THE MOST TERRIFYING ROAD PLAYER I EVER SAW.

THE MOST TERRIFYING ROAD PLAYER I EVER SAW.

It must have been the early part of the 1980's. Again, it was at the infamous "New Orleans- Sport Palace". You really had to experience this place to identify with it. The Sport Palace had gamblers of every kind; card sharks, pool sharks, horse racing bettors, sports bettor junkies. You name it, they had it. It wasn't the kind of place that you just walk in and open yourself up to right off the bat. It was an intimidating pool room to say the least. There was a private card room in the back where only the locals could tread. A visiting dignitary could get a pass if he knew one of the local card players and they vouched for them but strangers weren't allowed in. No one wanted the police snooping around back there, so you had to be either “a friend of ours” or at least, “a friend of mine” to enter the card room. If I recall correctly, the card room had a bona fide charter and was named The Red Rose Social Club. Everyone was told that you had to be a member to go back there and for the most part, all obeyed the rules. How I became a member of the Red Rose Social Club, well, I still don't remember. I guess it was by osmosis and it just happened over time.

In the card room, you had all sorts of desperados and even some of the elite gamblers with titles like "Esquire" and "Dr." and "PHD" behind their names but for the most part, names like New York Blackie, Jim the Lawyer, Joey with a Tie, Fu Manchu, Tall Paul, St. Louie Louie, Buffalo Jimmy, Shotgun Dave, Pots and Pans, Joe the Grinder, Railroad Willie, Hotel Al, Tommy the Plumber, Chicken Joe, just to name a few. We all shared some common interests like pool, cards, gambling and hustling in general. We had former professional baseball players like Keith Shilling and Mike Cummings who liked to swing a cue with the best of them. It's interesting how many different classes of people we had at this pool room. And yes, we had a few people who liked to do more than imbibe, if you know what I mean. Most of the names I mentioned were regulars at the Sport Palace and there were many, many more that I haven't mentioned for various reasons. Some might call this place a Den of Iniquity but to all of us, it was an electrifying place where we would learn to hone our skills at gambling.

You either suffered and learned or you became a regular sucker for all of the locals to feed off of. Yes, it sounds a little harsh and it was. It is the way things were at the Sport Palace. Old man Pete would boil the finest seafood that you could find ANYWHERE. It was really that good and I mean everything he cooked. Old man Pete didn't talk much and he didn't gamble but he could cook some of the best tasting seafood you have ever eaten. Back then, the owners Louie Knott and Earl Heisler purchase true Number 1 male crabs to boil. These were humongous-sized crabs with succulent, white meat that is difficult if not impossible to find today. The prices were always reasonable; after all the members of this community came from all walks of life and above all, they were a seasoned bunch themselves, always wary of a good deal and a bad deal. Every Friday, people would start coming in around noon with their paychecks. Earl Heisler would cash their checks "for a price", have food for them to eat and cash for them to gamble with. Often, some of the Sport Palace regulars would stay the entire weekend without leaving, eating, drinking and most importantly, "GAMBLING. Sometimes Lady Luck would smile on them and sometimes she just gives a slap in the face and sends them home broke and needing to work another week just to do it all over again the following week. It really was this way. There weren't any casinos back then. The illegal casinos had already been closed for decades and the illegal gambling and sports betting were done behind closed doors most of the time. Louisiana has always had some horse racing which a lot of the regulars still went to but for the most part, the money circled inside of the pool room. There was ALWAYS action available and you didn't have to go looking for it because if you had cash, the action would come looking for you.

It didn't matter who you were, what academic credentials you possessed or what kind of car you drove or what part of town you were from. It didn't matter if your skin was black, brown, yellow or white. What mattered was "Would you gamble?" If you didn't gamble, you had to keep your mouth shut and watch the show. The gamblers didn't tolerate non-gamblers queering their action with small talk or knocking another player's action. The gambling was taken quite seriously by all who walked through those doors. For some of us, it was just a hobby and for others it was their life line. Veiled threats and sometimes pointed threats were common place, while the physical beatings were talked about in revered tones, by those looking over their shoulders. What else could you expect from such a Den of Iniquity? This day was a day much like any other day at the Sport Palace. The room was filled with gamblers with different amounts of money in their pockets and disparate portions of talent for the venue of the day.

