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Friday, May 30, 2008
Gar, the Iron Man
Following is the complete short story I wrote as it appeared on Amazon/shortstories.com and cost $.59 to read. I'm releasing it to the pool public for nix. Anyone that feels guilty about reading it for free can still log on to Amazon.com and pay the $.59
Gar, The Iron Man
by Freddy the Beard Bentivegna
Once upon a time in Chicago, there lived a fabulous character named Milborn Gar Frazier, AKA "Gar, The Iron Man." He was born poor, a sharecropper's son from South Carolina. Despite being uneducated, with few natural talents, he was gifted with an indomitable heart and the endurance of a Kenyan marathon runner. Mind-boggling endurance was probably his long suit. No one could outlast him and no human has ever stayed awake for longer periods of time. Week long gambling sessions were the norm; and in the 70’s, Gar probably set the world's record when he stayed awake for twenty-one days and nights playing pool and cards. The record did come with a proviso because he downed handfuls of speed pills to set it. Even so, a three week stay-up-stretch is still pretty crispy. He later nearly broke his own record in the 80's at my place, a twenty-four hour action spot called The North Shore Billiard Club of Chicago. He began playing pool on Jan. 1st ( the place was closed for New Year's Eve), and continued playing nonstop until Jan.14th. Gar finally gave out and went home. Once he got home, he only slept about eight hours. Somehow he popped back up and returned to North Shore. He played more pool and pinochle until Jan 21st, and then went home again for the day. To add to an already unbelievable story, he came back once more and finished out the month. In the course of his run, Gar pulled out two of his own teeth with hand pliers and vomited twice into a garbage can. None of those interruptions gave him any real cause for pause. He just spit the blood into a paper cup, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and went back to racking the balls or dealing the cards. Near the end of his marathon, his feet had swollen up so much that we had to cut off the toe part of his shoes with a scissors and turn his shoes into sandals. He also never washed or changed clothes for the full thirty-one days.
Before the North Shore Billiard Club, I had another gambling spot called the 4 B's Club. It was named after the four partners who all had an B in their name. The time was the early 70's. Many famous pool players came through the club. The great One Pocket player, Grady "The Professor" Mathews, spent much time there and loved the joint. Gar would stay in there 7,8,9,10 days at a time playing poker, pool, or staking someone else to do the same. I was a top pool player at that time and he liked to put me in action. He was the only stake horse I ever had who would not let me quit when I had a bad game. He would beg me to keep playing, "Just one more set, one more set. We’ll get him this time," he’d say as I was getting my brains knocked out.
The action in pool, poker, and pinochle went on nonstop. The majority of our clientele was country boys like Gar, southern folk who looked at gambling as a lifestyle. Naturally, a lot of rough and rowdy guys hung out there; but anyone could win all they wanted to and never have a problem. However, money leaving the place at gunpoint was another thing entirely, because we did manage to get stuck up twice --- a very scary experience. In the first robbery, they tied all of us up with baling wire, forced us face down into the floor, and put our coats over our heads. They had to be pretty good heist men too, because everybody in the joint was usually packing themselves. However, the heist-men had shotguns and that trumped our pistols.
The main attraction for these robberies was probably Gar, because he was known to always carry a bankroll. I sort of semi-missed the second heist because I was sleeping on a cot in the back room at the time. The robbers rushed in through the back door and ran right by me. The lights were off in the room and they apparently didn’t see me. I was terrified they would spot me on the way out, so I crawled under the cot and waited them out. I failed to mention that it was a metal fold-up cot, and there was a bar in the middle that I had to squeeze under. The problem was, and thank God they never noticed it, in order to get under the cot, I had to lift it a few inches off the ground. When I finally got under it, the cot was no longer touching the floor, I was supporting it on my back! One of the main targets in the heist, besides Gar, was another hillbilly high-roller named James Justice. James had just bought a five carat diamond ring and he had been showing it off all week. That story somehow must have gotten back to the robbers because during the heist, they began grilling the victims, asking who was it that had the big diamond ring. They had everybody lined up , facing the wall and leaning against their palms. They interrogated Gar to find out if the guy with the big rock was in the joint. You must first understand that Gar and James had been bitter rivals for years. James was propped up, ring hidden, right next to Gar. Gar cursed courageously at the heisters, and bellowed, "Screw you! If I did know, I wouldn’t tell you bastards a goddamned thing!" But as he said that, he moved his hand ever so slightly along the wall and surreptitiously pointed his finger directly at James. James was carefully searched, and the precious gem was discovered and added to the haul. During the robbery they also made everyone drop their pants. Gar asked if he could be excused from that drill because he didn't want everybody to see his shorts, considering he hadn't changed them in about a month. The heist-men sadistically refused his request.
Gar was a unique, unforgettable personality, a tough-old WW II vet. He served the entire length of the war in combat, from Africa to Italy, from 1942 to 1945. He owned a house in the old Uptown area in Chicago. It was definitely not a high-rent district, filled with whores, dopers, and white-trash hillbillies. One night, while walking home from the grocery store in his neighborhood, he was accosted by a huge, ominous-looking mugger with a long knife. The mugger demanded Gar's bankroll, but Gar managed to push him away and then took off running, with the now-angry mugger hot on his heels. Gar had a plan, though. Thinking quickly, he headed toward his car which was parked in front of his house. While on the way, he fumbled his trunk key out of his pocket. Luckily, he reached the car and hurriedly popped open the trunk, dove in, and removed a large hammer. Now, with hammer in determined hand, he defiantly turned and faced his oncoming adversary. His would-be pursuer caught sight of him, skidded in his tracks, did an about-face, and took off running in the opposite direction with Gar now hot on his heels! The avenging Gar cut a formidable figure flying down Wilson Avenue, waving that hammer high above his head. He provided sound incentive for the mugger to keep on keeping on when he shouted at him " Don't trip now, motherfucker, 'cause I'm dead on your ass."
However, there was another side to this man's personality. At heart he was a softie, an easy mark for a touch, and a true friend of the unfortunate. I was in his house once when I noticed he had a barrel of peanuts and a barrel of bird seed in his hallway. "What the hell are these for, Gar," I innocently inquired. "They're for the squirrels and the pigeons, you dumb-ass!" Gar took care of everybody, friend or fowl. Every Christmas Gar would fill up an old supermarket cart with toys, and mosey up and down his street passing out toys to the underprivileged kids on the block. One Christmas he ran into trouble when an old hooker took an attitude with his offer. She refused to send her kids down from her second floor apartment to get the presents. "We don't need no charity from you, you old bastard!,' she ungratefully shouted. Gar persisted, and yelled, "C'mon down and get these toys for yer kids, you goddamn whore!" The lady was unmoved by his generosity and dumped a pan of water out the window on him.
At the age of 70, Gar became diabetic, but he never took decent care of himself, resulting in his right leg having to be cut off at the knee. Typically, he refused all rehab and amputee therapy and counseling, citing that he was on the Anzio beachhead for two months and was plenty familiar with missing limbs. He stayed in the hospital only two days after the operation before he released himself. He went directly to a card game and played poker all night. Gar stopped by the bar I owned for coffee the morning after the game, bemoaning the whole time his bad luck at cards, no mention of his missing leg.
