Why I Love Pool Halls

Why I Love Pool by bl a nd SimP Son il luS t r at ion by h a r ry bl a ir Halls

on a green field of order, where I wait for this game’s random shif ts to br ing you back, high and low, str iped and solid balls rotate. I chalk my cue and call for one more rack . . .

— Henr y Taylor, f rom An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards

From the open upstairs windows of a plain t wo stor y commercial building overlook ing a br icked side-street, Colonial Avenue in Elizabeth Cit y, as a boy I used to hear the pour ing out of loud jolly talk and laughter, but most of all the hard click s of cue balls break ing the rack s, and spoken and sometimes shouted encouragements and disappointments, and the lighter click s of wooden scor ing beads, as men I could not see slid them along str ung wires above the g reen felt- covered slate pool tables in that mag ic room above.

A small sig n hung by the street-side door, stating simply: City Billiards, Home of Luther “Wimpy” L assiter, World Champion, 9-Ball.

In the nearby cor ner movie theater, the Center, my f r iends and I of ten sat, enthralled and forgetting we were only a hundred yards f rom a swamp r iver on its way f rom the Great Dismal Swamp to the sound and the sea, believing instead that we were r iding along on horseback as we wove with the cowboys through some sag uaro range, or that we were stomping or swing ing along with Tarzan of the Jungle through mamba snake-r idden equator ial brakes. We even saw Zsa Zsa Gabor there, in Queen of Outer Space, and k new this shor t interlude of imag inar y galactic travel had brought us to our worshipf ul k nees before the most beautif ul and power f ul woman in the universe.

Yet when we emerged f rom these diversions, our r iver por t realit y fell heavily upon us, and the sounds of smack and click kept spilling out f rom the pool hall on high, and we somehow k new that was where the real men, not boys, went to have their advent ures, though all we could do, our ages still in single dig its, was to stand on the sidewalk below and listen hard and tr y and make out what the hoots and hollers and howls, and the cussing were all about, and what they all really meant. •••

At my Uncle Joe’s home on Greenwood Road, a few hundred yards straight dow n the R aleigh Road hill below Gimghoul Castle in Chapel Hill, in a large square pinepaneled room stood t wo g rand implements of joy and pur pose that g uided me through my teenage days: a 1917 player piano, and a Br unswick pool table of more recent vintage with a

golden-brow n felt top. A f ter school, an inspired fellow could get in an hour of honk y-tonk piano playing (R ay Charles’ “W hat I’d Say,” F loyd K ramer’s “L ast Date,” A lan Toussaint’s “Mother-in-L aw,” as inter preted by Er nie K-Doe) and another good hour of 8 -ball. Even if I were only sing ing alone and then playing, as well, only against myself. I liked the feel of the ivor ies, and then I cer tainly liked the light hef t of the cue stick and the faint smell of blue chalk as I squeaked it onto the tip and smacked the cue ball into the rack and heard all that increasingly familiar clack and clatter.

A s I could be R ay Charles for a while, then I could be Wimpy L assiter for a while too. A nd why not?

Some of my f r iends f rom the Greenwood neighborhood, Tom West and Dave Har r ison among them, would also chalk a cue with me on occasion, so the prog ression of lonesome though active af ter noons would be broken. A f ter a while, about the time we all t ur ned 16 and could dr ive (in my case, my uncle gave me the use of a ’48 Willys jeep, with no top and only a seag ull feather to dip into the gas tank to discover how close to empt y the vehicle was), we decided to take our sk ills to tow n and tr y out a real pool hall, there being one on West Frank lin Street and another on West Rosemar y Street — said to be somehow under the control of Doug Clark, the musician whose perennially popular band the Hot Nuts toured the East Coast on weekends and played for t unes of of f- color R&B music for young college men to alligator to, tr ying to impress their dates.

So one sunny Sat urday mor ning a quar tet of us went into Doug’s pool ha ll and shot for a couple of hours and, as we k new we would, liked the loud clat ter of rack af ter rack busting apar t as ferocious underslung stick action slammed the cue ba lls for th into bat tle. T hat we were white boys in a black men’s redoubt made no dif ference, or seemed not to. We were no trouble, and we were spending money. We may not have played ver y well, but we were lef t a lone and did a ll r ight there.

We got to going to the Brass R ail pool hall over in dow ntow n Durham, with its clientele as white and laconic as Doug Clark ’s was black and passionate. T he men of the Brass R ail were low- energ y, cynical, wor n dow n f rom work in the tobacco factor ies, older men who dr if ted in and out, playing t wo or three rounds of 8 -ball and dr ink ing t wo or three long neck s, and some of them hack ing and spitting the brow n juice of their chaws into br ight brass spittoons placed all around the joint.