Pool was the most respected form of gambling; at least it was for me. I had particular disdain for the card sharks that could and would manipulate and even mark the cards to cheat the unwary, but oh the pool players……. While it wasn’t particularly hard to hide your knowledge and skill of pool, it was out there for you to see. No sleight of hand business going on with the pool playing. You either recognized what was happening right before your eyes or you were one of the fish. I was young, full of spit and vinegar, sharpening my skills at pool and gambling by watching the seasoned veterans as they plied their trade. We had people who made their living just playing pool frequenting the Sport Palace on a regular basis. That’s right, some of these people never had a job or if they did, it was just to tide them over until they got pumped back up with some dough. People like New York Blackie and Ernie Sellers took plenty coup against the inexperienced players. There were players like Lenny Catonnio, Al Werlein who played against any of the visiting pool players and won their fair share against the world’s best pool players. We had dozens of players who could play with just about anybody in the world. This bunch was a highly skilled and highly seasoned group of pool players and it looked like they feared no one. The tables were full as usual, smoke filled the air but you could still smell the sweet smell of fresh boiled seafood that overpowered the smoke and any other noxious odors that might permeate the air. While a few of our denizen wore Brooks Brother suits, some wore the same clothes day after day. After all, how could you make any money if you were stuck at home?

There was one pool table that was empty of balls and people. It was the primary money table for which big matches were played on. The door opened and like all pool room gamblers do, eyes flashed toward the door to see who was coming through. You never knew if it might one of your own personal “customers”. As soon as the man stepped through the door, his persona was like no other man I had ever seen. I stand 5’10 ½” tall and while that isn’t extremely tall, it’s not short either. This man had to duck his head as we went through the side doors. He was wearing a top hat of sorts, not quite a Derby hat but it could have been described as a Derby type hat. It stood high up on his head which was supported by some of the longest legs I had ever seen on a pool player. He was tall but not gaunt and had a grave look about himself. This man had arms that matched his long legs, far longer than most men. His long coat stretched far down past his waist making him look even taller. He looked like he was 6’6” tall but was probably about 6’4” tall. Under one arm, he carried an inexpensive cue case that was barely big enough to carry one cue stick with two shafts at the most. Under the other arm, he carried a brown paper bag, like the ones you used to get when you bought groceries from the store. These days you are far more likely to get one of those cheap plastic grocery bags than you were to get one of those heavy-duty brown paper bags, although a few stores still provide them. The volume of the humming chatter in the room was immediately reduced as heads turned toward this formidable figure of a man. He walked into the room with only a few steps with his long legs. He quietly set his cue case on the vacant table, took off his hat and placed it next to the case. By this time, everyone in the place had their eyes on him. A slow buzz of noise started migrating around the room.

Apparently, some of the locals knew who he was but I sure didn’t. His size and style of dress caught my attention. There weren’t many pool players that wore a top hat like the one that sat on the empty pool table. The big man’s eyes swept and darted across the pool room as he removed the large brown paper bag from underneath his arm. No doubt, this man was a cautious man in spite of this brazen act he was about to commit. The bag had the top folded over a few times, making the paper bag seem like it was about12” tall. The bag was about as wide as the space between two diamonds on a pool table which measures 12.5 inches in width. The bag’s depth was about 7”. It had no writing on it, just a brown paper bag which he seemed very careful about holding upright. I was about ready for him to loosen a pack of rats on us or something because I noticed that not one single person approached this man, who was by himself. Sure, he was a big guy but everyone was welcomed at the Sport Palace, especially if you had “CASH”. My eyes were glued to the bag as soon as he removed it from under his arm. I knew he didn’t have a gallon of milk and a box of cookies in that bag but couldn’t figure for the life of me what it contained. This guy wasn’t fat but he wasn’t gaunt looking either. He was just a big guy with a serious looking face and no one said anything to him.

