Game Time
Previously published by Mainely Agriculture, Spring 2022
I can still see my father with a pool cue in his hand. He holds it upright at his side, its rubber bumper pressed to the floor. A Chesterfield smolders between the fingers of his other hand. He’s waiting for his turn to shoot. More than that: he’s watching me play, watching me learn. The game of billiards is probably the thing we shared most often during our time together. I grew up with a pool table in our living room. But it’s those quiet afternoons at The Long Branch I remember best.
Dad taught me to play pool before I could see over the table. I learned while standing on an empty Budweiser case turned upside-down. He provided helpful hints, telling me which ball to shoot first, how hard or soft to strike the cue ball, and where to strike the object ball to cut it at the proper angle. He taught me bank shots by placing his index finger on the rail and saying, “hit her right about here.” He referred to billiard balls as “she,” and “her,” the way people refer to boats. Dad possessed his own unique billiards vernacular. He called striped balls “the big ones,” and the solid balls, “the little ones.” Leaving yourself without a follow-up shot meant that you had “stitched yourself,” and his announcement of “game time” meant you were about to lose. Sometimes, he said things I did not understand, such as the idea that shooting pool was all geometry. Geometry, he said, was about angles, and I would learn about it in school. He told me that when he studied geometry, he once solved a problem for the class by sketching a theoretical bank shot on the chalkboard.
Dad played pool very well, having honed his skills as a youth while hanging out at the local pool hall during the 1920s. He played with finesse and was a master of the bank shot. Most impressive, though, is that he played for position—that is, he knew just how to make each shot so the cue ball would line up perfectly for his next shot. The game offered competition and camaraderie, two things he greatly enjoyed, and I suspect he viewed playing opportunities as a major benefit of owning a bar. On slow afternoons, he often played against customers, and if his opponent wished to wager some cash, even better. During the early 1960s, he and his friend Teddy, a local forester, regularly bet fifty dollars per game. That was a lot of money for the time. It’s still a lot of money for Greenville.
When Dad and I played, he allowed himself to take only one shot at a time—a voluntary handicap meant to give me a fighting chance. This ended abruptly one day when, at age six, I beat him with a bank shot on the eight ball. I’d driven the cue ball the entire length of the table where it ricocheted at a steep angle and rolled back seven feet to gently nudge the eight along the last foot of rail and into the pocket. Mind you, this was no accident. I’d called the shot. Dad knew I’d made it as soon as he saw the cue ball’s trajectory. “Well I’ll be go to hell!” he exclaimed. The eight was still rolling to its resting spot inside the table when he looked at me with one eyebrow raised in mock incredulity. Then a big grin spread across his face and he chuckled. “I guess it’s time to end that ‘one shot’ rule.”
In my mind’s eye, he moves around the table, calling his shots with a point of his cue, then gazing down the cue’s shaft with concentration and determination deep as the blue of his eyes. He always tried his best, but was never a sore loser, even when playing for money. He sometimes muttered an “aww, shit,” upon missing a shot, but never anything more. Winning meant nothing to him compared to the thrill of competition. He just loved to play, and he never beat himself up or put himself down when he lost. This is surely what he wished for me when I struggled with my own failures. When I shot too quickly, he would say, “Take your time, dear.” When I grumbled at a missed shot, he would gently tell me to be patient with myself. Only when I struck the cue ball out of anger would he speak sternly. “You didn’t hit it hard enough,” he’d say. He never had to explain what he meant. And yet, I kept getting angry. At myself, always. Not every game. Maybe not even one in three, or one in five. But often enough that I can still close my eyes and hear him say, “You didn’t hit it hard enough.”
What I remember most is his left hand, the way he curled his index finger around the cue, with his thumb and other fingers fanning out across the felt. Whenever he shot, I always watched that hand. As a boy, I could not articulate it, but in that hand I saw strength, and elegance, and supreme confidence. My dad looked as in-charge with a pool cue as Ted Williams looked with a bat. To this day, whenever I encounter someone playing pool, I watch the person’s lead hand. It tells me all I need to know about their knowledge of the game, their comfort, their confidence. Or their lack of all three. I have always held a pool cue in my father’s fashion. But for too many years of my life, I would stare down my cue’s length to my own hand and know that I was faking everything it meant.
