I always took the opposite point of view, and never hesitated to show the ‘fish’ anything they asked, thinking, the better they got, the more confidence (and money) they would gain by beating the smaller fish, and eventually be convinced they were finally good enough to beat me, thus bringing me more serious action (and money) in the end.
I went and got a driver's license the day I turned fifteen. That night I spent six or eight hours on pool tables. Age to drink beer or enter an establishment selling beer or liquor was eighteen, to buy hard liquor you had to be twenty-one. All rules I ignored. I was still in high school, I was working forty hours a week, I was playing pool for long hours every day. Burning the candle at both ends and the middle too!
First starting out, I learned from the small time gamblers I played with, they had this code of secrecy. I was also designing, building, and driving stock cars. The aura of secrecy in stock car racing was hilarious! Everybody had secrets they had discovered for themselves, not realizing that dozens of other people had learned the same things. There were very few real secrets.
a local racetracktrack owner wouldnt let me do circular burnouts in the
middle of the track but if I won a big race, it's on a different level..
I was the driver but I was also the money man behind the car and the engine builder. When the big boys on Sunday thought it was cute to blow up an engine that had just won a big race I did the opposite. Racing spark plugs tend to foul as I am sure you know so I would come out of the pits and come up through the gears making the engine howl. Drive hard and push every limit I could find. Then if I took the checkered flag I ran a nice polite thirty mile an hour or so victory lap with the flag and put my car gently on the trailer. A friend had the most thoroughly destroyed engine I ever saw. Snapped a custom crank several places. Blew the bottom out of a road racing style oil pan, the block was shattered several places, Carillo rods destroyed, roller cam, chunks of metal came up through the new intake manifold and destroyed a brand new racing carburetor. Roller rockers, push rods, I suppose I had seen rail jobs blow an engine this thoroughly at the drag strip but I had never seen a stock car engine grenade that completely!
Lost where somebody jokingly said something along the lines of what would Hu do. Generally I would get to the most critical shot of a game, gonna put enough spin on the cue ball to sit there and spin until the cloth caught fire when it stopped! I would load my wrist so I could flick it right to left just as the cue tip contacted the cue ball. One time in dozens this seemed to really work! I don't know who taught me that silliness but fifty years later if I am stretching and wrap my hand around the very end of the cue and the rubber bumper I will still snap my wrist sometimes. I prove just how persistent a bad habit can be! If I notice my hand wrapping around the bumper I will carefully move it a few inches ahead before shooting. If I don't notice what comes next is usually the mother of all miscues!
I am sure that this one bad habit alone has cost me thousands in the decades I have played pool. I don't do it for three months, even six months or a year. Finally put that bad habit to bed, or so I thought. A critical shot, I want the cue ball to do a high speed hootchie-coo and thread a needle at the end. I get down, a couple of nice gentle practice strokes, then my hand slides back after I address the cue ball a final time. The little finger is wrapped around the bumper or even curled behind it. I slam the cue forward with a vicious twist! I have never torn a half a yard rip in the cloth doing this but I don't know why not. It is embarrassing to have to retrieve the cue ball from on top of a light, especially when the light isn't even over the table I am playing on! "Leave me alone. I am going drink a beer or three or four."
Hu
Hu