I could feel the electricity in the air and I knew something big was happening, I just didn’t know what. The rest of the pool room had practically come to a complete halt and when the filled pool room was almost completely silent, the big man, deftly unrolled the bag’s top folds and turned it upside down. Out rolled a couple of dozen rolls of money, all with rubber bands around them, some were rolls of fives, tens, twenties and hundreds. I saw no fifty dollar bills which many gamblers consider bad luck. Each of the rolls looked to be about 2-3 inches in diameter and there were lots of them as they lay on top of each other in the large pile on the pool table. My heart raced as if I were witnessing some special approaching climax. The money, the man, the atmosphere in the pool room; it was almost too much to bear. I scarcely even looked at the rest of the people in the pool room as my eyes were glued to that pile of money.

I was then reminded of the song by Neil Diamond, “Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show” where he sings, • ♫ Room gets suddenly still and when you'd almost bet you could hear yourself sweat he walks in • Eyes black as coal and when he lifts his face • Every ear in the place is on him • Startin' soft and slow like a small earthquake • And when he lets go half the valley shakes. ♫ Except that he doesn’t start soft and slow like Brother Love. Instead, he looks out at the pool room with his piercing eyes, glaring and daring with each squint, bellowing, “WHO WANTS TO PLAY FOR ALL OF THIS OR PART OF THIS?” The big man quipped a new line as he looked at each and every person in the room. Sometimes he would repeat a line for effect.

He looked directly at me, looking deep into my eyes and I was transfixed and unable to speak. He was looking like he could see right inside of my mind and it scared me. I think I must have been thinking that he knew I wasn’t a “real gambler” and that I might be an available fish for him to feed off of. But I was just as stunned when he turned to every single person in the pool room, looking as hawkish as a man can look, barking with his carrot and stick routine. (The Carrot and Stick Approach (also "carrot or stick approach") is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. It is named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it. The mule would move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, while also moving away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of pain, thus drawing the cart.) The only trouble was, I soon realized that the money was the carrot for us and his pool stick was the thing that he would use to brutalize us. I realized this because as he looked at each person around the entire pool room and barked at them, they would all cower just as I had, bending to this Alpha male’s dominance. I had grown to revere my local pool champions who didn’t hesitate to bet hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Hell, they talked about massive scores they had made in their lifetime and I just knew one of them was going to take up the challenge from this stranger. A few of the Sport Palace veterans had already taken a spot far away from this man and I knew something was special about him.

I waited still, hoping against hope that one of our stalwarts would take up this challenge but each person bowed their eyes when he proffered his suggestion for them to play for any or all of it (referring to the cash). That day was the day when I realized remembered what had happened to the wizard when the curtain had been drawn back in the Wizard of Oz and had now happened to the invincible gamblers of the Sport Palace. From that day on, I viewed most gamblers in an entirely new light. I glanced again at the large pile of money as I had never seen so much money in one place at one time. My upbringing said you keep your cash in the bank, not on your person but here was this stranger, by himself in a city that wasn’t always nice to strangers, displaying this huge amount of cash and daring anyone to try and take a piece of it. My heart started to slow and a somber resolute came over me as I started to realize that my peers that I had held in such high regard were just pretend gamblers just like me. Before me stood a giant of a man who offered to play for all or part of this money and not one person in this seasoned den of thieves was brave enough to even try for a piece of this dough. The pedestal which I had placed these local, hardened gambling veterans on was now toppled over. I would never look at them the same. There was a new, big dog in town and that is how I came to meet the most feared road player I ever saw, Mr. U.J. Puckett. To learn a little more about this man who instilled such fear into all of us that day you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._J._Puckett. Later on, when he was finished his verbal shellacking of us, he opened his small and simple cue case and began to hit a few balls. It wasn’t long before I began to realize what the other seasoned gamblers already knew. His stroke was long, smooth and rhythmic and the cue ball danced fanciful jigs as if it knew that he was the true master. No one played him that day and I never saw him again until I saw a youtube video of him that Harry Reasoner (60 minutes fame) had made. Part 2: My perverted innocence of misplaced respect for our seasoned gamblers had been given a measured dose of medicine. Now, I knew that in every gambler,lays another lie and just around the corner; a bigger and more ferocious junkyard dog is growling and snapping his teeth; looking forward to the next encounter to savage those of his own kind.