The Journey to the West (11)

Another Sunday. Sundays are boring. Here at Sandhill it is cold and dreary. The snow disappears at an excruciatingly slow place. There is little to be done outside. All there is to write about is the speech of that big, fat, lying idiot, Rush Limbaugh, which isn't worth the time. So, as usual on Sunday, another installment of my sort-of memoir.

Of course in the pool hall we learned to play pool. But the importance of the place in the formation of our lives went far beyond just that. We learned to play and enjoy many different games: rotation, eight ball, nine ball, straight pool, rack pool, bottle pool, snooker and billiards. Snooker, played on a much larger table with smaller balls, was more difficult than pool, and we often gambled, playing pea-pool on that huge table. Billiards, what is now referred to as “Carom Billiards,” came to be the favorite of those of us who took the games more seriously. We never knew the term “Pocket Billiards,” fashionable now. To us there was snooker, billiards, and everything else was just “pool.” I have never understood why billiards (carom billiards) has fallen out of fashion, as it is a truly marvelous game of skill that can be played all your life. Those few of us who took the games seriously came to spend most of our time playing billiards. Babe still had a set of genuine old ivory billiard balls. We thought these were much better than the composition balls that were ordinarily used. But as they were delicate and given to chipping, Babe would not let anyone use them unless they had proven to be exemplary players. It was a moment of great pride when you were finally allowed to use them. For a time some of the city fathers came to play billiards during their lunch hour. They had their own rather fancy cue sticks and we watched them with interest although they were not exceptionally good players. Except for pea-pool, we rarely gambled on the games, other than to play that the loser had to pay. I don’t recall exactly but I think it cost fifty cents an hour. We learned about winning and losing, fair-play, and the rules of the game of life, as well as pool.

Along one wall of our sort-of men's club were a number of raised chairs from which one could observe the games, sit and smoke and chat, and hear the latest on the war or local events. As it was not a place merely for teenagers, we observed how it was that adults comported themselves, what they thought about things, and what it meant to be manly and adult, something we all aspired to (see Morialekafa 1-30-05). The war, mining, work, athletics and hunting and fishing featured prominently in our conversations, as did sex, marriage, work, and, by implication, morality and ethics. Literature, books, reading, education, art, music, painting, were discussed not at all.

It was Babe, the owner, who became a role model for me (and I suspect for many others as well). Someone once said, “the only way to true learning is through intellectual osmosis with a great-souled man.” While this is far too grandiose a description for what transpired between Babe and some of us, he became truly an important influence in our lives. First, he was everything: owner, bartender, soda jerk, entertainer, janitor, philosopher, banker, advisor, even, when necessary, father figure. He taught us never to ask someone to do something we would not do ourselves. He lived this himself, scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, whatever. He treated everyone equally, except for some rather notorious bad actors that often caused trouble. He taught us not to loan money, saying, “if you have a friend who needs money, and you have it to spare, give it to him with no demand that he pay it back. If he’s truly a friend he will return it.” He never talked down to us teenagers, treating us as equals. During the war, when cigarettes were rationed, and the bar only received so many, he made sure that even those of us teenagers who smoked were not left out (but only if he knew your parents knew you smoked and you smoked in public). When someone was really hard up he would take something in pawn, though he was not a pawnbroker and preferred not to do it. But there was no 30 or 60 day period at the end of which he would sell it. He had a huge old safe that contained a few old gold coins, sometimes a handgun or two, or other valuables someone had pawned, many of which had been there for years. Only if someone died or disappeared for a long time would he consider selling their item. He never offered gratuitous advice, but if something came up he would comment on the quirks and foibles of human nature, both male and female. Being a child of his time, I think he had a somewhat jaundiced view of female character, but he did not insist he was always right. When fights threatened to break out, as they sometimes did, he would try to settle them amicably, but if that failed, he insisted they go outside to fight. He was not without his quirks. For example, he refused to sell Budweiser beer or Chesterfield cigarettes as he felt they were not good products. In the case of Budweiser, it was at the time that the giant brewing companies were beginning to take over and putting local breweries out of business. As up until then virtually any town of any size had its own brewery, as we did, there was a resistance to “factory beer,” that I believe was the reason for Babe’s decision. I don’t know what his objection to Chesterfield cigarettes was, he was one of the very few adults I knew who didn’t smoke. He also rarely drank, but at times would go on a kind of mild bender for a day or two, during which time he would make the rounds of other bars and sometimes gamble a bit. I never knew him to be hostile or unpleasant, ever. I guess one of the things that drew me to him was the revelation that he read – books. To me this was virtually unheard of, an adult male who actually read books. True, he didn’t read the classics, and was not well educated, but he did read. I know he read Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and some of the lesser authors of the time like James M. Cain, Frank Yerby, and the like. As I loved to read I was much impressed. I wouldn’t say that I worshipped him by any means, but I thought he was great. I loved to visit the bar in the mornings when I could. Almost no one would be there and I could observe Babe brushing the tables, fixing pool cues, changing a felt on a table, and taking care of all the little things one had to do to keep the place going. Far from being a bad influence on my life, I believe the pool hall did a great deal to make me a better and more informed person. But of course it was an unusual pool hall, an unusual situation, an unusual town, and an unusual time. From our raised seats we observed, heard, and learned about most of the basic experiences of life: foolishness, vanity, cheating, pettiness, lying, jealousy, envy, rage, meanness, violence, and death; but also about kindness, heroics, trust, generosity, empathy, friendship, fair-play, and, above all, right and wrong. We did not think of the journey to the west, we were too busy experiencing it.