Unpaid Bill

vapros

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The far, far East

The far, far East

There are few sights in the world of pool as pleasing to the eye as Pan Xiaoting, and I don’t like to go more than a week without watching her play, at least for a few minutes. Yesterday I picked up on her match with Liu Shasha, another fine little Chinese player, but sort of cute rather than as beautiful as PX. On youtube, of course. I’m quite certain that I weigh more than the two of them combined. The commentary was all in Chinese, of course, but in nine ball that doesn’t matter very much, ordinarily. However, in this instance, I had only my eyes and my imagination to prepare this entry in my journal. I suspect that the oft-used word, inscrutable, is no longer PC, so I won’t use it here. Instead, you will have to take my word for the difficulty in recognizing the various moods I saw in the various Chinese folks involved. Here we go.

Leading 5-3 in the match, LS was at the table pondering the difficulty of getting from the 8 ball to the 9 ball. She called for an extension, which was granted by the referee. At that point, PX complained that LS had already taken an extension, and was not entitled to another. Anyway, that’s what I picked up. This halted the referee in his Chinese tracks, and his response to PX was obviously not acceptable, so they both appealed to a tournament official at a nearby table. Lo and behold, he did not know what to do, either, and the three of them consulted a fourth party, at great length.

LS waited patiently in her chair for the decision. She could have gone out for chop suey, with time to spare. PX was rejecting the arguments of all three officials, and ultimately the game was scrubbed, and the balls were re-racked and the game was replayed. By this time, not a stroke had been struck for maybe twenty minutes. Both players managed small polite smiles, and that was the only emotion I could see. Assuming my impressions were correct, I think the referee was at fault for granting the extension, rather than LS for asking.

With tranquility restored and the young referee no doubt much relieved, only a couple of games were played before he was back in hot water. Following a dry break, PX found herself without a shot, and pushed out the cue ball. LS came to the table for her option, and guess what? She complained to the referee that PX had failed to announce the push out, thus fouling when she failed to hit the one ball. I could tell that, as I was already learning to speak a little Chinese. PX wasn’t having any of that, and she and the referee and the official and the other official again had a long and heated discussion, without changing their expressions. LS again cooled her heels in her chair, rotating her head and massaging the back of her neck and occasionally looking up at the ceiling, but not participating in the argument. Without any visual clue, I believe I could tell what she was thinking, but it isn’t important to the story. She was getting even as she sat.

Ultimately, the foul was called, and LS was given ball-in-hand. PX, still poker-faced, returned to her seat. I didn’t stay for the end, but it was mostly LS as I watched. That child could play some nine ball, lemme tell you. The poor referee, whatever he was paid was not nearly enough. Seemingly, his duties were only to rack the balls and polish the cue ball with his white gloves, before putting it down on the table against the head rail.

I tried to imagine the same events in a tournament in this country. My mind’s eye could not picture Ken Shuman asking a third party to help him make a ruling. How about Earl Strickland calmly negotiating for a half hour over one rule, and then another? Would Scott Frost be able to abstain from taking part? Dr. Bill, what would you do with thirty minutes of dead air? None of these parallels seem to be quite parallel.

That’s about it, the end of my story. I’m pretty sure there is a moral here, but I can’t think of it. If I had drawn a conclusion, I would write it now. This would also be the logical place for a punchline. Having none of these, I guess I will wind it up the same way it began. Pan Xiaoting is a very handsome lady.
 

vapros

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Surgery and other trivia

Surgery and other trivia

Had a new experience this week. A guy in a green scrub suit took a little skin cancer off the side of my nose. It was probably a bit less than the size of the eraser on my pencil. I had not noticed it until maybe a month ago. Anyway, a young lady in a gray scrub suit gave me some shots of Novocain, or something similar, and then the guy took off what he figured was the right amount, and I waited in the chair while he took it away and looked at it with his microscope. Then, more injections and the guy came back for the rest of it. Said he got it all that time.

Next time I saw him, it was for plastic surgery, and he took a piece of skin from in front of my ear and made a patch for the wound. Then another young lady in a gray scrub suit came and sewed it all up. When I took the bandage off today, I discovered that she had sewed a gauze pad to my face on top of the patch! All in a day’s work, I suppose. Lots of stitches in plastic surgery – I’ve got about two dozen. There were five patients in there at the same time; maybe fifteen of the young ladies in gray scrubs, and just one doctor. Assembly line medicine. They told me that about 20% of skin cancers are on the nose, for those of you taking notes.

I was in there more than four hours, and a lot of the time was spent in the chair, waiting for the next step. There was a big screen on the wall in front of me, flogging all the other stuff for sale in the clinic, in a continuing series of before-and-after pictures of surgical patients and offering all manner of preparations one might buy to rub into one’s hide. Lemme tell you, it was a store, sort of like Walmart. Would you believe that you can get Botox injections for men? No shit. They call it Brotox!!! I had to laugh.

There is a new law that will be in effect this fall for Louisiana schools. Now they will teach the students to write in cursive! I didn’t know they had ever stopped, but with all the keyboards in action today, we are lucky if the kids can even print a little. Going to Google, I found that you can still buy a course in the beautiful Spencerian Penmanship style – online, naturally. Most of us older guys learned to write in the Palmer method, more or less. I’m expecting the new law to produce maybe a Boudreaux method. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.

This week’s research on Youtube uncovered a multitude of TV cameras around the world, transmitting continuing coverage of whatever. Lots of wildlife sites, such as eagle nests and game trails, where one can watch for long periods without seeing any action. I found these cameras mounted in night clubs, on street corners and intersections, and one on the waterfront in Oakland. People are always ready to stand before TV cameras and behave in weird manners. Potluck – tune in and you might see something. Or not. I saw one filming the rapids in a park in Alaska, and there was a big bear standing on his hind legs in the water. He didn’t seem to be watching the water, as if for a salmon. He just kept looking around at things to the right or left. I left him still in the rapids, doing nothing. Maybe he was just cooling his bear feet. (Sorry about that) I thought he looked pretty stupid, just standing there, but here I was, sitting in a little chair, watching him on my monitor. Whatever you can make of that, be my guest.
 

vapros

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Looking back

Looking back

Retrospection is the curse of your old age; or of mine, at least. All the action is in the rearview mirror, and you will have to get used to it. One pocket is one-derful, but you can’t do it all day, unless maybe your name is Henderson. At a time of life when you are in need of things to do that don’t offend your body, reflection is not bad. Of the few things you can still do, it is ideal. You can do it at the table, at the library, in the shower, or in those last few minutes just before you fall asleep. Or at the computer – especially at the computer.

Baton Rouge has a fine public library system, and I am a dedicated customer. I nearly said ‘consumer’. You and I will be consumed, but the books will still be there. A customer is what I am, books and DVDs. Their catalog shows a surprising number of books about pool, some by familiar names, but this week I seem to be into old movies – old black and white movies. I have watched Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity, as well as both The Blue Dahlia and the Glass Key. Oh boy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. All the men wear suits and hats, even in fistfights and gunfights. All the ladies dress up every day. Dialog is fast and the guys call the gals ‘Baby’. Tomorrow it will be In Cold Blood, with that slimy little Robert Blake. Only good thing he ever did.

