N & N Pool Hall- The Only Time I Was Ever Staked By A Stranger.
This was the first pool hall I ever hung out in. I was just 17 years of age, and I would take a city bus from the suburbs in Metairie, Louisiana into New Orleans. There would be one city bus transfer, but the entire ride took no more than 45 minutes. It was located at Iberville and Carrolton Avenue and was owned by a rough old guy named Nick. The location is now occupied by a bar called Wit’s End at 141N. Carrollton Avenue. His daughters worked there but I only remember one of their names because “Patsy” was there most often when I would arrive on a Friday night. I would often stay until midnight or later if they stayed open, then take the city bus back home. In another story, I shared that I didn’t like to have people stake me in pool games but back then my mom would give me a couple of dollars to see if I could turn it into a few dollars and most nights I did. When I won, I always paid her back. She like that. Lol.
N & N pool hall was a bare-bones kind of pool room with old 8-foot Brunswick tables which was common for a lot of pool rooms back in 1967. The bar was in the front part of the building and the pool room was in the back, completely separated, so they would let a few of us delinquents sneak in to play pool.
Like most young pool enthusiasts, I had trouble running a rack of 9 ball. One of the older guys that hung out there was a guy nicknamed “Moose” and he was at least a couple of years older than me so he had been playing pool longer than I had and was slightly better than me. If you were handicapping the match, you could say he could give me the Wild 8 Ball playing 9 Ball and it would be a tough game for both of us.
Now the way this story raised itself in my head is quite strange. Last night at exactly 1:30 a.m I woke after dreaming about this one particular evening I spent at N & N Pool Hall. Why it took almost 60 years for me to think about that evening and write about it is anyone’s guess. It just popped up into one of my many dreams and I guess you could call this one was a nightmare.
I learned early on who to mess with and who not to mess with. Moose had an early start on me as far as playing pool was concerned and I never gambled with him, that is until that evening. Now, you should also know that at the time, I did not know what a stake horse was and for those of you who still don’t; well a stake horse is someone who puts up money for someone else to gamble with. The stake horse will often determine the game, the stakes that will be played for. The stake horse usually is the real gambler, since the pool player who is getting staked, usually has no money invested in the game. If the stake horse’s player wins, the stake horse will usually reward the player with 25-50% of the net winnings. At that time, I had no idea of whether I would get a penny if I won.
That evening a guy, walks up to me and says, “Do you know that guy?”, pointing to moose across the room. I answered that I did now of him but not real well. The stranger says I want you to play him for money. I promptly told him I didn’t have any money to gamble with Moose and that Moose was a little better at pool than I was. The stranger then told me that he didn’t care if Moose was a little better than me and he also didn’t care that I didn’t have any money. Now to the best of my recollection, this stranger didn’t know Moose well, if at all and he sure didn’t know me.
The stranger now, from my memories, now kind of reminds me of another guy from the pool world, a guy we called Fred the Beard. Fred the Beard was an eccentric fellow who inherited millions of dollars from his mother as I recall and spent an enormous amount of that inheritance once video poker machines came to New Orleans. This Fred the Beard is not the famous bank pool player Freddie Bentevegna. New Orleans’s Fred the Beard’s real name was Fred Backlund and was quite eccentric. He was unique and a character you wouldn’t soon forget. Fred went to Tulane University back in the middle 60’s with Spike Wilds and Billy Wells. Spike and Billy were accomplished players several years senior to me. Spike was an attorney and worked for the U.S. Customs. Billy Wells was a medical doctor and he and I only crossed paths a few times. I still keep in touch with Spike but Billy has since passed on as has Fred the Beard.
Back to Moose and me. Moose kind of slinked up to me and asked if I wanted to play some 9 ball, apparently because the stranger had already told him that I would play. Well, in the beginning of my journey into pool, I would regularly play for a quarter a game and up to a dollar per game with my own money. Never had anyone ever asked to stake me, as I could barely run a few balls. The stranger took care of the bet with Moose and I realized right away that it wasn’t for a dollar or two a game. As the evening wore on, the bet kept getting higher and higher. The stranger is watching intently as I continue to barely lose more than I was winning. Moose slinks back up to me and whispers, “Why you playing so hard?”. I didn’t have a response for him, but I just bared down even harder, but his knowledge of 9 ball and his skills were just too much for my game, but when I told the stranger again, that Moose was just a little better than me, the stranger urged me on and said not to worry. After what seemed like an eternity, the stranger finally pulled up and Moose and I quit the game. I was depressed that I couldn’t win for the stranger and just said that I was sorry for losing his money. He didn’t seem that upset, and I always wondered why he picked me to play Moose. I don’t think I ever saw that stranger again unless it was indeed Fred the Beard. (If the stranger was indeed Fred the Beard, I guess he learned his lesson because in the later years, I never heard Fred actually staking any of the local pool players, however, he had a serious crush on video poker.
Many years went by, maybe a couple of decades, and one day at Buffalos in Chalmette on Paris Road, before Hurricane Katrina, I saw none other than Moose at the bar. Moose was a fireman with the New Orleans Fire Department and his real name was Bryan Broussard as I recall. He and I talked a little about that day many years ago and he said that he had won enough money to buy a brand-new car. I forgot the model he said but when I inquired if he was joking although I knew the stranger was betting a lot of money on me, he assured me he was not joking and that he used that money to buy a new car.
And for those of you who might have thought he gave me a walking stick (a sum of money often given to the loser, by the winner, to thank him for the action and to make sure that he wasn’t broke the next day, the answer is no. I did ask Moose if he wanted to play some, but he told me he no longer played pool and I guess that was for the best. I have always been reluctant to have anyone stake me and still to this day, I do not like it when people want to stake me against others, so I bet my own money and gamble as a hobby at pool. It is a hell of a lot easier and satisfying to just work a steady job and make that guaranteed money. I always wondered why some players still try to depend on making a living by gambling at pool?
JoeyA 032924 National Vietnam Veterans Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment