I don't know if this was the same brand or not but I bought a couple of the aluminum cues in the early seventies at the first of the big discount stores I encountered. Originally called Gibsons in the sixties the store became Howard Bros some time from then to the early seventies. The aluminum cues sold there were under ten dollars I believe and didn't take kindly to abuse or even breaking with them which I didn't consider abuse. The two halves were permanently joined where a joint would normally be but with a fairly soft piece of plastic. The plastic wallowed and it wasn't long before the cues developed enough slop there that they became fit only for whacking each other with.
One of the ladies on this forum used the cue in I believe league competition. The only times I encountered them in use away from home was when a bar tried them and they were quickly destroyed and when two fellows came in together with them and put their money on a challenge table I was on. They were fairly large, pot bellied, and we had a funny altercation on the table which is the major cause for remembering them.
They decided that "since I was so much better than them, they would both play me." Alternating I had no problem with as I considered that more of a spot for me but the plan was for me to shoot then one of them, then the other. Both of them shooting for every one shot I got. The first shooter could just nudge the cue ball around for the second shooter. Naturally I told them this dog wouldn't hunt!
I broke a conical taper house cue as a debating aid. It had been broken a good bit shorter than original in the past and it had the biggest tip I had seen on a cue being about a foot shorter than a typical cue with the tip appropriately fatter. A garbage cue in all respects except one, it was straight as a die! It was made from a single piece of a coarse grained wood, I thought oak at the time. More likely ash. As thick and heavy as that stick was I had some difficulty breaking it just flexing it in my hands when I started to discuss things with them. Sounded like a pistol shot when it broke!
We were in a room behind a redneck country bar with only a walk in door from the bar room to get in and out. It was only midafternoon and the place was quiet. The owner was a crochety older fellow and he was gonna be back there with us shortly so I was late for the door. I had two friends with me, all three of us of the long haired persuasion so we headed for the car bent over laughing so hard we couldn't run. Fortunately my car was facing the road. We jumped in and slung rocks everywhere in the gravel parking lot leaving on the fly, my personal version of the ballad of the dew drop inn.
The cues were color anodized unlike the bats I have seen. I think I bought a green and a blue to tell them apart and I seem to remember a red one too but not positive about there being a red one. The cues were cheap, felt funky passing through your bridge hand, and made a funky sound hitting a cue ball. Best of my recall, they hit much like the carbon fiber shafts of today. Had they been marketed as a high end cue for a hundred dollars or so back then they might have hung on long enough for the bugs to be worked out and they might have caught on. As it was, these three encounters are all I remember with the cue.
Hu
Not.