I’m an old bowler, as I have mentioned before, and I feel certain that retrospection for old bowlers is much different than it is for old pool players. For one thing, the old bowlers never made a living bowling. We bet and bowled, of course, but we had no stake horses, so we seldom won or lost large amounts.. Much of the nostalgia is housed in old tournament results and in the black and white films of the head-to-head matches staged in Chicago or St. Louis – the Midwest. Five hundred or a thousand to the winner and half that amount to the loser. Three hundred if you strung five strikes. It’s all on Youtube, of course. Yeah, you better have a job.

The old pool players I’m thinking of, on the other hand, were often gambling men, and they have recollections of big scores and successful hustles and a life on the road that sometimes could get sort of exciting in a multitude of ways. They recall adventures and misadventures with other gamblers, house men, tush hogs, thieves, hotel clerks and the law. But none of it was recorded – Fast Lennie and Big Truck were far in the future. If there is an upside to their reverie, it is just that. Their memories and their imaginations can be tied together, if there is no documentation. Selective recollection, one might say. And when it’s all over, someone might have to pass the hat to pay the gravedigger.

Retrospection can be sad, as it involves friends and heroes long gone, but it can be fun, too. It takes some practice to be good at it, and it can be done sitting down when the missionary position has become a bit of a burden. On that subject, over in Mandeville, which is on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, they have jailed a woman for giving ‘erotic massages’. If the bond is not too high, I might be willing to bail her out, but probably not. That would not be retrospection; resurrection, maybe.

I will probably address this topic again in this journal, but not tonite.
 

vapros

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T-Rex beat the guy, you say?

T-Rex beat the guy, you say?

I got to see nearly all of it. The first day I was a little late getting on, and Chohan was already doing a number on Dennis, but I watched all the rest. While I think of it, this was the most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen, and I will look in the bottom drawer, under my tee shirt from the Al Jolson concert, and see if there’s a few nickels I can send along to the good people at POV Pool. I have paid for much less, many times.

At the end of the first day I was thinking, like so many others – if this Filipino is the best, how come he’s so far behind? Then the pirogue began to right itself on the second day, and Orcullo beat the guy, if just by one game. On the third day, Chohan was put in his place, and he lost five games of his six-game lead. Whatever had happened on the first day, it would be enough to assure him of a respectable showing in the match.

But on the fourth day, the coup-de-grace seemed to be a long time coming. Orcullo stayed a game behind until late, when he finally managed to get a game ahead and several times he missed opportunities to put the big guy away. He no longer took his time about surveying the table, and Chohan hung on, somehow. And we all saw the last few games, even if we didn’t understand.

So, what have we seen this week? In one of the discussion threads I observed that Tony Chohan had thrown a grenade into the world of one-pocket, and I’m still thinking that way. He demonstrated that this game did not have to played in the manner of Efren Reyes or Nick Varner, or even Scott Frost. One could succeed, or at least he could, with another kind of controlled aggression. Somewhere in the rack there are things that others either can’t see, or are not willing to risk. If they look good to you, draw a bead and pull the trigger. Sometimes they don’t work, but sometimes they do. Chohan showed us that it can be a good game plan. No need to tiptoe around the table. Of course, it helps greatly to be a great shot maker, but even if you’re not, just be as good as your opponent.

Will T-Rex’s aggressive victory have any real impact on our favorite game? For some players and for some period, I have no doubt it will. It will tempt people like me, who don’t shoot straight. Maybe if I shoot harder, you know? Maybe if I quit calling the cue ball Jojo, and begin thinking of it as Bruno. Nah, I’m too old to switch now, but not everyone is. I predict that many of us will be more receptive to the signals from our imaginations, and not as quick to dismiss the creative impulses we feel. We will have some good results and some disasters, but likely without the winning percentage of a Chohan. Games would be shorter, but more exciting, and more like nine ball. The hell with that. I think I will keep doing it the other way. Nice try, though, Tony. It was a great show.
 
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vapros

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Going forward here

Going forward here

I haven’t posted anything to this journal for ten days, and that’s too long, but it seems to be time to have another look at it. I believe this forum is a really good feature of the site, but it’s dragging at present. We have had a very limited number of writers contributing and the content has been excellent, for the most part, but there is a limit to the number of great pool stories out there. Even my bowling tales seem pale for this audience, as they don’t involve big gambling.

I could tell you about bailing out of Hap Morse’s Young Street Lanes in Dallas at three in the morning because Dub Weller got drunk and sucker-punched a railbird who was perched on one of the formica tables, with his feet hanging over the edge. You may not have heard about how Joel Vick lost his bowling ball in downtown San Antonio one Sunday afternoon. He took a turn onto Houston Street a little too fast, and the door of his old pickup truck flew open and the ball shot off the end of the seat and out onto the pavement. There was a solid line of store fronts on both sides of the deserted street, and no place the ball could have gone, but Joel spent an hour trying to find it and finally gave up. We had to start the pot game at the Hermann Sons without him.

One cold night in Syracuse we got locked up in the American Legion hall and had to escape by cranking up through the sidewalk on the freight elevator, pushing open the steel doors as we went. There was a snow storm and a cop waiting. None of these involve blood, drugs, sex, gunplay or serious gambling, so they are unlikely to draw a crowd in any self-respecting pool room.

However, I intend to continue with my journal. Not a difficult thing for me to do, once I get used to the idea that my stuff does not have to be exciting or fascinating. I will post maybe a couple times each week, like in a small newspaper, and we will see how many readers will hang on with me. I will watch the numbers. Thinking of something I wrote quite a few years ago, but Steve may not be interested – we will wait and see. For this week, I can report that the football coach at Ole Miss has been forced to resign over the matter of some phone calls to an escort service, according to the news. He was making literally millions of dollars in his job, and now it’s all over. Nice while it lasted, I suppose. Meaning the football, of course.

And then there’s O.J. He has been approved for a parole, probably about the first of October. I always think of him as a cold-blooded murderer, but now he’s more of a buffoon. Seventy years old, maybe not too old to commit some small crimes, but he promised the parole board that he would continue to lead a conflict-free life, as he always has. Feel free to comment on that. See you later.
 

vapros

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The Sign Painter

The Sign Painter

I am pretty sure the year was 1979, because it was a year that I remember well. Even Frank Sinatra would not have said it was a ‘very good year’. Most of the things that were a part of my life sort of ground to a halt in 1979. I had recently completed about nineteen years in the bowling business, and was winding up a twenty-one-year marriage, as well as another little matter I won’t go into. I had already been schizoid for more than thirty years, although I had not yet heard the word. I was writing a weekly column for the local paper and doing play-by-play on the radio for high school football, and breaking off associations with both the Louisiana State Medical Society and the Council of Medical Staffs. Bunch of little part-time gigs to keep me out of the house, mainly – plus the bowling lanes, of course.

Suddenly I was trying to support the family household and a little apartment, with nothing but a sign shop in a cavernous brick building a hundred years old; once a foundry. I had been a sign painter, of sorts, for a number of years, but I knew very little about the business end. I had turned to it by choice as a tailor-made thing that I could do alone, away from the public. The shop wasn’t nearly ready for this task, and neither was I, but there we were.

