CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
One of the things I enjoyed doing most while living in Sonora was shooting pool. If you have an interest in learning to become a good pool player, the best advice I can give you is to learn the basics first: hold the cue stick properly with your dominant hand, form a nicely developed bridge with your non-dominant hand, and always but always chalk the tip before taking your shot. Your success making shots and leaving yourself in a good position to make the next shot starts with how you hold the cue stick.
I was a decent pool player as a teen. I grew up playing mostly billiards, specifically three-cushion billiards. This is a very challenging game that involves bouncing your cue ball off your opponent’s cue ball and off another ball (not necessarily in that order), which counts as one point. But you have to bounce your ball off three sides of the table before hitting the second ball. You can also hit your ball and make contact with at least three sides of the table first, then hit the other two balls, which will also give you a point. Basically, before your ball makes contact with the two other balls, you have to hit at least three cushions on the table. It’s not about sinking the balls into pockets; in fact, there are no pockets on the table.
The skill and accuracy required to do this helped me play eight-ball and, less often, nine-ball. I found nine-ball to be a very different game, one which was a lot more difficult to master and become consistent in. I played in many eight-ball tournaments around Sonora and even won a few of them.
I remember one night quite clearly, when I made it to the final in one of the eight-ball tournaments without losing a single game. The owner of a bar called The Rock, which was where the tournament was held in Twain Harte, a guy named Reed, had to play me in the final for a prize of around $150. Reed was a very good pool player, but he had already lost one game, and to win the tournament he had to beat me twice in the final. He did just that. He beat me twice and won, and I had to settle for the second-place prize.
I particularly enjoyed playing on the historic pool table at St. Charles Saloon in Columbia, one of the Gold Rush towns just a couple of miles from Sonora. The table, well over a hundred years old at the time, was one of the nicest tables to play on. I remember an older guy with a beard and a ponytail named David being one of the players to beat there, as he was very good and consistent.
I also became friends with a guy named Eric and his wife, who were regulars on the local pool tournament circuit. We would go to pool tournaments at Rawhide Saloon in Jamestown and others in Angels Camp, a town near Sonora where Mark Twain wrote a short story called “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” They had me over to their place for dinner on a couple of occasions.
Eric was a truly great pool player. I remember one moment, though, when in the final of an eight-ball tournament with over $180 at stake, he called a one-time bank shot into the middle pocket. He missed the pocket he intended by less than an inch. But since the table at St. Charles Saloon was a fast table, meaning the balls would travel quite a distance when struck, the 8 ball went into the opposite pocket. He was the one who had to settle for second place that night, but Eric was a talent to reckon with at a pool table and won many tournaments. He gave me a lot of tips and helped me improve my game. I still think about him and his family, and I wonder how they are doing these days.
I met all kinds of characters at St. Charles. Leon, an older guy in his seventies, and Mike, a true cowboy — he really did work with horses — who had a unique style of holding the cue stick, just to name two. One of the people I am still good friends with was a guy named Bob, who was (and still is) about twenty-five years older than me. He was another one of the greats in the area.
He had a wide variety of interests. He usually rode his bike everywhere, and he would play soccer with us at Columbia College sometimes. He also raised pigeons and would take them to racing competitions. With a friendly and adventurous personality, he had many life stories to tell and I loved hearing every one of them.
Bob once told me that when he had lived in Los Angeles, one of my favorite actors, the late James Caan, would sometimes come into this local pool hall. This was before he was famous. Bob would say with a laugh that James Caan still owed him $25. I haven’t seen Bob since he came to visit me a few years ago. It was great seeing him, though I was sorry to hear that his wife, Nancy, who was one of the kindest souls I had ever met, had passed away.
Comments