open. The cover was a heroic George Washington crossing the Delaware, standing in a row boat with, incredibly, a Meucci in hand.
I took a couple of brochures home and didn’t see anything that I really liked. Most of the cues where either too plain or too gaudy for my traditional sense of pool cue aesthetics. So I pulled out one of my X-Acto knives and actually glued together a ring here, a butt there, and a wrap from that one, until I had what was, in my mind, the perfect Meucci. I called the number on the brochure and, surprisingly, somewhere down in Olive Branch, Mississippi, Bob Meucci himself answered the phone. I told Bob what I wanted, asked for two shafts, and about $300 and a few weeks later, it was in my hands.
Right off the bat, I hated the shinny sealed wrap. The wrap itself was a traditional white-with-flecks, but coated with almost the same finish that was on the butt itself. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was some sort of “protective wax” I took a wet paper towel to it. Big mistake. The coating was indeed water soluble but my paper towel and hands immediately started turning purple. Why purple, I have no idea -- the wrap, after all, was white -- but purple it was and though it eventually came off, it was at the expense of raising the threads of the underlying wrap and a few stains that looked I’d been playing while eating jam (don’t go there).
The Air Force finally granted me asylum and off I went to Great Falls, Montana. Like I said, this was all late 70’s. At about the same time I was to own a Gina, a McDermott (made by Jim McDermott), a Richard Black, and a $25 Viking which played a memorable role when I entered my first Montana State 8Ball Tournament.
Back then I was lucky enough to win a qualifier for the National 8ball Championship, held that year in Dayton, OH. At that tournament, every player was given a free Viking cue. As I recall, it was a merry widow style cue and had a clear plastic sleeve in the butt underneath which said something like "National 8ball Tournament" in gold on black. I came home and threw it in my closet.
A few months later I'm playing in the State Tournament. This is a big deal up North because basically every bar up there has two million teams playing 8ball all winter and so there are several hundred players playing in a hotel in downtown Great Falls. My tip had come off my playing cue a few days before and I was concerned the re-glue job might not take, so, just as a back up, I pull the freebie cue out of the closet.
Right off the bat, my first match, I could tell I wasn't playing well. (Yes, the tip was glued on just fine.) After a few shots, out of pure desperation, I pull out the freebie cue.
Suddenly, everything was right with the world. I couldn't believe the difference. Everything looked right when I got down on the shot. Everything worked right when I pulled the trigger. A little while later, I switch back to my regular cue, a very nice, expensive job, to see how it felt by comparison and immediately, after just a couple of shots, I can tell that it's not right. So I go back to the $25 special. To make a long story short, I end up in the finals, go hill-hill, play a safe on Jack Larson’s last ball and lose on what may have been one of the greatest kick shots anyone has ever played on me. If not for that cue, I probably would have gone two and out.
So back to the Meucci: After my failed experiment with the wrap I played intermittently with the Meucci until on one visit to San Francisco to see family, I take it to Whitehead and Zimmerman, the main pool table and cue distributor in the city. It was a great old musty place down on Howard Street in the downtown area. I think it was Earl Whitehead that I showed the Meucci to and asked if he could re-wrap it with black Irish linen. He said, “I don’t have any black Irish linen in stock but I can do it in black nylon.” So I say, “OK” and a couple of days later it was ready and Meucci, wife, and I drive back to Montana.
At the time I was, pretty much like today: an aspiring player. As a 9ball player I was capable, with perfect alignment of the stars, of running a couple of racks. And so I entered a 9ball tournament at The Corner Pocket in Missoula, one weekend in 1981 -- the last year of my four year tour of the Northern Tier. And, for whatever reason, I decided that my newly nylon re-wrapped Meucci would be my weapon of choice.
It was a pretty big field, with guys like Mike Chewakin and Panama Ritchie leading the pack. I found out later that two of the guys from Great Falls, Parks and Tim Nelson -- part owner of TJ’s, my home room in Great Falls -- bought me, not too surprisingly, on the cheap in the Calcutta, all the big established names driving the total side purse up into several thousands of dollars.
And we began to play.
You know, we all talk about the Indian or the arrow thing, but I can honestly tell you that sometimes, without question, and with zero doubt: it is the arrow.
I am running out from everywhere with the Meucci. My safety play is stellar. I am thinning balls by the thinnest of margins, sending whitey to the end rail and gluing it to the other consistently leaving my opponents 9’ away. One after another they drop by significant margins. Mike “Chewy” Chewakin is so incensed at the beating he is taking at my hands that he makes a scene and Parks and Tim have to pull me away from the table, urging me, “Don’t let him get under your skin.” (As I continued to go deeper into the tournament, Parks and Tim were to get increasingly drunk, whooping it up as they calculated the exponential return on their $20 calcutta investment). Next, I demolish Panama Ritchie in the semi-finals. It was so ridiculous that at one point Ritchie turns to the crowd and disgustedly tells them, “I’ve beaten champions all over the country and here I am losing to this kid.”