In 1979 I contracted to paint the ads on the outfield wall of the ballpark in Plattenville. It was a shit job, but I needed the work. I did all the layouts on brown paper in the shop, and perforated them with an electric needle so they could be transferred with a bag of powdered charcoal. Most of the paint would be airbrushed on – not the little artists’ airbrush used to paint tee shirts, but an automotive touch-up gun made by Binks. The weather was chilly and gray, but I had a deadline, so I loaded my gear into the little truck, including my electric air compressor. It was on two wheels, and it weighed a ton. Bitch to load and unload by yourself.

At the ballpark the wall was CDX plywood, with one coat of latex paint. I figured it would probably be about like that. I pounced on the first three patterns and mixed the three colors I would use. I rassled the compressor out on the ground and headed for the fence, trailing a mile of power cord behind me. I should have known better, but I didn’t. It was too far, and the compressor wouldn’t run. The solution was to use only one of the three extension cords, which reached the infield, and to wheel the pump back and forth to build up the pressure and then ferry each load of air out to the fence in the tank. We do what we have to do. I got three six by eight signs done before the rain started. They looked pretty good – from home plate.

There was a tool shed at the park and it was not locked, so I wheeled the compressor inside, along with the extension cord, and hoped no one would steal it before I got back. I was wet and cold and hungry and I headed back to town. There were things to eat in my little refrigerator, so I made no stops on the twenty mile trip. The sun was nowhere to be seen, and it was near dark when I got back, and I pulled off the street and left the engine running while I lifted the overhead door. I backed in and unloaded only what I had to, hoping the weather would be better tomorrow. I would put on a dry shirt and make a sandwich and work through the evening.

I walked around the truck to close the big door, and there was a little man standing there, just inside the building. His jeans and denim jacket looked brand new, and were only a little damp. He hadn’t been long in the rain.


To be continued
 

vapros

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Sign painter II

Sign painter II

The man just inside my big door stood about four or five inches over five feet, and not very hefty – maybe thin, even. The jeans and denim jacket he wore seemed a size too big for him, but obviously new; maybe new today. His hiking shoes looked as though he had hiked a long way in them. Somebody had hit him in the face not very long ago, and more than once, too. He had the air of a man who was used to it, and might be waiting to see if I wanted to be next. A limp wrist, maybe, or a boozer. He was toting a paper bag, twisted at the top, obviously on the neck of a bottle.

He stood and looked around my shop, as if he might make an offer to buy the place. “Great old building – do you own it?”

“I wish, but I’m a renter. Used to be a foundry, and there’s a big fireplace on each side. Sixteen foot ceiling, with some real heavy old lumber above.”

He noted several signs standing around the shop, and one on the big easel. “You’re an artist”.

“No, I’m a sign painter.”

“You’re an artist,” he repeated, seeming to be correcting my error. “You’ve been out painting a sign in the rain today. I guess someone has to paint the signs, don’t they? Excuse me for just a minute.” He stepped out through the door, into the dark and the rain. He was back in twenty seconds, a bit wetter than before. I could smell the wine.

“What do you do for your living,?” I asked him. His attitude pissed me a bit, coming at the end of a pretty bad day. He was a little bum, with his bottle of wine in a paper sack, and I was tempted to send him out into the weather so I could close the door. It was getting chilly in the shop, and he didn’t care if he irritated me or not. All one, to him.

“I was a school teacher - but I am semi-retired, I suppose, or something. Little college in upstate New York, below Rochester.”

“Far above Cayuga’s waters, maybe,” I ventured, taking a closer look at this small wino.

“That’s it, Cornell University. Do you know Cornell?”

“No, but I played ball there one Saturday in the summer of 1953. Or maybe it was a Sunday”

“Did your team win?”

“Yeah, we won easy. Bunch of frat brothers, they seemed like.” I recalled the game at the Ivy League school. Bad diamond, bad dugouts, bad team, bad bleachers with maybe thirty spectators. Couldn’t recall where I had heard the song. Cayuga was a lake, but I didn't get to see it. Not on the bus route, I suppose.

“You played for a good team, then. Softball?”

“No, baseball – hard ball. We were a GI team, just a bunch of kids, but we were better than the Cornell guys. What did you teach?”

“English and English Literature. I was there in 1953, but I missed the ball game. Missed all the ball games – Cornell is not about ball games, except maybe football.” Cornell is to football as Richard Simmons is to MMA. I tried to imagine this little wimp at an LSU-Alabama game. “I was there for eleven years, long time ago now. Excuse me for just a minute.” He stepped out into the dark again and was back in a short time.

When he was back inside I pulled down the big door. “You’re not fooling anybody. You don’t have to go outside to do that.”

“Yes, I do. I don’t want you to see.” But he didn’t explain why.

“What have you been doing since you quit teaching?” It was none of my business and I didn’t really care what he had been doing, but if he was going to hang out in my place until the rain let up, he would have to perform. Maybe I could piss him a little, I thought.

“I move. I’ve been around and about. Been in and out, too.” In and out, I was pretty sure, meant jail. “I have a place, but I haven’t seen it for a while. Ithaca is a good little town. Today I’m going east. I’ll ride over to Raceland tomorrow and pick up US 90 and go to New Orleans. Back to Ithaca once in a while, but I’ll stay on the gulf coast until spring.”

“And now you’re on the street. You’re traveling mighty light, aren’t you? Where’s your stuff?” The man wasn’t carrying anything, as far as I could see, except a bottle of wine in a sack. He could have had a folding toothbrush, ala Jack nmi Reacher, somewhere in the denim jacket. Speaking of Reacher, did this little hobo buy new clothes as he went, and toss his laundry into a trash can? His denim outfit was new. What the hell?

“No, sign painter, I’m not on the street. I’m on the road. It’s not the same thing, and this is my ‘stuff’. “He held up the paper sack. “And I’ve been here long enough. Will you give me a lift?” Bingo, I had pissed him off.

“Where do you need to go?” I asked him.

“I need to go to the Ford dealer in this town. Can we do that?

“I’ll take you to the Ford dealer, but he is closed by now. You can’t buy any cars there tonight.”

“Just take me where the new cars are, and don’t worry about it.” Those were my orders. I felt like telling him to go to hell, but I let it go. I lifted the big door again, and drove the truck out into the rain. He got into the passenger seat and waited there while I got out and shut the door. In the rain. We didn’t speak on the ride to the car lot. I pulled up on the back side, where the new cars were parked. He got out, still carrying his bottle in a sack, and touched a finger to his eyebrow in my direction as he turned away. His version of a salute, but not a thank-you. It was still raining, but he seemed unaware of it. I went back to the shop and left him looking over the Fords in the lot.

That’s it. Not an adventure, just an encounter. Just a wet spot on the concrete floor of the old foundry building. Funny way to recall it – encounter, wet spot. I was probably the only one in Thibodaux who even knew he had been there. Maybe the Ford dealer found one of his cars unlocked in the morning, and a wet spot on the back seat. Shouldn’t that have made it a used car? Maybe not.