After that, things got worse for Gar. His disdain for diet and treatment caused him to lose his left leg, also at the knee. Next, the thigh of both the right and left leg was sliced off. Finally, he had a stoke that paralyzed his whole left side. All this didn’t seem to slow him a step. Undaunted, he did the only thing he could do. He became a beggar in a wheelchair, and could be seen out working the streets every day. A friend of mine spotted him on a busy corner with a tin cup, begging. The friend playfully asked what would Gar do if he just snatched up the money that was in the beggars cup? Gar had a newspaper in his lap and his hand was under the newspaper. When he pushed the paper aside he was holding a 7" switchblade knife. Gar told my friend, "Go for it!" Needless to say, nobody ever put their fingers in Gar’s cup. Operating with 1/4 of a body, Gar had more "cods" than a squad of US Navy SEALs.
After a successful morning of begging, Gar loved to go to the racetrack and fire his hard-earned package at the horses. He didn’t have a clue about handicapping and he would invariably blow whatever he had garnered on his beg route. Race track touts would surround and barrage him with "hot" tips. He bet on all they would give him. He might be betting on as many as five or six horses in the same race, so his chances of success were nil. In those days the track was not handicap accessible and people had to go up a long ramp to get to the admissions booth. This posed a serious problem for the wheelchair-bound Gar. He eventually solved the dilemma by hiring someone to wheel him around. Gar probably should have used a higher set of employee qualifications, because the guy that wound up pushing him was totally blind! They were a hilarious duo, with Gar cursing and shouting orders at the blind guy, urging him to go faster. Between the two of them, they didn’t have a full contingent of body parts.
Near the end of his life, Gar finally succumbed to the diabetes and passed into a coma. Even brain-dead, Gar hung on and wouldn’t die. If someone wanted him dead, they would just have to kill him. Eventually the hospital had to pull all the plugs, and the old warrior’s heart was finally stopped.
Next is a postscript that doesn't appear on Amazon/shortstory.com:
When Milborn "Gar" Frazier was a young buck back home in South Carolina, he and his first wife Diane were in a bar and had been drinking heavily. They had become very loud and boisterous and were eventually confronted by the bouncer.
Gar's wife and the bouncer got into a heated argument when the bouncer insisted the two leave the premises. Finally, Diane asked the bouncer, "You ever been hit by a woman?" The bouncer, taken aback slightly, said, "Yeah, sure." Then Diane said, "I mean really hard!" Then she proceeded to bash him with a solid right hand that knocked him out colder than a Siberian popsicle!
Gar, The Iron Man
by Freddy the Beard Bentivegna
Once upon a time in Chicago, there lived a fabulous character named Milborn Gar Frazier, AKA "Gar, The Iron Man." He was born poor, a sharecropper's son from South Carolina. Despite being uneducated, with few natural talents, he was gifted with an indomitable heart and the endurance of a Kenyan marathon runner. Mind-boggling endurance was probably his long suit. No one could outlast him and no human has ever stayed awake for longer periods of time. Week long gambling sessions were the norm; and in the 70’s, Gar probably set the world's record when he stayed awake for twenty-one days and nights playing pool and cards. The record did come with a proviso because he downed handfuls of speed pills to set it. Even so, a three week stay-up-stretch is still pretty crispy. He later nearly broke his own record in the 80's at my place, a twenty-four hour action spot called The North Shore Billiard Club of Chicago. He began playing pool on Jan. 1st ( the place was closed for New Year's Eve), and continued playing nonstop until Jan.14th. Gar finally gave out and went home. Once he got home, he only slept about eight hours. Somehow he popped back up and returned to North Shore. He played more pool and pinochle until Jan 21st, and then went home again for the day. To add to an already unbelievable story, he came back once more and finished out the month. In the course of his run, Gar pulled out two of his own teeth with hand pliers and vomited twice into a garbage can. None of those interruptions gave him any real cause for pause. He just spit the blood into a paper cup, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and went back to racking the balls or dealing the cards. Near the end of his marathon, his feet had swollen up so much that we had to cut off the toe part of his shoes with a scissors and turn his shoes into sandals. He also never washed or changed clothes for the full thirty-one days.
Before the North Shore Billiard Club, I had another gambling spot called the 4 B's Club. It was named after the four partners who all had an B in their name. The time was the early 70's. Many famous pool players came through the club. The great One Pocket player, Grady "The Professor" Mathews, spent much time there and loved the joint. Gar would stay in there 7,8,9,10 days at a time playing poker, pool, or staking someone else to do the same. I was a top pool player at that time and he liked to put me in action. He was the only stake horse I ever had who would not let me quit when I had a bad game. He would beg me to keep playing, "Just one more set, one more set. We’ll get him this time," he’d say as I was getting my brains knocked out.
The action in pool, poker, and pinochle went on nonstop. The majority of our clientele was country boys like Gar, southern folk who looked at gambling as a lifestyle. Naturally, a lot of rough and rowdy guys hung out there; but anyone could win all they wanted to and never have a problem. However, money leaving the place at gunpoint was another thing entirely, because we did manage to get stuck up twice --- a very scary experience. In the first robbery, they tied all of us up with baling wire, forced us face down into the floor, and put our coats over our heads. They had to be pretty good heist men too, because everybody in the joint was usually packing themselves. However, the heist-men had shotguns and that trumped our pistols.
The main attraction for these robberies was probably Gar, because he was known to always carry a bankroll. I sort of semi-missed the second heist because I was sleeping on a cot in the back room at the time. The robbers rushed in through the back door and ran right by me. The lights were off in the room and they apparently didn’t see me. I was terrified they would spot me on the way out, so I crawled under the cot and waited them out. I failed to mention that it was a metal fold-up cot, and there was a bar in the middle that I had to squeeze under. The problem was, and thank God they never noticed it, in order to get under the cot, I had to lift it a few inches off the ground. When I finally got under it, the cot was no longer touching the floor, I was supporting it on my back! One of the main targets in the heist, besides Gar, was another hillbilly high-roller named James Justice. James had just bought a five carat diamond ring and he had been showing it off all week. That story somehow must have gotten back to the robbers because during the heist, they began grilling the victims, asking who was it that had the big diamond ring. They had everybody lined up , facing the wall and leaning against their palms. They interrogated Gar to find out if the guy with the big rock was in the joint. You must first understand that Gar and James had been bitter rivals for years. James was propped up, ring hidden, right next to Gar. Gar cursed courageously at the heisters, and bellowed, "Screw you! If I did know, I wouldn’t tell you bastards a goddamned thing!" But as he said that, he moved his hand ever so slightly along the wall and surreptitiously pointed his finger directly at James. James was carefully searched, and the precious gem was discovered and added to the haul. During the robbery they also made everyone drop their pants. Gar asked if he could be excused from that drill because he didn't want everybody to see his shorts, considering he hadn't changed them in about a month. The heist-men sadistically refused his request.