So let me just say this, because I don’t think I’ve adequately conveyed at what level I’m playing at that day in early 1981 with the Meucci: I am not only playing run out pool, I am in mortal dead punch. I am walking up to the table and casually drawing the ball back to the rail with reverse spin and popping back out two rails for perfect position; I am over spinning the cue ball off the end rail bending it to go cross table to slip under an object ball and come out perfect on my next target; I am playing caroms and tickies to make 9balls sitting near pockets disappear. There is not a cross-side bank that I am not drilling. It is completely and totally ridiculous and I lose in the finals to a fantastic black player whose name escapes me, and he wins, but just barely. Parks and Tim can barely stand. They are drunk as skunks and are hooting and hollering and laughing their asses off at the thousands they’ve won with their $20 dark horse bet.
After the tournament, a guy who was a local cue maker comes up to ask me about the Meucci. We talk and I tell him about the wrap and how Whitehead and Zimmerman only had black nylon in stock and he says, “Well, I can re-wrap it for you with black Irish linen if you want.” And I say, “Sure” and give him the cue. A week later it is my hands and, as advertised, is beautifully wrapped with black Irish linen.
And, I never play 9ball again as well as I did that weekend with the Meucci wrapped with nylon. Ever.
Nowadays, the Meucci sits at the bottom of my closet in its brown Fellini case. I haven’t played with it in years. But every once in a while, like now, I think about it and consider having it re-wrapped in black nylon.
Lou Figueroa
(insert flashback music)
I was living in San Francisco, my home town, in the late 70’s, graduating from college by the thinnest of margins (having majored in pool), and killing time waiting for the USAF to finally put me on active duty. I’d been commission a 2nd Lieutenant, but there were so many guys in the pipeline they told me to get lost for a couple of years until the backlog cleared and I could come on active duty.
So, I was working the swing shift at Wells Fargo headquarters in downtown SF and playing a lot of pool when all of us at the pool hall started to notice the sporadic appearances of these funny looking pool cues everywhere. They all had a lot of plastic inlays and skinny shafts. BUT the thing that really got us all salivating were the countless reports of how much spin you could get on the ball with a Meucci. (Pool room scholars of the time would spend endless hours in Talmudic-like debates about the proper pronunciation. “It’s ‘May-oo-chee;’” “No, ‘Mew-chee;’” “”I think it’s ‘Moo-key.’” And so it went.) Regardless, we all recognized that no matter what you called them, these pool cues really spun the rock in a way no other pool cue of the era could.
Then one day a pile of Meucci brochures appeared at the pool hall desk and we were all *really* hooked. They were 8x 10 color brochures that folded open. The cover was a heroic George Washington crossing the Delaware, standing in a row boat with, incredibly, a Meucci in hand.
I took a couple of brochures home and didn’t see anything that I really liked. Most of the cues where either too plain or too gaudy for my traditional sense of pool cue aesthetics. So I pulled out one of my X-Acto knives and actually glued together a ring here, a butt there, and a wrap from that one, until I had what was, in my mind, the perfect Meucci. I called the number on the brochure and, surprisingly, somewhere down in Olive Branch, Mississippi, Bob Meucci himself answered the phone. I told Bob what I wanted, asked for two shafts, and about $300 and a few weeks later, it was in my hands.
Right off the bat, I hated the shinny sealed wrap. The wrap itself was a traditional white-with-flecks, but coated with almost the same finish that was on the butt itself. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was some sort of “protective wax” I took a wet paper towel to it. Big mistake. The coating was indeed water soluble but my paper towel and hands immediately started turning purple. Why purple, I have no idea -- the wrap, after all, was white -- but purple it was and though it eventually came off, it was at the expense of raising the threads of the underlying wrap and a few stains that looked I’d been playing while eating jam (don’t go there).
The Air Force finally granted me asylum and off I went to Great Falls, Montana. Like I said, this was all late 70’s. At about the same time I was to own a Gina, a McDermott (made by Jim McDermott), a Richard Black, and a $25 Viking which played a memorable role when I entered my first Montana State 8Ball Tournament.
Back then I was lucky enough to win a qualifier for the National 8ball Championship, held that year in Dayton, OH. At that tournament, every player was given a free Viking cue. As I recall, it was a merry widow style cue and had a clear plastic sleeve in the butt underneath which said something like "National 8ball Tournament" in gold on black. I came home and threw it in my closet.