I think about the little guy now and then, and I wonder about him. He had an attitude, and I didn’t like him, but he didn’t care. The recollections always wind up with the same thought; there, but for the grace of . . . . you know what I mean? On the road, but not like Willie Nelson; no luxury bus, no musicians, no groupies. But he was going to New Orleans tomorrow, and I was going to Plattenville. If it didn’t rain.
 
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vapros

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The journals come alive

The journals come alive

We are seeing some action on the journals, and that’s good news. At present the forum is looking pretty healthy. Unoperro chimed in to say he knows where one can get a very tasty barbecue lunch for just fifty bucks. Then LSJohn returned with a tale about some plotting against the southeast Asians, and confessed to the time he almost became a counterfeiter. Said it would have been his worst felony, but neglected to elaborate. Pretty cheap confession, seems to me – the one he didn’t do – and a narrow escape. Our own Billy Cannon, the only LSU player ever to win the Heisman Trophy, was once a counterfeiter, and they sent him off to the pokey for several years. But, since leaving stir he has been a good citizen, and is now the number one dentist at Angola penitentiary. Doctor Bill of Louisiana.

Then on Wednesday Androd told of making a trip to Memphis, and admitted that there had been an assassination, a riot and a tornado in the brief time he was there. As far as I know, he was not responsible for any of that stuff. He didn’t say. And today, 12squared put up a shot of an Australian bug. I have to say I was more impressed by the pictures of the Great Wall of China. But it was a nice bug.

Anyway, all those posts were fascinating and exciting and I’m a bit embarrassed to offer my plain vanilla journal entry, but I will do it anyway. I opened my mail this week, and that’s something I force myself to do about three or four times every year. One never knows what might be in there. Mostly it’s the same baloney, over and over. Enroll in this program, join this organization, pay this bill, give generously for the people in Detroit, send in this premium or answer these few simple questions. Bundles of crap, mostly, and all sent by people of some kind. It’s a lot more likely to go in the garbage than to make it to my desk, but it clears off the table for breakfast – at least until the mail starts to pile up again.

They are all hoping you will do what they want, and at my place their hopes generally go a-glimmering. (That’s a poetic term, and I seldom get to use it) I leave them with few options. If they feel strongly about it, they can send another mailing, but many of them just blow it off, believe it or not, and go on to other mailees. A few of the most persistent might try to call you, but for those, of course, there’s caller ID. Talk about junk mail. Being a mail-sending guy must be a tough gig.

With college football right around the corner, all the coaches are pretty much in the same boat, with vacancies here and there in their rosters. Some of the boys failed to make the required grades. Others did not stay in shape in the off-season, and still others are awaiting court dates downtown and may not even be on campus this year. Les Miles, the coach LSU fired last fall, is going to appear on some of the game telecasts as an expert and a color man this season. I recommend him highly, as few people know the game as well as he does, and he is a fine speaker and a funny guy. He was very popular in Baton Rouge and still lives here. His sin, besides being unable to beat Alabama, was that he continued to run the ball between the tackles, even when it wasn’t working. I believe he learned that in Michigan.

My youngest daughter has bought me a one-year membership in the Lumosity program. No doubt some of you have seen the ads on TV. It’s a brain training thing, online, and I can sign on and participate as often as I want to. I’m aiming for three days a week. They do it with all manner of games and exercises that strain my capabilities and they claim I will get stronger as I go. When I open any one of the features, it’s easy at first, but it gets faster as I sit there and they begin to add barriers and stuff to make it more difficult, and at the end you see what your score is today. You see how it compares to yesterday’s performance and how it compares to the performance of other people. That is pretty humbling, lemme tell you.

I’m having a ball with it, and for the first time I can see my ineptitude expressed in numbers. I needed something to strengthen my brain back in the days when I was scuffling to make a living. Too soon old, too late smart.
 

vapros

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Kroger, etc.

Kroger, etc.

Last week I complained about the junk mail piled up on my breakfast table. Among the wreckage was a gift card from the hearing aid people, for $850. It is the second one they have sent me, so now I have $1700 worth. Not really. I suppose the gift card isn’t the same as a price reduction, but it’s a dead cinch that the markup is pretty sweet in hearing aids. Maybe they make up the difference from the people who aren’t on the mailing list. Marketing is a mystery. They keep track of my age, too. Today I heard from the cremation people, inviting me to their fireside. Pay now to avoid future price increases. Fuel futures, maybe. ‘Time waits for no one’ it said on the envelope. I needed to hear that.

Out of the blue I got a nice letter from the Kroger market folks. Thanks for shopping with Kroger, it said, and here are some valuable coupons to help you save money. Sure enough, a bunch of coupons were enclosed. Man, there hasn’t been a Kroger store in this town for thirty-five years. Used to be several; four or five anyway, maybe six. Then the employees joined a union and called a strike for Monday morning. Well, come Monday morning every store was closed up tight as a clam’s ass. A fleet of big rigs came on the weekend and took out the inventory, and local sign companies came and took down all the big Kroger signs. It was like they had never been there. I believe the strike was called off! Same thing happened in both San Antonio and St. Louis, we are told.

Recently, on Youtube of course, I saw an interview with Jose Parica, from a number of years ago. Good interview. Jose explained how difficult it is to become a skillful pool player. Not like bowling, he pointed out, where you just throw the ball. Bless that old man anyway, he is still my hero. Eye like a turkey buzzard, nerve of a house burglar, grin of a cub scout.

My man Donald Trump has turned out to be a sort of loose cannon, hasn’t he? But I like the way he talks to that wild man in North Korea. I hope someone makes a preemptive strike, and soon. If we don’t do it, the Chinese might, or the Japanese, or the Russians. Kim Jung Un has no friends, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s like the honey badger, he doesn’t give a shit. But you have to be afraid of him.
 

vapros

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Mike VII is in town

Mike VII is in town

Since 1936, LSU has had a live tiger mascot, living on campus. Traditionally, he has attended many football games in his cage on wheels. Also traditionally, his name has been Mike, and he has been mighty popular with LSU fans. More and more, as time has gone along, animal rights folks have criticized the whole idea of a live mascot, especially a wild animal. Leave ‘em in their natural habitats, they say. Well, the truth is that the LSU tiger mascots have not been snatched out of the jungles and brought to town in a cage. Mostly they have been found in refuges of some sort, and usually rescued from bad treatment elsewhere, and their moves to Baton Rouge have offered a better life than being released into a strange environment, even if it is a jungle.

Also, each of the six previous Mikes has been treated better than the last, and excellent accommodations on campus have included the very best in care, under the guidance of veterinarians and vet students. Mike VI died of cancer last fall, and nothing was spared in making his last days comfortable, when it had been established that his ailment was not curable. He was sedated and taken to a local hospital for his treatments.

In the year since, the Tiger Athletic Foundation has anted up $950 K for renovation and updating of the tiger domicile, and it’s state of the art, lemme tell you. Inside quarters are heated and cooled. There is a synthetic stone in the yard, heated in the winter, (if there is a winter) and cooled in the summer. (There will be a summer.) The pond and the waterfall have been redone, and the yard is spacious and green. I should have such a flop.

