The Journey to the West (10)

Everyone is on the same journey to the west, but each person's journey is unique and fraught with different experiences. As Lewis Black said recently, "We are like snowflakes."

It might seem strange that anyone would feature a pool hall in their memoir, but a pool hall played a very important part in my young life. During most of my time in High School we had no Youth Center or any approximation of one. We hung out somewhat in a Soda Fountain and Candy Store called Saxton’s, congregating there after school for a while. There was a story that Herb Saxon, who owned and operated the place, had lost his penis in an accident. I’m not sure anyone believed it, but it was supposedly common knowledge. We drank coca colas and ate banana splits and played the juke box (you couldn’t dance there) but such a hangout was no substitute for the pool hall, which was an all male hangout where much more important and more adult activities occurred. I don’t remember just how it was that some of us boys started hanging out in the pool hall. Interestingly enough, some boys never ever even entered the place, those being the sons of the local bankers, lawyers, and I guess you could say the presumptively “upper class” of our town. Those of us who were of the pool hall were somehow not members of the upper class. This had no effect on me as I was always involved with everyone and was invited to the dances and such held in the basements and recreation rooms of the more well-to-do. I’m not sure why this was so, but it was so. It might have had something to do with the fact that Henry J’s girlfriend (Henry was a banker’s son) was a close friend of my girlfriend. It may have had something to do with the fact that my father was not a miner and occupied a kind of indeterminate status in the community. And it might have been because my mother was educated and made friends with everyone even though she was deaf. In any case, the pool hall came to be almost like my home away from home.

No one under twenty-one years of age was supposed to be in the pool hall, but the local police and even our parents knew we hung out there, and they also knew that the management did not serve us drinks, other than soft drinks and milk shakes. Of course they also knew we had no other place to congregate and “idle hands were the devil’s workshop.” To understand how this worked it is necessary to describe the pool hall itself. When you entered the front door to your right was an area comprised of four stools at that end of a long old-fashioned bar. There was also a juke box located there. This small area was partitioned off from the main bar only by a small partition that kept you from looking into the bar (but only if you were seated on one of the stools). It was somewhat like a miniature soda fountain where ice cream, milk shakes, and popcorn were available. Beer was not served there. If you were entering, or just standing around, you could see directly into the supposedly out-of-bounds bar itself. In the bar there were some ten or twelve stools occupied mostly by beer drinkers, punchboards, pickled eggs, sausages, hard boiled eggs, and such. You could play dice, double or nothing, with the bartender for beer or snacks, 4-5-6 being the game, played with leather dice cups. On the wall opposite the stools was a pinball machine and, for a time, four slot machines. A large partition and display case separated this area from the pool hall itself. You could enter the pool hall by walking around the ends of this large partition. When you did so, you found yourself looking at the curved stand-up end of the bar, a huge safe, and the pool tables. There was a genuine billiard table first, next to it was a full-sized snooker table, then an ordinary pool table, a slight rise up and then another pool table. Also on this slightly higher level was a huge and beautifully constructed chest of drawers intended to hold cuesticks (although by this time it was not actually used). Each heavy drawer was sculpted to hold cues and was a relic from the days when pool rooms were of much greater importance. I’m certain the cost of such a piece of furniture would have been prohibitive by the time we inhabited the place. Then behind this behemoth, in the far corner, was a poker table. Technically, we should not have been allowed either in the bar or in the pool room. But no one paid any attention to those rules and we spent large amounts of our time there. Above this pool hall was an apartment where one of the owners lived with his family.

The name of this establishment, when I first became a habitué, was Babe and Jim’s. It had an interesting history, or so I was told. Originally it was created by a man named Dude and was called Dude’s (maybe Dude’s Place). Two of the employees were Babe and Jim. For reasons that were never made clear, Dude decided to leave and move elsewhere. As neither Babe nor Jim had much money, Dude told them they could have the place and pay him off when they finally made some money (there were no slot machines at that time). So the place became Babe and Jim’s and did reasonably well. However, Babe and Jim did not get along very well as co-owners. Babe was an easy-going personable guy who did not let much of anything bother him. Jim, on the other hand, was kind of dour, serious, and not very sociable. And he did not want any kids hanging around the place, whereas Babe welcomed and enjoyed them. Finally it was decided that one of them would have to buy out the other, but neither of them still had much money. They were to meet one night and see which one would prevail. Somehow, Babe found someone to back him, and so the story goes, he showed up with $5000 cash in his back pocket. When he put it on the billiard table Jim was unable to match it and so he left. The place continued to be known as Babe and Jim’s for quite some time and Babe eventually settled with Dude. Although I have no way of knowing for certain, I always believed that when Dude created the place it was a genuine old-fashioned bar and pool hall. This impression was reinforced by the occasional presence of a couple of very old men who obviously had played billiards routinely all their lives and possessed elaborate old custom-made cues with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays. The four stools in front where they sold ice cream, milkshakes and popcorn, must have been a later innovation. Once you became a "regular" it was a friendly place where everyone knew everyone else and for the most part got along well. It played an important part in our socialization and enculturation.