Charlie Milliken

jrhendy

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Joined
May 24, 2004
Messages
5,717
From
Placerville, CA
I think Charlie deserves his own thread.

In the early 60's, when Charlie wasn't playing the horses, he was at the billiard room at San Gabriel Lanes playing three cushion. What little I know about three cushion I learned from Charlie and Howard Cronenwirth (sp). We played partners to 15 for $5/10 a man, 1st and 3rd Billiards were partners. Amazing the easy shots they would miss on the 3rd billiard when I made the first one.

Charlie was considered the best player around there and also the best for the $$. He was a better player than Lefty Gold (Allen Gilbert) at that time.

The great japanese female billiard player from San Francisco came to do an exhibition with Charlie. He said he would just oil her up and that would be that. She outplayed him in every aspect of the game and drilled him.

Charlie was a bookie and I asked him what kind of $$ he made. He said around a thousand a week. I said that is great but he said yes, but I lose about $1,200 a week betting the horses. He was quite a character. I believe he was originally from Tennessee.

My own three cushion career got derailed when I found out there were two wealthy businessman in there who played golf for fairly big stakes at the time.
 

baby huey

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Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
1,962
John, I met Tennessee (Charlie Miliken) through Tommy the Greek down at 4th and main around 1965. I did not know Tennessee was a Bookie, I thought he was just a horse player. He then opened the all night room in Norwalk, Charlie's Billiards, and as you know the action was good there for about 2 years until Vern Peterson opened up Bellflower. I did see him play some pretty sporty billiards and I agree he played better than Al Gold maybe not for the time for for the cash he certainly did. He used to play Bill Hines all the time for $20/game first to 20 points or so. I did not know him personally very well just howdy do when I would see him. I did not ever hear anything about him again after Norwalk closed. Back during those horse racing days, you had to really bet it up to make a score. You only had the daily double for exotics and any money to be won required some serious win betting. Do you remember the precurser to the pick six? it was the 5/10 at Caliente.

aidios
 
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