Mike VII came to town this week. Eleven months old, he was donated by a refuge in Florida, and he is a fine looking young tiger. He is in quarantine at present, but he will be let out in a few more days, and there will be a crowd there to get a look at him. It will be a media event, for certain, and the viewers will cheer, but this tiger will not be taken out to any more football stadiums (stadia?). That’s good news for him and for the animal lovers. Will he be happy at LSU? I don’t know. What does it take for tigers to be happy – another tiger, maybe? Not likely, but if there’s anything else they can do for him . . .

Big year for the LSU Tigers. New head coach, new defensive genius, and new innovative director for the offense. If they win, the people will love them. But don’t worry about the new tiger. He is a big winner already.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has reported finding red swamp ‘crayfish’ in some ponds and rivers, and they seem to be sort of upset about it for some reason. It’s illegal to import crayfish into their state, even for bait or as pets. They fear a possible infestation. Well, the news has reached south Louisiana, and a relief column from Lafayette is on the way, and they will show them poor deprived yankees what to do with red swamp crawfish and the right way to do it. There will be CARE packages of Zatarain’s seasoning, and Slap Ya Mama. Bon Dieu, bro, things are fixing to get better around there!
 

vapros

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Water

Water

Don’t try to tell the folks in southeast Texas about water. They know. Mitch has a post on the subject today on our website. It’s a fine bit of writing, as we have come to expect from him. Lots of one-pocket players in the Houston area, and we are wondering about their well-being. A few have checked in, but some have not, and we are waiting. All across the country, Harvey is in the news, even for those who are totally out of his reach. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are on page two today.

Hurricanes are getting wetter, are they not? I have lived more than eighty years in south Louisiana, half of that time in extreme south Louisiana. I’m talking Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, which are mostly one to three feet above sea level. I don’t know how many hurricanes I have seen come and go in that time. I can recall being in the eye at least four times – that twenty minutes of beautiful clear weather granted while waiting for the other side to come. The wind blew and things were blown down or blown away. The rain came down in buckets and the ditches overflowed and some of the lower streets were out of service for some hours. Then, starting tomorrow, picking up and cleaning up. That’s how I knew hurricanes.

Flood water is another else. I mean the flood water that visited New Orleans after Katrina, Denham Springs just a year ago, and Houston in the past week. (Each in the last week of August – make what you want of that). I have worked on the water, and I have fallen overboard a couple of times, but I have never looked around me and wondered how in hell I was going to get out of the water. In floods, people wonder about that, but I’m sure the rest of us cannot appreciate that situation. Try to imagine standing in water up to your knees, your nuts, your navel, your nipples, your nose – pick one – and suddenly realizing that the nearest dry spot is a long way away. Water is a great equalizer. When it’s five feet deep, the guy who has lost his Lincoln is just about equal to the guy who has lost his Yugo, at least for a while. Maybe yesterday he had some kind of edge, and maybe he will again tomorrow, but today you can’t tell them apart.

Androd and I stay in touch, after a fashion, and I know him to be a God-fearing man. Today he is in a motel, because there’s water in his house, but he had the grace to make a kind comment about the folks who delivered his lunch. I’m not sure I could do the same if my place floods – and it still might, as rain is on its way. We like to think we know how it is for the flood victims, but we don’t. Not really. For what it’s worth, I believe the people who have faith have an edge on the rest of us.

Speaking of rain, it has always been a source of great wonder to me to look up at a dark sky and know that there is a million tons of water suspended in those clouds, or a half million or whatever. How can that be true? How can it stay in the sky so long? But then I can reflect that there are several other things I still don’t understand, either. People, for example.
 

vapros

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Update on Irma

Update on Irma

Nearly everything has been said fifteen or sixteen times about the current state of things in southeast Texas. For a while it will be all about buckets and mops and shop vacs, and then tearing out drywall (strange name for sheetrock) and hiring people to build it all back again. There will by many, many out-of-state pickup trucks and trailers of various kinds, and crews eager to do what you need done. There will be some price-gouging and customers eager to pay whatever it takes, and insurance adjusters trying to settle claims and hold down their costs. People in rubber boots and work gloves will make their 2017s ooze black ink. As we know, ‘it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.’ And eventually, it will all be over, one way or another.

In the meantime, we are all watching the horizon for the arrival of Irma, still building in the Atlantic. Surely she wouldn’t . . . well at the moment it doesn’t look like she will, but don’t bet the rent money. I just watched a twenty-four-minute update by a young guy named Matt Devitt at the National Hurricane Center. Nothing is for sure yet, said Matt, and won’t be until at least Wednesday, but she is a wide storm with high winds and waves predicted as high as sixty feet. Based only on what they know from experience, they are naming four possible destinations, as follows: Florida, Georgia/South Carolina, New Jersey or the open Atlantic.

The foggy consensus puts landfall at Hilton Head Island. It so happened that I was watching the program while riding my exercise bike, and looking down I realized that I had on an old tee shirt that says Hilton Head Island. No idea where I got it, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, this information will be updated every six hours for the next few days, and has to be encouraging for the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Nobody is thinking, today, that it will bring bad weather farther west than maybe the eastern Gulf of Mexico. But this same news will be a caution for a lot of other people in other parts of the country.

There are still members in Texas that have not yet checked in, and now we must start thinking about the guys along the east coast, and especially Florida. Lots of really good friends in Florida, and it’s time to start rooting for their safety, and that of the others, too. That’s how it is in the Hurricane Belt at this time of year. The alternative would be to move to aahh, Chicago? Detroit? Baltimore? Berkeley? Never mind, we will make it okay right here. But I gotta tell you, Jose is already on the radar, in the eastern Atlantic.

I generally go to bed with an hour of Forensic Files on my little TV. Did I ever mention that it stands on end on a night table? Yeah, I watch lying down. Lots of extra long commercials after 2:00 am, mostly for cosmetics and lawyers flogging class-action legal cases for real or imagined torts. They don’t miss much. Wednesday night, or rather Thursday morning, there was a guy reporting that a medicine called Abilify was alleged to cause out-of-control gambling. I don’t know what that medication is taken for, but if you have taken any, and are losing most of your bets, he wants to hear from you. This must be welcome news for at least a few pool players. All we need now is a doctor to write the prescriptions.
 

vapros

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Great viewing op

Great viewing op

On Youtube last night, I watched one of my all-time favorite one-pocket matches. It’s from 2010, and the venue is Goldsboro, North Carolina. I saw a pair of genuine one-pocket experts locked up in a tournament match, and having fun with each other as they played. Nick Varner, carefully choosing every shot and looking at it from every angle, won the match by 3-1 without making any errors. Artie B would have been impressed. Nick had a neat nine-and-out in the very first game, and ran seven balls in the last game. Shannon Daulton played like Shannon, making only two mistakes and not getting away with either. In his only win he ran a fantastic eight-and-out. They played the four games in fifty-four minutes. Not much bobbing and weaving. If Efren had been there he might have run third.