Gar was a unique, unforgettable personality, a tough-old WW II vet. He served the entire length of the war in combat, from Africa to Italy, from 1942 to 1945. He owned a house in the old Uptown area in Chicago. It was definitely not a high-rent district, filled with whores, dopers, and white-trash hillbillies. One night, while walking home from the grocery store in his neighborhood, he was accosted by a huge, ominous-looking mugger with a long knife. The mugger demanded Gar's bankroll, but Gar managed to push him away and then took off running, with the now-angry mugger hot on his heels. Gar had a plan, though. Thinking quickly, he headed toward his car which was parked in front of his house. While on the way, he fumbled his trunk key out of his pocket. Luckily, he reached the car and hurriedly popped open the trunk, dove in, and removed a large hammer. Now, with hammer in determined hand, he defiantly turned and faced his oncoming adversary. His would-be pursuer caught sight of him, skidded in his tracks, did an about-face, and took off running in the opposite direction with Gar now hot on his heels! The avenging Gar cut a formidable figure flying down Wilson Avenue, waving that hammer high above his head. He provided sound incentive for the mugger to keep on keeping on when he shouted at him " Don't trip now, motherfucker, 'cause I'm dead on your ass."
However, there was another side to this man's personality. At heart he was a softie, an easy mark for a touch, and a true friend of the unfortunate. I was in his house once when I noticed he had a barrel of peanuts and a barrel of bird seed in his hallway. "What the hell are these for, Gar," I innocently inquired. "They're for the squirrels and the pigeons, you dumb-ass!" Gar took care of everybody, friend or fowl. Every Christmas Gar would fill up an old supermarket cart with toys, and mosey up and down his street passing out toys to the underprivileged kids on the block. One Christmas he ran into trouble when an old hooker took an attitude with his offer. She refused to send her kids down from her second floor apartment to get the presents. "We don't need no charity from you, you old bastard!,' she ungratefully shouted. Gar persisted, and yelled, "C'mon down and get these toys for yer kids, you goddamn whore!" The lady was unmoved by his generosity and dumped a pan of water out the window on him.
At the age of 70, Gar became diabetic, but he never took decent care of himself, resulting in his right leg having to be cut off at the knee. Typically, he refused all rehab and amputee therapy and counseling, citing that he was on the Anzio beachhead for two months and was plenty familiar with missing limbs. He stayed in the hospital only two days after the operation before he released himself. He went directly to a card game and played poker all night. Gar stopped by the bar I owned for coffee the morning after the game, bemoaning the whole time his bad luck at cards, no mention of his missing leg.
After that, things got worse for Gar. His disdain for diet and treatment caused him to lose his left leg, also at the knee. Next, the thigh of both the right and left leg was sliced off. Finally, he had a stoke that paralyzed his whole left side. All this didn’t seem to slow him a step. Undaunted, he did the only thing he could do. He became a beggar in a wheelchair, and could be seen out working the streets every day. A friend of mine spotted him on a busy corner with a tin cup, begging. The friend playfully asked what would Gar do if he just snatched up the money that was in the beggars cup? Gar had a newspaper in his lap and his hand was under the newspaper. When he pushed the paper aside he was holding a 7" switchblade knife. Gar told my friend, "Go for it!" Needless to say, nobody ever put their fingers in Gar’s cup. Operating with 1/4 of a body, Gar had more "cods" than a squad of US Navy SEALs.
After a successful morning of begging, Gar loved to go to the racetrack and fire his hard-earned package at the horses. He didn’t have a clue about handicapping and he would invariably blow whatever he had garnered on his beg route. Race track touts would surround and barrage him with "hot" tips. He bet on all they would give him. He might be betting on as many as five or six horses in the same race, so his chances of success were nil. In those days the track was not handicap accessible and people had to go up a long ramp to get to the admissions booth. This posed a serious problem for the wheelchair-bound Gar. He eventually solved the dilemma by hiring someone to wheel him around. Gar probably should have used a higher set of employee qualifications, because the guy that wound up pushing him was totally blind! They were a hilarious duo, with Gar cursing and shouting orders at the blind guy, urging him to go faster. Between the two of them, they didn’t have a full contingent of body parts.
Near the end of his life, Gar finally succumbed to the diabetes and passed into a coma. Even brain-dead, Gar hung on and wouldn’t die. If someone wanted him dead, they would just have to kill him. Eventually the hospital had to pull all the plugs, and the old warrior’s heart was finally stopped.
Next is a postscript that doesn't appear on Amazon/shortstory.com:
When Milborn "Gar" Frazier was a young buck back home in South Carolina, he and his first wife Diane were in a bar and had been drinking heavily. They had become very loud and boisterous and were eventually confronted by the bouncer.
Gar's wife and the bouncer got into a heated argument when the bouncer insisted the two leave the premises. Finally, Diane asked the bouncer, "You ever been hit by a woman?" The bouncer, taken aback slightly, said, "Yeah, sure." Then Diane said, "I mean really hard!" Then she proceeded to bash him with a solid right hand that knocked him out colder than a Siberian popsicle!
Grady Mathews One Pocket DVDs
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Grady Mathews is a legendary gambler, professional pool player, and a four-time World One Pocket Champion. In 2004, he was the first player to be inducted into the One Pocket Hall of Fame. He has authored two books, promoted nineteen tournaments and produced eleven instructional videos. He has commentated on ESPN and The Billiard Channel, and has been a contributing writer to Billiards Digest and The National Billiard News. He is also the creator of the Legends of One Pocket tournament series.
All 3 remastered OnePocket DVDs are available for purchase for $29.95 ea. Http://www.bankingwiththebeard.com/grady.html/
"Titanic Tales" part 1
By San Jose Dick Mc Morran
In the 60s, wherever the action pool room in Dallas was at that time, either the Cotton Bowling Palace or Times Square, Alvin C. Thomas, AKA "Titanic" Thompson would hold court almost daily. Ti, already in his 70s, could still wield a mean golf club and a meaner deck of cards. His many other games of chance and trickery were legendary and all the young "scuffs" (yours truly included) would hang on Ti's every word when we could get him to open up about some of his past exploits.
I had the privilege of caddying (well, driving the cart anyway) for him, a few times, in his frequent high stakes golf match-ups. A high rolling gambler once staked a highly regarded lady pro to give Ti three strokes a side, in a $2000 nassau. I was out of town when the actual event took place. We did speak by phone the night before, and he assured me that there was, quote; "No "mop-squeezer" in the world that could give him three-a-side!" unquote.
He had to have been over 70 at the time, but sure enough, he won both sides and the back side press, for a cool $8000. He had her in tears. There was no re-match.
Male chauvinism was alive and well in those days. Ti was lucky there were very few, highly skilled, lady pool player's back then, or he may have let his male ego get him in trouble. That goes for me too.
The game of pool was one of the few things that Ti never quite mastered. His usual con and gamesmanship seemed to leave him when he matched up at his favorite game, One pocket. He took some brutal, large dollar beatings at the hands of "New York Fats" and Hubert Cokes (to name a few), when One pocket was young, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Eventually, Cokes and he became quite good pals, and they often hit the road together. Talk about "double trouble."
Ti was a solid "B" player, and not completely helpless at pool, but as he began to realize his limitations, he zeroed in on a seldom played game and succeeded in pushing it well beyond his skill level at ordinary pool. He became one of the best three rail kickers I have ever seen. Playing either off the spot, or making the middle ball in a 15 ball rack, Ti could beat players far more advanced than him at the other pool games. He also knew exactly how many shots he could safely bet on. Using his natural gift of gab, he caught many players and side bettors alike in his little "three rail kick-in" trap. In fact, he became so proficient at the game, that he could beat a lot of shortstops at it by throwing the ball with his bare hand, instead of using a cue stick.
Ti, as everyone called him, loved the game of One pocket. He would often bet on me (or stake me) even when I had the worst of it. Sometimes, just the intimidation factor, of such a legendary gambler would be just enough to throw my opponent off, and turn a bad game into a winner. Ti appreciated my knowledge of the game and would often grab a set of balls and challenge me to a horrible match-up, for him, just to get some cheap lessons. We would bet it up a little at times, but we would keep adjusting the game so no one got hurt bad. I'd often be gone for extended periods, and when I'd return, I can still see his "cat eating" grin, when he'd greet me with, "Dick, you won't believe how much better I'm playing One pocket now. Get the balls, I'll play you some 8 to 6, and kick your young Irish ass."
We became quite good friends in those years. I looked up to him and always felt very fortunate to have him for a mentor. Sure do wish I would have absorbed more. His son Tommy, from a long forgotten marriage, re-surfaced around that time and we became close too. Tommy was a real chip off the old block. He lacked his father's gift of gab, (just try and follow that act) but he had learned his way around a deck of cards as good, if not better, than Ti himself. Ti sent Tommy up to Evansville, for further training in the "Daddy Warbuck's" school of gambling, and, just like he had done with Ti decades earlier, Mr. Cokes and Tommy took off some high $$$ scores.
Partner's One pocket was quite popular in those days and presented a virtual kaleidoscope of potential ways to match up a game. A and C players against two B players, A and D players against B and C players, etc., and coaching, either allowed or not allowed, made for some really spirited pre-game negotiations. Most regular players knew how to match up head-to-head, but partner's opened up a whole new ball game. Many times neither team would know for sure who had the best of it until it was too late. For the most part, it was pure gambling. The high rolling gambler's and oil men loved partnering up with the top players. They'd bet it up, big time.
Enter into this equation a man by the name of Red Box. Red owned one of the greatest action pool rooms ever, the Guys and Dolls in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was a good, smart gambler, and he and Ti were always trying to "one up" each other. Red was a little bit like Ti, in that he would have sacrificed a major body organ to play top notch One pocket. Ti, as shrewd a gambler as he was, thought he played about even with Red, but I could clearly see that Red had the best of it by at least ball, if not two.
Every month or so, a typical conversation between Ti and me would go something like this; "Hey Dick, Red called today and he said that Peter Rabbit, or Buddy Hall or Earl Heisler was in town, and they will give us 8-7 playing partners. I think we got the nuts at that, don't you?" He would elaborate on his reasoning by saying, "You play as well or better than Red's partner (whoever that might be) and Red and I are pretty even, aren't we?
Ti and I had played partners with some of the local Dallas players with varying results. The big differential was usually whether I was allowed to coach him during the games. We had worked out an elaborate set of signals for the games where coaching was not allowed, but there really wasn't an effective way to tell him where I wanted his cue ball to end up. The signals were pretty much limited to the specific ball I wanted him to shoot, and he was mostly on his own after that. However, at some point Red snapped to that and I had to look away from Ti when he was at the table (in the "no coaching match-ups). In addition, I could never convince him that he was at least a ball shy of Red's One pocket game. There was never a problem with the money. Ti always had plenty of cash and if I didn't, he was willing to bankroll any partner's play we made. I don't have to tell you how persuasive he could be when he felt like playing.
Usually, our matches were made before we left for the 200 mile drive to Shreveport. Ti was often a little lax in his demand for me to be allowed to coach him, because I think, in his mind he thought he knew all there was to know about the game. Many times we would get off loser at the partner's game, and I would have to match up a tough heads- up game to try and recover our losses. Red Box was a good, smart gambler, but he loved action and fortunately, although a lot of money changed hands between us, no one got hurt too bad in those good old days. Ti, and Red sure loved their one-hole.
Ti eventually realized that he was no "Eddie Taylor" at pool. He, Tommy and I, roamed around together for a while back in the late 60s. We were a pretty well rounded crew with Ti's con games, Tommy's card playing skills, and my occasional pool score.
There were times we hit some pretty rough joints in the Ark-La-Tex area we moved around in. But I never felt any apprehension because every night, Ti and Tommy would clean and check their "artillery". Ti carried an old .44 revolver with about a ten inch barrel, which looked much like a typical old John Wayne six-shooter, and I knew he wasn't afraid to use it if he felt it was necessary. Ti, almost always, wore a suit to conceal the old "hog leg". Tommy's .357 was always strapped to his ankle under his bell bottoms, so we weren't short on firepower should the need arise.
Fortunately, it never did. The few awkward spots we encountered, would usually wind up with the offending "tush-hog", backing down from the "skinny old man" with the piercing eyes.
I'm not trying to infer that Ti and I were full time partners, but for several years, we hooked up often enough for me to have had some very memorable life experiences. I hope you've enjoyed my sharing a few with you. I have always considered it a privilege to have met and befriended, one of the true legends of our time, Alvin C. "Titanic Thompson" Thomas, 1892 – 1974. RIP old rounder, what a pleasure knowing you.
Dick Mc Morran
June, 2007
Dick, just for you, I'll tell the only Titanic story that I have. I seen him in action only once down in Johnston City in the early 60s. He must have been 70 yrs old but he had 3 young girls traveling with him. He laid down a spread with an unwitting kid from Chicago named Tennesee Willy. Ti lost $400 to Willy playing 1pkt for $30 and $40 a game. He never made a ball, and was acting semi-senile. Willy was a very loud, obnoxious player and attracted a lot of attention. I knew Willy very well and he really thought the game was on the square, and was giving Ti plenty of "raspberries." I overheard the smart guys whispering that Ti was probably over the hill, and was now a ripe target. The next day Ti had his choice of good games. He locked somebody up good, I forgot who, but I remember the bet. His first bet was naturally, $400 a game!
Freddy the Beard
POKER HISTORY: GEORGE MCGANN: GAMBLER, CON MAN, HIT MAN, KENNEDY ASSASSIN???
George Albert McGann was this almost comic Texas road gambler and con man when we used to play poker and gin rummy together back in the mid-sixties in Lubbock, Texas. He was born in Big Spring about 1937. During the 1960s, Lubbock was a real center for big no-limit Texas Hold 'em games although we obviously just called it Hold 'em. Many of our opponents came from distant towns and nobody knew or cared where they got their money. Poker players were by definition outlaws. Jack "Treetop" Straus was playing one time with a guy who would leave the game and go rob a bank. The FBI followed the guy back to the poker game.
Treetop spoke for all gamblers when he told the FBI, most truthfully, "We don't know or care how he got that money."George was a real mystery man. He'd get out on the blacktop and go all over Texas and show up in the middle of the night at some poker game. He seemed to mostly lose. Like most practiced con men, he was most charming, likable, and extremely well dressed. Watch out for a player whose shoes are new and a little too fancy. And those pinkie rings. If you told George, "I like your watch or hat or sweater." He'd say, "It's for sale."
Once, George sold a bag of fake diamonds to this gullible gambler I knew. He told him they were hot diamonds from big Dallas burglaries that were in the newspaper. The guy had to promise to hide them for a decade before he moved them. George bragged about these things but he often told cryptic stories, talked in riddles, and hinted at a dark side.
Much has been written about George McGann being a hit man for the Dixie Mafia. Some of the Kennedy assassination researchers think George was involved, even one of the shooters. One of the huge factors in being a professional poker player back then was finding a game and keeping the game going. This led to a lot of loaning and staking. Be careful about borrowing because then you are obligated to make a loan to that guy. If it was the middle of the night and a guy says he is going to quit the poker game if it gets down to five-handed, you might put some railbird like George in the game if you were bigger behind than a cotton-patch spider.
I loaned George $150 once. He soaked two beautiful expensive sweaters. I wore them for a few years. He had this long list of the people he owed money to. He'd pull it out and show it to me. He said paying all the poker players around Texas back was very important to him.Years later, some Kennedy assassination researchers led by Gary Shaw of Ft. Worth. came here and we had dinner. He mailed me some pictures of George and George's list of debts. I was on it as were a Doyle, a Slim, and a Sailor. George would go down to Odessa and try the big game with all the future World Champs. He couldn't beat it and neither could I.
I wasn't afraid of George but I had not heard all these bad things. Looking back, I guess George could pump all that money on the tab because the smart money was afraid of him. He was the kind of poker and gin rummy player that you knew would go broke. On fifth street, he'd study and puzzle, and shake his butt all around in the chair and convince himself that some guy that had not bluffed since the Great Depression just had to be bluffing this time. If you held a hand, George would pay you off and he was pleasant about it with the con man's semi-permanent big smile on his face.One of the places we played was up this long flight of stairs.
The houseman kept a shotgun leaning against the wall visible to all players. Now it was expected that the houseman would have barking iron, but tastefully out of sight. Someone suggested he hide the shotgun if George came around. This was the first hint I had that the gambler's were wary of George and his nocturnal ramblings.Mornings might find me driving by several spots looking to play one of my side games, bridge or gin rummy. I'd prop folks to play heads-up Hold 'em but settle for gin. I'd try the golf course or one of the dice games before it opened.
A few times I went by George's fancy apartment in Lubbock's best apartment house. George had a whole closet full of fancy clothes and shoes. We'd play gin rummy and then go for mid-afternoon breakfast. I was careful not to break him but he was the type of gambler you could carry all the way to busted. I do not really remember ever seeing George win.One morning, we sat down to play gin rummy. He had left the two major suit nines in the card box on the kitchen cabinet. I figured this out early but didn't see any sense in saying anything. He knew two nines were gone. I knew two nines were gone. He did not know I knew. At first I thought he was holding them out. I jumped up and suddenly looked in his lap. Nothing was there.There was some other shiny-shirt road slick there. The way they kept carney-talking and eye-dancing each other, you'd know they gaffed he deck.
After I beat him out of a day's walking around money, I pulled up. I went in the kitchen and could see the cards in the box. Neither of us mentioned it. As George was getting ready to go to breakfast, he slipped a pair of brass knuckles in the front pocket of his very tight slacks. These showed for a mile. I asked him," Why don't you carry a pistol like everybody else?"He made a lengthy reply about his uncontrollable temper. He said he'd kill somebody if he had a gun.
Later, he did just that. George McGann told me a lot about Jerry James who he knew. James was on America's top ten most wanted. James robbed other outlaws all over the south. When the word hit the gambler's grapevine that James was in town, joints closed and folks stayed armed and indoors. George said that when I got robbed at a poker game, it would be Jerry James. James was later a leader in the New Mexico prison riot where thirty-nine were killed. He befriended Jimmie Chagra in prison at the behest of our government and James gained valuable information. Later, I was at a big poker game that was robbed by three masked gunmen. They told us to face the wall and not look and that was fine with me. Only one of them spoke but some of the players later said one of them might have been George. Big Fred threw his healthy bankroll behind the ice box and saved it.
After the robbers left, there was a hastily arranged small posse who had guns in their cars. They gave chase but played lucky they didn't get to smell any gun smoke on that particular beautiful summer night.George McGann told me the most curious thing of our friendship after the Kennedy assassination. He showed up with a brand new Cadillac that was red on the bottom and white on top. He said Jerry James had a matching Cadillac. George said that after the assassination, the Texas Rangers arrested him in East Texas and had at first mistaken him for Jerry James who they were chasing. George said they shuffled him around to various small town jails without charging him with anything. Finally, they let him go and drove him to the Cadillac which they had pushed off into a bar ditch and dented up.
George married Beverly Oliver, the so-called Bakuska Lady, a Dallas night club singer, who said she filmed the Kennedy assassination but the FBI stole her film. Most of what she said has been discredited. She said George killed Doris Grooms and George Fuqua. She was the source for the information that Ruby met Oswald in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. Beverly Oliver said that she and George McGann met for several hours with Richard Nixon when he was running for President. If they played poker, I am sure Nixon won. He financed his early political career on poker winnings.
Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame said George was one of the Dixie Mafia hit-men that killed his wife. It has been written that he killed George McGann but that was not true. A friend of mine was an eye witness to George McGann's killing in Lubbock, Texas, September 30, 1970. He was an old thirty-three. According to my friend, a group of honky-tonk hero’s numbering four were at a house in the middle of the night. George got a phone call from a woman who said that Jerry Meshell, 30, had abused her. George shot him twice, killing him, while the woman was still on the phone where she could hear. Then George didn't know what to do. He held my friend and Ronnie Weeden, 31, captive for several hours.
Finally, Weeden went to the back of the house and came back with a pistol. He killed George and did some time for it.I think the Kennedy assassination was a small Dallas-New Orleans conspiracy headed up by Carlos Marcello. At that time, bookies in Dallas laid off bets to Marcello, the real Mafia. Jack Ruby was a bookie. His telephone records are at Texas Tech's Southwest Collection. It is obvious he was calling Ft. Worth every few minutes in relation to Fall football. Do you think the Kennedy Assassination was a conspiracy?? I hope you like my old stories.
Johnny Hughes
PS. The "Big D" crowd of Johnny Hughes, Garren Hensley, Fibber, Billy T. Dyer and yes, even George Mc Gann were all former stake horse's of yours truly at one time or another. Pretty fast company for a dumb kid, huh ?