A few months later I'm playing in the State Tournament. This is a big deal up North because basically every bar up there has two million teams playing 8ball all winter and so there are several hundred players playing in a hotel in downtown Great Falls. My tip had come off my playing cue a few days before and I was concerned the re-glue job might not take, so, just as a back up, I pull the freebie cue out of the closet.
Right off the bat, my first match, I could tell I wasn't playing well. (Yes, the tip was glued on just fine.) After a few shots, out of pure desperation, I pull out the freebie cue.
Suddenly, everything was right with the world. I couldn't believe the difference. Everything looked right when I got down on the shot. Everything worked right when I pulled the trigger. A little while later, I switch back to my regular cue, a very nice, expensive job, to see how it felt by comparison and immediately, after just a couple of shots, I can tell that it's not right. So I go back to the $25 special. To make a long story short, I end up in the finals, go hill-hill, play a safe on Jack Larson’s last ball and lose on what may have been one of the greatest kick shots anyone has ever played on me. If not for that cue, I probably would have gone two and out.
So back to the Meucci: After my failed experiment with the wrap I played intermittently with the Meucci until on one visit to San Francisco to see family, I take it to Whitehead and Zimmerman, the main pool table and cue distributor in the city. It was a great old musty place down on Howard Street in the downtown area. I think it was Earl Whitehead that I showed the Meucci to and asked if he could re-wrap it with black Irish linen. He said, “I don’t have any black Irish linen in stock but I can do it in black nylon.” So I say, “OK” and a couple of days later it was ready and Meucci, wife, and I drive back to Montana.
At the time I was, pretty much like today: an aspiring player. As a 9ball player I was capable, with perfect alignment of the stars, of running a couple of racks. And so I entered a 9ball tournament at The Corner Pocket in Missoula, one weekend in 1981 -- the last year of my four year tour of the Northern Tier. And, for whatever reason, I decided that my newly nylon re-wrapped Meucci would be my weapon of choice.
It was a pretty big field, with guys like Mike Chewakin and Panama Ritchie leading the pack. I found out later that two of the guys from Great Falls, Parks and Tim Nelson -- part owner of TJ’s, my home room in Great Falls -- bought me, not too surprisingly, on the cheap in the Calcutta, all the big established names driving the total side purse up into several thousands of dollars.
And we began to play.
You know, we all talk about the Indian or the arrow thing, but I can honestly tell you that sometimes, without question, and with zero doubt: it is the arrow.
I am running out from everywhere with the Meucci. My safety play is stellar. I am thinning balls by the thinnest of margins, sending whitey to the end rail and gluing it to the other consistently leaving my opponents 9’ away. One after another they drop by significant margins. Mike “Chewy” Chewakin is so incensed at the beating he is taking at my hands that he makes a scene and Parks and Tim have to pull me away from the table, urging me, “Don’t let him get under your skin.” (As I continued to go deeper into the tournament, Parks and Tim were to get increasingly drunk, whooping it up as they calculated the exponential return on their $20 calcutta investment). Next, I demolish Panama Ritchie in the semi-finals. It was so ridiculous that at one point Ritchie turns to the crowd and disgustedly tells them, “I’ve beaten champions all over the country and here I am losing to this kid.”
So let me just say this, because I don’t think I’ve adequately conveyed at what level I’m playing at that day in early 1981 with the Meucci: I am not only playing run out pool, I am in mortal dead punch. I am walking up to the table and casually drawing the ball back to the rail with reverse spin and popping back out two rails for perfect position; I am over spinning the cue ball off the end rail bending it to go cross table to slip under an object ball and come out perfect on my next target; I am playing caroms and tickies to make 9balls sitting near pockets disappear. There is not a cross-side bank that I am not drilling. It is completely and totally ridiculous and I lose in the finals to a fantastic black player whose name escapes me, and he wins, but just barely. Parks and Tim can barely stand. They are drunk as skunks and are hooting and hollering and laughing their asses off at the thousands they’ve won with their $20 dark horse bet.
After the tournament, a guy who was a local cue maker comes up to ask me about the Meucci. We talk and I tell him about the wrap and how Whitehead and Zimmerman only had black nylon in stock and he says, “Well, I can re-wrap it for you with black Irish linen if you want.” And I say, “Sure” and give him the cue. A week later it is my hands and, as advertised, is beautifully wrapped with black Irish linen.
And, I never play 9ball again as well as I did that weekend with the Meucci wrapped with nylon. Ever.
Nowadays, the Meucci sits at the bottom of my closet in its brown Fellini case. I haven’t played with it in years. But every once in a while, like now, I think about it and consider having it re-wrapped in black nylon.
Lou Figueroa
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