David King did the commentary, and David knew his way around the game, without doubt. Jeff Abernathy was the color man, and he was a delight to hear, although not as comfortable as David in this game. If one encountered Jeff on the road to Mandalay and asked him for the time, one would know instantly that he was from North Carolina. He was equally responsible for the success of the stream with David. Great team, and a great viewing experience. It has my recommendation.

Several weeks ago I mentioned a story about a large number of slaves sold by Georgetown University in 1837, to raise some needed cash. Some of the slaves were sent by sailing ship to New Orleans, and a number of them went to Maringouin, where many of their descendants may still be found. Led by students on the Georgetown campus and certain leaders at the school, a concerted effort was recently made to follow those slaves and perhaps to offer some recompense to their current families.

Now, it is reported that a sixty-three year old woman from New Orleans has enrolled as a freshman at Georgetown, under a program of aid from the university. Unlike many of us, such as yours truly, who have shamefully meager knowledge of our lineage, this lady knows her family tree. She tells that as a child she was required to learn and memorize her ‘begats’, and can document her relationship to one of the original group that disembarked down the river at New Orleans. Aside from the human interest aspect of this tale, it has reminded me that I don’t know much about my people – not much at all. And all the folks that took any interest in it are dead and gone. That’s sad and a bit embarrassing.

There are services today who say they can offer great help in this matter. I don’t know how many are legitimate, or what their rates might be. I’m pretty certain that for a price one could be discovered to be a direct descendant of anyone one might choose. What to do? My daughters would like to know, and I have little to give them, except a box of old pictures of mostly unidentified people. I should be ashamed, and I am.
 

vapros

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Publishing

Publishing

Many years ago, when the world and I were younger, I wrote a story. I would like to say I wrote a book, but it never made it that far, so I was left with a manuscript. With Steve’s blessing, I’m in the process of posting it here among the journals. It’s a long adventure tale and so far I have put up the initial five chapters, but the other forty will appear soon, one at a time. The Taking of Sonny Boy. I note there are a few readers, and that’s encouraging. Without readers . . . you know what I’m saying?

I’m certainly not the only member of this site who writes; far from it. The journal forum has seen several good ones, but I’m the most regular, without a doubt, and I probably have more fun writing than any of the others. We have among us an author who has written a real book, Tom Wirth. Fine book, by the way. Alfie Taylor also comes to mind, and he has written a fine book also. I have both. Freddie the Beard was a published author, and there may well be others.

All this brings me around to my topic this evening, and it’s publishing. Having produced a manuscript, I am often asked why it has never been published, why I haven’t written a real book. Tom and Alfie and Freddie could explain better than I, but I will tell you what I can. Of course, I wrote on a computer, and when the thing was done, I printed up a hard copy on my own little printer. Quite a project, with nearly a hundred thousand words, requiring a lot of paper. Then I took it to Kinko’s and had several copies made. At the public library I sat down with the latest version of ‘Writer’s Market’ and picked out some publishers. I composed a cover letter, and mailed off several copies of my manuscript, and hoped they would initiate an auction, with all these big guys trying to outbid each other for the rights.

In time – quite a lot of time – most of my stuff was returned, but only because I had enclosed enough stamps to cover the mailing. That’s required. Nobody had read my story, and the few who had the courtesy to write me a note advised that they only consider submissions from recognized and successful literary agents. Without going into detail, the agents I queried all said they were not taking on any new authors. The real skinny here is that promoting a new author takes time and money, and everyone does it very carefully, and they all are looking for younger people with the fire in their bellies, who might produce a nice string of successes. Nobody is interested in an old guy with one manuscript. And that’s how it is. I didn’t lose too much sleep over it.

So, what can one do? One can self-publish, and I believe each of the three guys I mentioned did just that. They all wrote about pool, which seriously limits the supply of possible customers, and one must do one’s own marketing and promotion. Did these guys profit from their books? I have no idea – none of my business. I hope they did, so other pool writers will be encouraged to write and publish. Many writers signed on with the vanity publishers, who will print and bind your book; you pay up front for services you may never get. Lots of thieves among those people. Books might be shipped to your house, and lots of them are still there today. Depends how many friends and family members will buy a copy. It’s better today, with print-on-demand type services. Once it’s on the computer, you can order books in small lots and pay as you go.

Anyway, now you know why The Taking of Sonny Boy is making its debut on our one-pocket journals forum. I hope you like it. I had not looked at it for several years, but I am enjoying reading it as I post it. Good stuff, especially the dialogue – damn, this old man can write. I wonder if this ego thing is common among writers. Doesn’t really matter, does it?

One more thing – a lot of people believe that John Grisham started out in self-publishing. He did not.
 

vapros

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The lemon-flavored smile

The lemon-flavored smile

A girl named Jeanie used to come around to my wife’s beauty shop in Thibodaux. She was unemployed, and Pat gave her some small tasks around the place and paid her cash, and now and then she would baby-sit for my girls in the evening.

Jeanie’s skin was sort of tan, and her hair was pitch black. She had a Slavic name that began with Z, and I always thought she could be a gypsy. She had a great big white smile that could light up a room, and she smiled often. She had a way of looking at you that was almost apologetic; a manner that made you want to do something for her. Jeanie had been a school teacher, and had worked at a little school in an old frame building ‘way out of town, where they had a bunch of kids with special needs. The kids loved her, but the school board apparently did not. They let her go, and she lived for a long time with no visible means of support, in a run-down duplex house.

When my wife and I separated Jeanie began showing up at my sign shop now and then, just to hang out and to look at my work and how I did it. Once in a while she would bring sandwiches, and we would eat lunch in my little office. She was an attractive girl in a bony sort of way. She liked to talk, and her favorite subject was her boyfriend, whose name was Eddie. They seemed to fight a lot, and Jeanie would be depressed and sad until they patched things up. But she never shut down that wonderful smile. It was something to see.

Jeanie called me up one evening, and invited me to come and spend an evening at her place. It came as a surprise, and I stalled for a while before deciding to go. I hadn’t any idea that was coming. Late in the evening, she went and changed her clothes for a pair of short shorts and her nightshirt. Without going into detail, I will just say that before long she admitted she couldn’t go farther than that, and thanked me for coming and keeping her company, and so I went back to my shop.

Anyway, she lived for more than a year on nothing but a Diner’s Club Card and a Texaco credit card. That did not seem possible, but Jeanie did it. They never stopped trying to collect, but she had no money, so she never paid, and somehow it was that long before her credit was cut off, and this was about forty-five years ago, before we all carried plastic instead of cash. Not everyone could get a Diner’s Club Card. Unprecedented. Jeanie bought goods on credit and sold them; things like new tires and batteries and whatever else she could buy with those two tickets. I feel sure that her great smile was her lemon. She made people trust her and got what she wanted. She stiffed creditors and made them like it. I don’t think she had set out to live that way, but I’m not sure she didn’t, either.

One day she showed up at my place, sad and down in the dumps. She and Eddie had fought, and she had tried to think of something nice to do for him to make amends, and had stayed up late to make him his favorite kind of cake. She had taken the cake and left it on his stoop, but Eddie had taken the cake back to her place and thrown it at her front door, and it was breaking her heart.