In the 60s, wherever the action pool room in Dallas was at that time, either the Cotton Bowling Palace or Times Square, Alvin C. Thomas, AKA "Titanic" Thompson would hold court almost daily. Ti, already in his 70s, could still wield a mean golf club and a meaner deck of cards. His many other games of chance and trickery were legendary and all the young "scuffs" (yours truly included) would hang on Ti's every word when we could get him to open up about some of his past exploits.
I had the privilege of caddying (well, driving the cart anyway) for him, a few times, in his frequent high stakes golf match-ups. A high rolling gambler once staked a highly regarded lady pro to give Ti three strokes a side, in a $2000 nassau. I was out of town when the actual event took place. We did speak by phone the night before, and he assured me that there was, quote; "No "mop-squeezer" in the world that could give him three-a-side!" unquote.
He had to have been over 70 at the time, but sure enough, he won both sides and the back side press, for a cool $8000. He had her in tears. There was no re-match.
Male chauvinism was alive and well in those days. Ti was lucky there were very few, highly skilled, lady pool player's back then, or he may have let his male ego get him in trouble. That goes for me too.
The game of pool was one of the few things that Ti never quite mastered. His usual con and gamesmanship seemed to leave him when he matched up at his favorite game, One pocket. He took some brutal, large dollar beatings at the hands of "New York Fats" and Hubert Cokes (to name a few), when One pocket was young, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Eventually, Cokes and he became quite good pals, and they often hit the road together. Talk about "double trouble."
Ti was a solid "B" player, and not completely helpless at pool, but as he began to realize his limitations, he zeroed in on a seldom played game and succeeded in pushing it well beyond his skill level at ordinary pool. He became one of the best three rail kickers I have ever seen. Playing either off the spot, or making the middle ball in a 15 ball rack, Ti could beat players far more advanced than him at the other pool games. He also knew exactly how many shots he could safely bet on. Using his natural gift of gab, he caught many players and side bettors alike in his little "three rail kick-in" trap. In fact, he became so proficient at the game, that he could beat a lot of shortstops at it by throwing the ball with his bare hand, instead of using a cue stick.
Ti, as everyone called him, loved the game of One pocket. He would often bet on me (or stake me) even when I had the worst of it. Sometimes, just the intimidation factor, of such a legendary gambler would be just enough to throw my opponent off, and turn a bad game into a winner. Ti appreciated my knowledge of the game and would often grab a set of balls and challenge me to a horrible match-up, for him, just to get some cheap lessons. We would bet it up a little at times, but we would keep adjusting the game so no one got hurt bad. I'd often be gone for extended periods, and when I'd return, I can still see his "cat eating" grin, when he'd greet me with, "Dick, you won't believe how much better I'm playing One pocket now. Get the balls, I'll play you some 8 to 6, and kick your young Irish ass."
We became quite good friends in those years. I looked up to him and always felt very fortunate to have him for a mentor. Sure do wish I would have absorbed more. His son Tommy, from a long forgotten marriage, re-surfaced around that time and we became close too. Tommy was a real chip off the old block. He lacked his father's gift of gab, (just try and follow that act) but he had learned his way around a deck of cards as good, if not better, than Ti himself. Ti sent Tommy up to Evansville, for further training in the "Daddy Warbuck's" school of gambling, and, just like he had done with Ti decades earlier, Mr. Cokes and Tommy took off some high $$$ scores.
Partner's One pocket was quite popular in those days and presented a virtual kaleidoscope of potential ways to match up a game. A and C players against two B players, A and D players against B and C players, etc., and coaching, either allowed or not allowed, made for some really spirited pre-game negotiations. Most regular players knew how to match up head-to-head, but partner's opened up a whole new ball game. Many times neither team would know for sure who had the best of it until it was too late. For the most part, it was pure gambling. The high rolling gambler's and oil men loved partnering up with the top players. They'd bet it up, big time.
Enter into this equation a man by the name of Red Box. Red owned one of the greatest action pool rooms ever, the Guys and Dolls in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was a good, smart gambler, and he and Ti were always trying to "one up" each other. Red was a little bit like Ti, in that he would have sacrificed a major body organ to play top notch One pocket. Ti, as shrewd a gambler as he was, thought he played about even with Red, but I could clearly see that Red had the best of it by at least ball, if not two.
Every month or so, a typical conversation between Ti and me would go something like this; "Hey Dick, Red called today and he said that Peter Rabbit, or Buddy Hall or Earl Heisler was in town, and they will give us 8-7 playing partners. I think we got the nuts at that, don't you?" He would elaborate on his reasoning by saying, "You play as well or better than Red's partner (whoever that might be) and Red and I are pretty even, aren't we?
Ti and I had played partners with some of the local Dallas players with varying results. The big differential was usually whether I was allowed to coach him during the games. We had worked out an elaborate set of signals for the games where coaching was not allowed, but there really wasn't an effective way to tell him where I wanted his cue ball to end up. The signals were pretty much limited to the specific ball I wanted him to shoot, and he was mostly on his own after that. However, at some point Red snapped to that and I had to look away from Ti when he was at the table (in the "no coaching match-ups). In addition, I could never convince him that he was at least a ball shy of Red's One pocket game. There was never a problem with the money. Ti always had plenty of cash and if I didn't, he was willing to bankroll any partner's play we made. I don't have to tell you how persuasive he could be when he felt like playing.
Usually, our matches were made before we left for the 200 mile drive to Shreveport. Ti was often a little lax in his demand for me to be allowed to coach him, because I think, in his mind he thought he knew all there was to know about the game. Many times we would get off loser at the partner's game, and I would have to match up a tough heads- up game to try and recover our losses. Red Box was a good, smart gambler, but he loved action and fortunately, although a lot of money changed hands between us, no one got hurt too bad in those good old days. Ti, and Red sure loved their one-hole.
Ti eventually realized that he was no "Eddie Taylor" at pool. He, Tommy and I, roamed around together for a while back in the late 60s. We were a pretty well rounded crew with Ti's con games, Tommy's card playing skills, and my occasional pool score.
There were times we hit some pretty rough joints in the Ark-La-Tex area we moved around in. But I never felt any apprehension because every night, Ti and Tommy would clean and check their "artillery". Ti carried an old .44 revolver with about a ten inch barrel, which looked much like a typical old John Wayne six-shooter, and I knew he wasn't afraid to use it if he felt it was necessary. Ti, almost always, wore a suit to conceal the old "hog leg". Tommy's .357 was always strapped to his ankle under his bell bottoms, so we weren't short on firepower should the need arise.
Fortunately, it never did. The few awkward spots we encountered, would usually wind up with the offending "tush-hog", backing down from the "skinny old man" with the piercing eyes.
I'm not trying to infer that Ti and I were full time partners, but for several years, we hooked up often enough for me to have had some very memorable life experiences. I hope you've enjoyed my sharing a few with you. I have always considered it a privilege to have met and befriended, one of the true legends of our time, Alvin C. "Titanic Thompson" Thomas, 1892 – 1974. RIP old rounder, what a pleasure knowing you.
