An old coot got in trouble in “River City.”
by the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler
Pool replaced baseball as my favorite pastime when I left West
Junior High and entered Central High School. My friend, Woody, and I first discovered
the game when we joined the YMCA as first graders. We waited for our ride home
in the Y’s poolroom every Saturday after swim class. We thought the objective
of the game was to hit the balls as hard as possible. Some ended up in the
leather pockets at the corners of the table, but most flew over the rail and
landed on the floor. Our favorite game found us at opposite ends of the table,
rolling balls toward each other as fast as we could. We strived to get all
sixteen balls moving at the same time and at great speed. In my first year of
high school I discovered the real game of pool: eight ball, six ball, nine
ball, rotation and straight pool. My appetite was whetted at the Lottis Pool
Hall on Main Street by the bridge. It was a teen hangout located just a short
hop from Binghamton Central High. It was a place I stumbled upon by following
the lunch crowd after I was turned away from the overcrowded, Baird’s Bakery,
which served as a secondary school cafeteria and let students crowd in and eat their
bag lunches if they purchased a beverage or a bakery product. It was so crowded,
if someone fainted, they’d never hit the floor.
The pool hall soon became a second home. It cost a penny-a-minute
to shoot straight pool, but most of us played eight ball or rotation for ten
cents a game. That gave the owners a better rate of return since a typical
match lasted less than five minutes. The Lottis brothers racked balls,
collected dimes and gave pointers on the game. They tried to teach us to shoot
softer, so the cue ball would go where we aimed it and to put spin on it to
avoid a scratch (knocking it into a pocket). They did it to rid us of the
techniques we’d developed on the tables at the YMCA and to prevent us from ripping
the felt covering or wrecking the side cushions. I only regretted using the
pool hall as a lunch room the day a classmate was struck with a grand mall
seizure in the middle of an eight-ball game. He dropped to the floor, spasms
racking his body. It scared the hell out of us. One kid threw up. Then another.
Soon, the floor was awash in vomit and kids were slipping and sliding as they
raced for the door, tossing their sack lunches into the trash barrel by the
door.
I eventually stopped by the pool hall every day on the way home
from school too. Then, I started going there instead of religious instructions
at Saint Patrick’s, on Wednesday afternoons, when the school let us leave early
for that purpose. The pool hall was deserted at that time in the day, so the
Lottis brothers, with time to kill, taught us the fine points of “six ball” and
“nine ball,” the two primary "money games" of the day. Eventually, I was
caught skipping religious class. The school principal, Mister Hamlin, was upset
that I skipped the class, but downright incensed that I spent my "release
time" in a pool hall. I swear he was going to break out in a song from the
hit musical, The Music Man - "Ya got trouble - right here in River City,
it rhymes with "T" and starts with "P" ..... and stands for
POOL." He sentenced me to after school suspension and then let me choose
how I would settle things with the "Church." I could continue to be
released from school every Wednesday for religious instruction if I confessed
my truancy to the nun running the program, or I could discontinue the sessions
by bringing him a note from my parents. The choice was clear. I'd rather face
my mother with my crime than a surly nun with a well-worn, knuckle-rapping
ruler so I dropped out of religious instruction. It turned out to be another
stupid decision on my part. I chocked too often when shooting at the “money”
ball. Minnesota Fats would have loved to play me.
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