Threw the cake at her door – are you kidding me? What kind of a guy would do a thing like that? But I knew what kind of guy, so I said, “Jeanie, Eddie is a girl, isn’t he?” It took half a minute before she finally agreed that Eddie was a girl. The big white smile was even more apologetic than usual, but I put my arm around her and told her not to worry about it, ‘cause it was okay. And it was.

I never saw Jeanie again. She loaded her stuff in her old blue Chevrolet and drove away somewhere, probably with half a tank of Texaco gasoline. I went by the raggedy-ass house where she had lived, and it was empty. Today, I’m sitting here wondering how to end this story, but I guess I already have. Like the Cheshire Cat, it has all faded away except for the smile. Man, it was something to see.
 

vapros

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Burying Sonny Boy

Burying Sonny Boy

I haven’t touched this journal for about two weeks. I never intended to let it go that long, but I got started posting the story about Sonny Boy, and had to change all my scheduling. I was going to post the chapters one at a time, and spend most of this fall getting it all done, but it was so much easier to keep the thing up on the word processor and take down two or three chapters nearly every day, and that’s what I did. But now Sonny Boy has been put to bed and this Unpaid Bill is back to being my main interest.

The Taking of Sonny Boy was a unique experience for me. I wrote it a long time ago, and put it aside when I discovered it was not likely to be published. I dug it up and updated it a couple of times, for no good reason. With Steve’s permission, I posted it here for whoever might want to follow it, and thus delayed the natural death of the tale for a while. Otherwise, it would have just gone into the box with me. It was written for my own amusement, and I did have a good time with it. I believe about 98.3% of all fiction originates that way and expires in the same manner. The rest is published.

I tried to keep track of the number of views that were generated as the story went along, and my best guess was that there were perhaps fifteen to twenty readers who were regulars. That doesn’t seem like many, but on a one pocket website I did not expect a landslide, anyway. Not so bad at all, and chapter forty-five has been viewed more than sixty times in the two days since I put it up. Don’t know just what to make of that, but it’s encouraging.

A few people in past years who read the manuscript complained that the end of the story was not so good. There was no resolution of the dilemma that had fueled the whole thing. I pondered on that, but decided not to make a change. After all, I did what I could for Jack Ross, since I felt I owed him something for the pistol shot in the belly. On the last page I let him know that the building he needed still stood, presumably with the loot still inside. All the other hopefuls are dead except for Gus Mendoza, and he’s on the lam if he knows what’s good for him. What more could I do? Whatever Ross might decide to do, after he gets well, I will not be complicit. My hands are clean – sort of.

Anyway, it’s over. Thanks -
 

vapros

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Tony the tiger

Tony the tiger

They killed a tiger yesterday in Grosse Tete. In the small community where I lived for several years, Tony the tiger was euthanized Monday afternoon. The ‘coup de grace’ or stroke of pity – (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1951, James Mason and Ava Gardner) came after seventeen years in a cage at a truck stop. Tony had resided there, on I-10 in Iberville Parish, since he was six months old. The cage was not so bad, as tiger cages go; it had a concrete floor and a little pool and Tony’s house, all done up in a good, tight hurricane fence. Tony seemed to figure it was okay, as compared to – well, he didn’t really have anything else to compare it to, come to think of it.

Things have gotten better for some of the animals in today’s world. We have all seen the new agencies, some of them non-profit, that work pretty hard to rescue the pets from bad environments and try to give them something better. Mostly it’s the dogs and cats, but there are the horses and others. Not all are suitable for adoption, and the others can get a painless death, if that’s what is indicated. Lots of things are worse than a painless death, whether you are a man or a yellow Lab. And yes, you can tell ‘em I said so.

I spend a lot more time on YouTube nowadays than on television, and I am watching similar small miracles in many places in the world. Some big parcels of undeveloped land are being dedicated to the betterment of the lions and tigers and bears (oh, my) and elephants etc., too, that are being sought out and taken from carnivals, circuses and tourist traps and moved to the preserves. Some such places are securely fenced, but others are so vast that it would be impossible and unnecessary. Imagine watching the door of a cage being raised so that the beast inside can step out onto the first grass he has ever seen in his life. It’s funny – the tigers jump out snarling and in high gear, and are out of sight in a few seconds, but not so the other animals. The lions are quite timid and doubtful. The elephants are ponderous and doubtful. The laboratory chimps are afraid and doubtful. All except the tigers, and I imagine even Tony would have been kinda doubtful.

The ASPCA and the Animal Legal Defense Fund (?!?) have been in the courts for years, trying to get Tony away from the truck stop, but never succeeded, and now Tony doesn’t need them any longer. He has found a way out.

For other animals, things have gone downhill. In Africa, the Masai Mara and the Serengeti, the tourists seem to be everywhere, although I’m sure that is a terrible exaggeration. But they are all over the YouTube. Wildlife safaris load up the travelers and take them out where it’s happening, in SUVs and covered trucks and Land Rovers, to see and film the formerly-wild animals. Many of the beasts seem to have given up and now go along, perhaps sent out into the tall grass from central casting. From my rolling desk chair I can see a family of lions eating a warthog that isn’t quite dead yet, and in the picture are five or six vehicles full of rubbernecks, parked in a circle and all within ten yards of the scene. Five minutes here and then we’re off to see a cheetah running down a gazelle, and then a big lion killing a hyena, and then the crocodiles fattening up on wildebeests out in the river. For ten dollars more you can see how little elephants are made. There’s no privacy any longer – maybe you feel the same way.

No doubt about it, our side is still winning. But just once, I could be entertained by seeing a big cat suddenly take a running jump into the back of one of them trucks. Then the lions could stop eating for a couple minutes and see how homo sap got his name. It would all be on YouTube, too - viral, whatever that is. I’ll keep you posted.
 
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vapros

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The appeal of nine ball

The appeal of nine ball

Brief field trip today – I went to Cardiff, Wales to see a match from the 2002 World 9 Ball Championship. Francisco Bustamante was playing Efren Reyes, and a great match it was, as Django pulled ahead of Bata right at the end and took it off. There’s not much breath-taking suspense involved, wondering what the next shot might be, so one must find entertainment in the shot-making and position play. I often find myself abandoning such matches to see what else is on YouTube, but today’s show benefitted from the presence of the referee and the commentator.

The very sharp lady in striped shirt and black slacks will be a familiar sight to all who indulge in viewing recorded competitions, and it seems to me that she officiates at a great many places around the world. Is it just my imagination, and if not, who is paying for her travel and accommodations? Doesn’t seem possible or practical, but there it is. I have become a fan of hers, being partial to neat ladies who pin their hair up and wear glasses and fill up the striped shirts quite pleasantly. I get to see her only when she appears briefly in the background of a picture of a pool player; the cameraman doesn’t even show her as she announces the score. She deserves much better, being by far the handsomest character present. And I don’t even know her name.

Speaking of which, there is a neat blond guy who officiates at many locations and seems to get around as much as she does, which is pretty much all over, at least in my observation. Are they a couple, perhaps? When I see him it always occurs to me that he could be a poster child for Hitler’s aryan youth ideal. Blond, erect and without visible humor – only the very oldest members here will know what I mean. Der fuehrer even had breeding programs to turn out such specimens to start his master race.