Our play improved steadily, if slowly, as we visited these emporia, and we played only 8 -ball, and my f riends found their way to Uncle Joe’s piano and pool hall more f requently as well, so the long lone days had given way to days of what we had come to know as pool hall convivialit y. Of f to ourselves, we could feign in a way that we were up at Doug Clark ’s or over at the Brass R ail and ape the ways grown men walked slowly around with squinted eyes and assayed the lay of a table as they set up their shots, and the ways they addressed the cue ball, maybe lying well over the table as they did, and slammed a long shot home or maybe just barely k issed a combination shot so the second ball in the combo might lightly curl around the cushion corner and fall smar tly into the center pocket. We learned that it was not only the shot, but also the next shot, and so we learned about the leave. A nd that this was all geometr y wor th k nowing.

W hat really elevated the impor tance of pool and rooms in which it was played was a talk with my father one evening, which began with him saying: “We need to talk about where you stand with the draf t.”

“T he draft?” I had yet to t ur n 18, and only would dur ing my first ter m at Carolina.

“W hat do you k now about it? A nd I don’t mean what you’ve heard around the pool hall — what do you really k now?”

Not a long call, but a keen one. I promised I would follow up, check on whatever I would have to do to reg ister, and so for th. But what was tr uly meaning f ul was my father’s realistic assumption that I would have, even should have, found my way to the pool hall and heard there the inevitable levit y and also ser ious talk about ser ious matters and that, also, I might not have k now n how in the midst of animated and, at times, f ur-flying talk, to tell what of it was real and what was not. My father was letting me k now, advising me of the tr uth in a slant way, that one needed, always, to take the temper of the room, to lear n extra-well how to navigate the gather ing places, the water ing holes and oases of the world, to note which asser tions had real g rains of tr uth within them and which ones were as flimsy as those thin wires above the pool tables threading through the wooden scor ing beads.

He was telling me that a pool hall was a tr uly impor tant place, and he was r ight.

For that first one I ever recalled, Cit y Billiards there in Elizabeth Cit y just a couple of block s f rom where my father was bor n and lived and practiced law, and only t wo miles f rom where he died, drew many men into its convivial space, many of them rank amateurs, some poseurs with light sk ills and a tr ick or t wo and perhaps a t wo -bit hustle, and a few tr uly talented when it came to chalk ing a cue.

Yet one of them — and only one — was the champion of the world. •••

In t ime, my old f r iend Ja ke Mi l ls showe d me h is t wo f avor ite p o ol ha l ls, Happy’s on C ot a nche in G re env i l le, a nd Wi lbur’s on Webb Avenue in Burl ing ton. A f ter scho ol in t he 1950 s, he a nd h is long t ime f r iend Steve C oley use d to play quar ter ga mes aga inst t he tex t i le m i l l ha nds c om ing of f first- sh if t a nd dr if t ing into Wi lbur’s st r a ig ht f rom work . T he cigaret te ha ze hung low b elow t he g re en shades, a nd t he cr y of “R ack !” wa s in t he a ir a nd t he ba l ls cl icke d a nd clacke d a nd, l i ke ma ny a yout h b efore t hem, Ja ke a nd Steve picke d up pin money in t h is A la ma nc e C ount y 8 -ba l l haven. W hen, de c ades later, Ja ke a nd I lo oke d in late one w inter’s day, had a c old one, a nd shot a round, no ha ze hung, a nd we were just ab out t he on ly ones in Wi lbur’s a s a gloa m ing crept over t he close d m i l ls at ha lf pa st five.

Once, at the cour thouse square pool hall in neighbor ing Graham, the bar tender ser ving Jake af ter a spell commiserated with him, telling Jake about his best f r iend and how the best f r iend ’s wife had recently stabbed him in the back with a Bic pen, not really hur ting him, but . . . “Prett y pointed message,” Jake said, and the bar tender

g r imaced. “I mean,” Jake went on, “she must’ve thought he wasn’t exactly seeing the wr iting on the wall.” At which point the bar tender shook his head ang r ily and walked of f.

Sometimes in New York Cit y, fellow song wr iter David Olney and I found ourselves in the big, 16 -tabled, Upper West Side 79th Street Billiards at the nor theast cor ner of Broadway. T he hall had a for t une of windows wrapping around its cor ner, facing west and south, and so had a br ight, air y disposition to it, even on a cloudy day. One slow af ter noon, the ow ner, a stock y man about 60, ambled by as we racked the balls and asked us where we fellows were f rom. W hen I said Nor th Carolina, he asked: “A ny where near Elizabeth Cit y?”

“T hat’s where I g rew up — L uther L assiter’s f rom there!” I went on about the Colonial Billiards, about how L assiter star ted hang ing around there as a boy, got the use of the tables for keeping the place swept up.

“Wimpy — sure. He always comes by here any time he’s in tow n, r uns the table a few times, shows ever ybody how you do it. Nice g uy. T he best.”

“W hat about Minnesota Fats?” I asked.

“Fats? Aw, he’s a loudmouth, a braggar t — he’s nothing but a hustler.”

T he pool hall man who had seen it all let that sit a few seconds, nodding at Dave and me both, and just before he walked on through a space that is no more, said with finalit y: “Wimpy L assiter’s the best 9-ball player I’ve ever seen. Straight pool too. A nd on top of that, he’s a real gentleman.” •••

Semi- dim places like Cr unk leton’s in Chapel Hill and the Orange Count y Social Club in Car rboro feat ured single tables back away f rom their f ront doors, always a nice sight for an 8 -ball man or woman. T hough a single table hardly a pool hall made, the OCSC, like Neville’s ag reeable speakeasy just of f Broad Street in Souther n Pines with its lone table, seemed at least half way there. My son Hunter and I were chalk ing post-T hank sg iving cues not long ago in the OCSC and challeng ing David and Heidi Per r y, and in the ensuing contest across the red felt table (with chalk cubes to match), our energ ies went betimes vivid, betimes laconic, matching the energ y in the small Par is- of-the-Piedmont bar room (“Nice to be channeling the Royal James,” David said a time or t wo).

In for mer days, women would not have found such welcome in the real pool halls. Dave Har r ison and I brought our dates into the Brass R ail in Durham one evening af ter we had gone to an ar t film at the R ialto and for that integ rative act ear ned just about the most bra zen, hostile glares either of us had ever received. But that age went by the boards sometime as the 20th cent ur y aged and passed on, and pool tables star ted showing up, along with dar ts and foosball games, in many a spot that ser ved wine as well as beer. Vic’s smok y taver n on Tur ner Street in Beaufor t (where, my wife, A nn, has told me, a young woman’s reputation would be shot should she ever enter) kept its three big, beckoning, g reen-felt slate tables and became the Royal James, smok y no more yet still and all one of the best pool halls in the land and a renow ned epicenter of easter n Carolina-ness, welcoming all comers and losing nothing in the bargain.

Channeling the Royal James indeed.

I have sat in the Royal James, the R J, on a T hank sg iving-tide af ter noon and heard the best of talk f rom Steve Desper, the late impressive science educator, about speculative ways to pull nitrogen out of the Neuse R iver; have heard f rom author Barbara Gar r it y-Blake of an A f r ican A mer ican menhaden fisher man engag ing the captain of the pogeyboat upon which they both worked in there and telling him, movingly, “I k now why you fish, Cap’n, ’cause it’s in your hear t”; seen a laughing female in a sequined, for mfitting camouflage dress pulling the taps behind the bar at a blister ing pace one Fr iday night; seen another woman polish of f male 8 -ball opponents on the middle slate table just as fast as they could challenge her, she in all respects untouchable; and seen families of ever y imag inable age range tak ing a few moments of f the bak ing summer time Beaufor t streets and cooling out on the smaller, 75 - cent tables in the back of the hall.

A nd over a stretch of 35 years I have found the Roya l James to be as good a barometer of ba lance as any around, and far bet ter than most. A s much as I have enjoyed concer tizing in theaters g reat and sma ll around the world, or spending ser ious time in the cor r idors of power and the ha lls of academia, I have a lso lear ned that a man w ithout time to enter the pool ha ll and find a pint of hops and cha lk a cue and go t wo out of three or three out of five w ith a handf ul of f r iends is a man missing out on some of life’s best essences. For X mark s the spot where geometr y and conv iv ia lit y cross and create the billiard parlor, the pool room, and praise be for such sa lubr ious intersection.

At home in the hill countr y of Carolina, I once unwrapped a present f rom A nn and our daughter Car y, a light weight something in a 2-by-3 -foot box that t ur ned out to be a miniat ure pool table replete with 3 -foot cue-stick s and inch-and-a-half balls. A nd a f ull-sized cube of chalk.

Its name — with no shadow falling bet ween contemplation and act — immediately became the Royal James Jr. A nd over many years since its unwrapping, upon its g reen felt in our red- clay countr y living room, many a family and f r iends contest of geometr y and will has been launched, played with an exacting hilar it y, and settled. T he relish to rack is the same, the squeak of the chalk the same, and much is spoken and heard around the RJ Jr. pool hall.

A nd the smack and click of the white cue and the str iped and solid balls are the same as they ever were, just as those clear shar p convincing sounds were when they leapt out the windows and echoed over Colonial Avenue and rained dow n on us boys there, emanating f rom Wimpy’s home cour t, Cit y Billiards of long ago, where up the same lopsided stairs in the same second-stor y room near the bank s of the Pasquotank R iver, there is a pool hall yet. PS

Bl an d Simpson is Ken an D ist ing uish e d Profe ssor of English an d Cre at ive Wr it ing at th e Universit y of Nor th Carolin a - Ch apel Hill, th e auth or of nin e bo ok s an d a l ong t im e pi anist an d comp oser/ ly r i cist for th e Tony Award - w inning Nor th Carolin a str ing ban d T h e Re d Cl ay R ambl ers. In 2005 h e receive d th e Nor th Carolin a Award for Fin e Ar t s.