Jim Wych was on the mike, and to my mind he speaks English only marginally better than Bata Reyes, but there in the UK I suppose they may have understood him – certainly better than I could. To my untrained ear his accent may be Cockney, but what do I know? Could be almost anything. He was both unconventional and entertaining, and his unique style was fueled by his great enthusiasm. He made Howard Cosell seem tame by comparison. A ball rolling slowly toward a pocket was worthy of shrieking anticipation of it falling victim to gravity. Surely he must have been in a soundproof booth, else they would have chucked him out of the arena.

Jim created a hundred metaphors never heard before in pool rooms, comparisons fresh only for their originality and imagination. He told me that Reyes leapt from his chair like a rat up a drain pipe (!?), or was it down? He said Bustamante’s handling of the stick appeared to be like stirring a custard. There was even a reference to the great white whale, Moby Dick, although he lost me on most of it, due to the accent. Hated to miss that one. Or not.

Anyway, everything considered, it was about as good as nine ball ever gets. I noted that Bata and Django matched up again a year later in that same event, and that it is also available for viewing. But I’m not.
 

vapros

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Halloween

Halloween

The day before All Saints Day is not what it used to be. You have to be a little older than I am to recall the last time somebody’s privy was pushed over by Halloween trick-or-treaters, but I’m pretty sure it happened now and then, a bit earlier in the twentieth century. I was raised in a rural area, and the practice entailed a lot of walking from one house to the next, and I gave it up by about age twelve. The country roads were out-of-bounds to the kids, and they were required to travel through the front yards whenever possible. Dark roads, sometimes even foggy, were suitably spooky but also perilous. There were no prescribed hours for going out, and midnight callers were not unknown.

Right now we are halfway through trick-or-treat hours, and no one has knocked on my door yet; this will make seven years in a row. I’ve got candy bars and wrapped peppermints ready in a bowl, as usual, and as usual I will have to eat them myself. I can’t eat chocolate, so I always buy Payday candy bars. Before coming to town and buying this old condominium, I lived in Grosse Tete, on the bank of the bayou. No callers out there, either. It was Natchez, Mississippi before Grosse Tete, and a bit too remote for kids, even with parents. Had to eat my own candy in Natchez, too.

But before that I had a little garden home in a B.R. subdivision, and traffic on Halloween was pretty brisk. Tough, brazen youngsters on Noble Cane Drive, as I recall. A loud knock would announce teenagers without any sort of costumes, kids as tall as I was. They carried plastic bags from the grocery store, and thrust them at me for the loot. They said nothing until they had looked at the take, and then they would give me dirty looks and say “That’s all!?” Child abuse was not far from my mind.

Today, it’s all about haunted houses, and I guess that’s okay. Spooky as hell, and a lot of fun – as much for the people preparing them as for the visitors. Couple of guys in Spanish Town have spent the whole year getting their house ready for this night, and I wouldn’t mind seeing what they have done. The residents of Spanish Town have earned their reputations for creativity and imagination. Interesting neighborhood on just about any night. Downtown, almost right on the levee, is the ultimate haunted house. At one time a store for guns and sporting goods, now it sits empty most of the year, until it becomes The 13th Gate for this season. Not the cheapest entertainment, but maybe the top attraction on this night, or even this time of year. It has been open for at least a couple of weeks already, and has existed for a number of years in this town. I’m told there are some horrible things to see, hear, smell and touch in the 13th Gate. Such places are a good solution for Halloween. Everyone involved is there by choice.

So, what is the Ghost up to tonight? Does he terrorize anybody in the Chicago pool rooms, or is it all in his mind? Does he wear a sheet, and moan and groan and holler ‘boo’ at the local players? Do they quake and shrink back and then laugh behind his back, or is he the real McCoy? After all these years, seems like we ought to know. Someone needs to rat him out tonight.
 

vapros

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Ike Runnels, et al

Ike Runnels, et al

It has been a long time since I first heard Ike Runnels’ name. I have vague recollections of hearing that he was a fine tactician at one-pocket, a finagler who never gave up a shot and a prime example of the Chicago style. I don’t recall hearing that he was a shooter, but a tough opponent anyway, because of his tenacity. So, yesterday I asked Youtube about him and they provided a video of a match he played with a guy named Brian Carson at Red Shoes Billiards in 2013. Well, Ike won a race to two in twenty-two minutes. Carson needed a restraining order, which might or might not have gotten him a shot at his pocket. Not only that, but when he made an error Runnels ran as neat an eight-and-out as you might want to see. Great cue ball control, eight easy shots.

Then I watched an interview done at the Derby City Classic in 2009. I find most sports interviews to be groaners between two people poorly qualified to do interviews, but a pretty girl with a Latino name talked with Runnels about his banks and one-pocket games, and she had obviously been watching; not just a face from central casting. Ike, for his part, spoke well and entertained listeners like me. Their dialogue was a treat. He explained that you gotta know where the cue ball is going at all times, and as we know, that’s the name of our game. My estimate is that eighty-five percent of us might profit by having that tattooed on the backs of our bridge hands. He also told the lady that he was not from Chicago, but from Kankakee, and I realized that it must be a real town and not just a place in a Willie Nelson song.

I followed him to another tournament match at Red Shoes, against Sergio Perez, in 2011. The commentator, Freddy The Beard, said they were well matched, and about even, and they were. Perez won the race to three by 3-2, and I think the guy who broke the rack won each game. Between those two smallish guys, the break was a definite advantage. When they got a move ahead, they didn’t like to give it up. Only in Chicago, I suppose. Excellent viewing, if you like one-pocket, and I do.

Freddy Bentivegna sounded, as always, like one of the Billy Goats Gruff and his running commentary was all over the map. He gave a shout-out (that’s when someone says your name on TV) to Dr. Bill, and one to Cowboy Dennis, the Rust Belt Lunatic, and even one to San Jose Dick – I’m thinking those two were at each other’s throats about that time. He explained the tactical advantage of having a ball near your side pocket and the folly of failing to protect small advantages. He sent someone out to Krispy Kreme for pastry, and someone else for coffee – with cream and plenty of sugar – I like lots of sugar, he noted. Said he was seventy years old and healthy as a horse, with a strong constitution. I think Freddy lived about three more years.

He knew who the best heart surgeons were, and he was following a White Sox game on the television. Leading Detroit 8-1, they went in the tank and lost 9-8, as the Tigers made three runs in the ninth on a triple and a pair of homeruns. Several nameless sweaters came and went in the background of the audio feed, and Freddy took a call on his cell phone. The worst one-pocket player in the world was a friend of his, he said (he may have said the guy was living in his house!), and he noted that the guy played Artie Bodendorfer, who laid 400-1 on the money and never lost a game. Shout out to Archie the Greek, fastest gambler on earth, who had just walked in. All in all, a motley congregation of midwesterners who cared about one-pocket and assembled on a pretty regular basis to play it, watch it, and talk about it.

I hope Red Shoes Billiards is still kinda like that.
 
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