Dick Mc Morran
June, 2007
Dick, just for you, I'll tell the only Titanic story that I have. I seen him in action only once down in Johnston City in the early 60s. He must have been 70 yrs old but he had 3 young girls traveling with him. He laid down a spread with an unwitting kid from Chicago named Tennesee Willy. Ti lost $400 to Willy playing 1pkt for $30 and $40 a game. He never made a ball, and was acting semi-senile. Willy was a very loud, obnoxious player and attracted a lot of attention. I knew Willy very well and he really thought the game was on the square, and was giving Ti plenty of "raspberries." I overheard the smart guys whispering that Ti was probably over the hill, and was now a ripe target. The next day Ti had his choice of good games. He locked somebody up good, I forgot who, but I remember the bet. His first bet was naturally, $400 a game!
Freddy the Beard
POKER HISTORY: GEORGE MCGANN: GAMBLER, CON MAN, HIT MAN, KENNEDY ASSASSIN???
George Albert McGann was this almost comic Texas road gambler and con man when we used to play poker and gin rummy together back in the mid-sixties in Lubbock, Texas. He was born in Big Spring about 1937. During the 1960s, Lubbock was a real center for big no-limit Texas Hold 'em games although we obviously just called it Hold 'em. Many of our opponents came from distant towns and nobody knew or cared where they got their money. Poker players were by definition outlaws. Jack "Treetop" Straus was playing one time with a guy who would leave the game and go rob a bank. The FBI followed the guy back to the poker game.
Treetop spoke for all gamblers when he told the FBI, most truthfully, "We don't know or care how he got that money."George was a real mystery man. He'd get out on the blacktop and go all over Texas and show up in the middle of the night at some poker game. He seemed to mostly lose. Like most practiced con men, he was most charming, likable, and extremely well dressed. Watch out for a player whose shoes are new and a little too fancy. And those pinkie rings. If you told George, "I like your watch or hat or sweater." He'd say, "It's for sale."
Once, George sold a bag of fake diamonds to this gullible gambler I knew. He told him they were hot diamonds from big Dallas burglaries that were in the newspaper. The guy had to promise to hide them for a decade before he moved them. George bragged about these things but he often told cryptic stories, talked in riddles, and hinted at a dark side.
Much has been written about George McGann being a hit man for the Dixie Mafia. Some of the Kennedy assassination researchers think George was involved, even one of the shooters. One of the huge factors in being a professional poker player back then was finding a game and keeping the game going. This led to a lot of loaning and staking. Be careful about borrowing because then you are obligated to make a loan to that guy. If it was the middle of the night and a guy says he is going to quit the poker game if it gets down to five-handed, you might put some railbird like George in the game if you were bigger behind than a cotton-patch spider.
I loaned George $150 once. He soaked two beautiful expensive sweaters. I wore them for a few years. He had this long list of the people he owed money to. He'd pull it out and show it to me. He said paying all the poker players around Texas back was very important to him.Years later, some Kennedy assassination researchers led by Gary Shaw of Ft. Worth. came here and we had dinner. He mailed me some pictures of George and George's list of debts. I was on it as were a Doyle, a Slim, and a Sailor. George would go down to Odessa and try the big game with all the future World Champs. He couldn't beat it and neither could I.
I wasn't afraid of George but I had not heard all these bad things. Looking back, I guess George could pump all that money on the tab because the smart money was afraid of him. He was the kind of poker and gin rummy player that you knew would go broke. On fifth street, he'd study and puzzle, and shake his butt all around in the chair and convince himself that some guy that had not bluffed since the Great Depression just had to be bluffing this time. If you held a hand, George would pay you off and he was pleasant about it with the con man's semi-permanent big smile on his face.One of the places we played was up this long flight of stairs.
The houseman kept a shotgun leaning against the wall visible to all players. Now it was expected that the houseman would have barking iron, but tastefully out of sight. Someone suggested he hide the shotgun if George came around. This was the first hint I had that the gambler's were wary of George and his nocturnal ramblings.Mornings might find me driving by several spots looking to play one of my side games, bridge or gin rummy. I'd prop folks to play heads-up Hold 'em but settle for gin. I'd try the golf course or one of the dice games before it opened.
A few times I went by George's fancy apartment in Lubbock's best apartment house. George had a whole closet full of fancy clothes and shoes. We'd play gin rummy and then go for mid-afternoon breakfast. I was careful not to break him but he was the type of gambler you could carry all the way to busted. I do not really remember ever seeing George win.One morning, we sat down to play gin rummy. He had left the two major suit nines in the card box on the kitchen cabinet. I figured this out early but didn't see any sense in saying anything. He knew two nines were gone. I knew two nines were gone. He did not know I knew. At first I thought he was holding them out. I jumped up and suddenly looked in his lap. Nothing was there.There was some other shiny-shirt road slick there. The way they kept carney-talking and eye-dancing each other, you'd know they gaffed he deck.
After I beat him out of a day's walking around money, I pulled up. I went in the kitchen and could see the cards in the box. Neither of us mentioned it. As George was getting ready to go to breakfast, he slipped a pair of brass knuckles in the front pocket of his very tight slacks. These showed for a mile. I asked him," Why don't you carry a pistol like everybody else?"He made a lengthy reply about his uncontrollable temper. He said he'd kill somebody if he had a gun.
Later, he did just that. George McGann told me a lot about Jerry James who he knew. James was on America's top ten most wanted. James robbed other outlaws all over the south. When the word hit the gambler's grapevine that James was in town, joints closed and folks stayed armed and indoors. George said that when I got robbed at a poker game, it would be Jerry James. James was later a leader in the New Mexico prison riot where thirty-nine were killed. He befriended Jimmie Chagra in prison at the behest of our government and James gained valuable information. Later, I was at a big poker game that was robbed by three masked gunmen. They told us to face the wall and not look and that was fine with me. Only one of them spoke but some of the players later said one of them might have been George. Big Fred threw his healthy bankroll behind the ice box and saved it.
After the robbers left, there was a hastily arranged small posse who had guns in their cars. They gave chase but played lucky they didn't get to smell any gun smoke on that particular beautiful summer night.George McGann told me the most curious thing of our friendship after the Kennedy assassination. He showed up with a brand new Cadillac that was red on the bottom and white on top. He said Jerry James had a matching Cadillac. George said that after the assassination, the Texas Rangers arrested him in East Texas and had at first mistaken him for Jerry James who they were chasing. George said they shuffled him around to various small town jails without charging him with anything. Finally, they let him go and drove him to the Cadillac which they had pushed off into a bar ditch and dented up.
George married Beverly Oliver, the so-called Bakuska Lady, a Dallas night club singer, who said she filmed the Kennedy assassination but the FBI stole her film. Most of what she said has been discredited. She said George killed Doris Grooms and George Fuqua. She was the source for the information that Ruby met Oswald in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. Beverly Oliver said that she and George McGann met for several hours with Richard Nixon when he was running for President. If they played poker, I am sure Nixon won. He financed his early political career on poker winnings.
Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame said George was one of the Dixie Mafia hit-men that killed his wife. It has been written that he killed George McGann but that was not true. A friend of mine was an eye witness to George McGann's killing in Lubbock, Texas, September 30, 1970. He was an old thirty-three. According to my friend, a group of honky-tonk hero’s numbering four were at a house in the middle of the night. George got a phone call from a woman who said that Jerry Meshell, 30, had abused her. George shot him twice, killing him, while the woman was still on the phone where she could hear. Then George didn't know what to do. He held my friend and Ronnie Weeden, 31, captive for several hours.
Finally, Weeden went to the back of the house and came back with a pistol. He killed George and did some time for it.I think the Kennedy assassination was a small Dallas-New Orleans conspiracy headed up by Carlos Marcello. At that time, bookies in Dallas laid off bets to Marcello, the real Mafia. Jack Ruby was a bookie. His telephone records are at Texas Tech's Southwest Collection. It is obvious he was calling Ft. Worth every few minutes in relation to Fall football. Do you think the Kennedy Assassination was a conspiracy?? I hope you like my old stories.
Johnny Hughes
PS. The "Big D" crowd of Johnny Hughes, Garren Hensley, Fibber, Billy T. Dyer and yes, even George Mc Gann were all former stake horse's of yours truly at one time or another. Pretty fast company for a dumb kid, huh ?
Daddy Warbucks -- Hubert Cokes
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January 1966 issue with an article about Hubert Cokes and Harold Worst
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Minnesota Fats and Hubert Cokes
Daddy Warbucks
By Tom Fox
Hubert Cokes is one of those larger than life mortals who seem to step off the pages of history onto the wide, wide screen of life.
When Hubert Cokes was a rambling gambling man in the rowdy 20s, the guys and dolls of that romantic era called him The Giant. It was a simple, almost childlike endearment and yet it implied singular distinction. It wasn’t that Hubert Cokes was a massive hulk of a man, although he was, nor that he performed Himalayan feats, albeit sometimes he did. They called him Hubert Cokes The Giant because of his indomitable scorn for protective cults. The only protection Hubert Cokes ever needed was Hubert Cokes.
Stories of the derring-do with which the freelancing Giant defied powerful gang lords are legend and they are retold, and perhaps embellished, wherever floating crap game alums gather. Once they say, Cokes was running a rich dice game somewhere and a benevolent arm of a protection society announced it was muscling in. Cokes looked down his leathery nose at the ultimatum and when a couple of dockwallopers were dispatched to his tables, The Giant whipped hell out of the toughs with his bare fists. Hubert Cokes was always the master of his house. Then there was the Southwest Incident: Cokes was operating a posh gambling casino in a booming oil town. The handle was a robust $40,000 a day but in the same town Pretty Boy Floyd was knocking off banks and post offices for $800. Floyd, the aficionados claim, thought the law offered better odds than The Giant.
You hear all sorts of stories about Hubert Cokes. He is one of those larger
than life mortals who seem to step off the pages of fiction onto the wide,
wide screen of life and some of his intriguing stirrings have been dramatized
with exaggeration. In truth, the man’s image is part myth.
The Hubert Cokes I know is a gentle, brown-eyed man of 67 who wouldn’t harm a miller moth. He is a huge, bald man of 6’2 and 220 pounds and he has cold, piercing eyes that might frighten lesser men but he smiles easily and he walks softly and dignity is his big stick. He has tone, as they say. He likes the simple things in life. He enjoys playing golf with his wife, Frances, a former nurse, and he delights in teaching kids, and sometimes women, how to shoot pool. Once I saw him up to his ears in housewives in one of those carpeted billiard rooms in suburbia. He was instructing les girls on the proper technique in making a bridge. A salty old sandbagger like Texas Guinan, who knew Hubert Cokes when he had hair, would have laughed out loud.
Hubert Cokes is a wealthy Evansville, Indiana oilman-sportsman who takes the sun in Florida in the winter and spends the summers golfing in the Midwest. He shoots in the low 80s ("In the fall when the ground is hard") and he’ll wager on his drives and putts on the drop of a tee. He was, for the record, one of those country club hustlers who had a hand in sending ex-heavyweight champion Joe Louis to the poorhouse just beyond the 19th hole. Hubert Cokes also loves to bet on his pool game because he is an excellent pool player, in fact, one of the best around, bar none. When he is in the dashing, chancy world of the pool hustlers, Hubert Cokes is known as Daddy Warbucks, a nom de guerre that needs no explanation. He looks like Daddy Warbucks -- the bald head, the big ears, the tiny deep set eyes, the taut mouth, and the ever present cigar. He is also very rich and extremely generous and so he is a soft touch for the luckless, down and out pool hustler. Of all the picturesque pool hall sobriquets, Daddy Warbucks, perhaps, is the most poetic.
When Hubert Cokes is in Evansville, almost any night you can find him in the game room of the Elks Club, a stately old ante bellum mansion that stirs thoughts of another day. It’s a massive beige brick building with large white columns jutting up from the front porch and in those hand fan days of the late, late, 30s, the Elks used to sit out there in their big rocking chairs with the stiff starched white slip covers and watch the oil men come and go at the old McCurdy Hotel on the other side of First Street. The Elks have long since retired to the clubhouse, now air-conditioned, thank you, and the oil men still stop at the McCurdy but it’s not like it was when Hubert Cokes first came to town.
He was younger then, fortyish and newly wed, and had just made a strike in the oil fields around Centralia in Southern Illinois and he was thinking about a place with a mailbox and a lawn and a flower garden. For 25 years he had been a rambling, gambling man, a rover with the soul of a gypsy and the roots of a sparrow. Life had been one glorious high roll after another and for a quarter of a century Hubert Cokes had been running to where the action was -- In Joplin, or Tulsa, New York or Chicago, Miami or New Orleans. But in 1939 the action was around Evansville, IN where new found oil spilled over like a spring flood and riches awaited the free soul with the bankroll and guts to dare chance. It was a gambling man’s Brigadoon, a big lusty wheel of fortune with no sheriff to fade, and as legal as the Bill of Rights. And so they came from all over -- storied Ray Ryan, the highest roller of them all; fabled Titanic Thompson, the prototype of all proposition men; solemn Preacher Du Buford, who wore dark suits and spoke softly like a man of the cloth but bellowed invectives when he struck a dry hole; crafty Jimmy the Greek Castras, who made book on anything, once on how many cups would break at a DAR party; and a carload of other blithe spirits, Hubert Cokes among them, with nerves honed over crap tables and the daring to risk it all on one more roll. They were all out of Runyon, by gosh, an they checked into the old McCurdy and fortunes were made and lost right there on the marble floor of the lobby; and out on the sidewalk this flamboyant new breed did things with money that had the Elks holding hard to their rocking chairs across the street.
In those freewheeling days before World War II, Evansville was a lethargic little river town on the northern shores of the beautiful Ohio and back then, as it does today, the scene suggested the best of two worlds -- the tranquil grace and charms of the Old South, coupled with a bustling, yet cautious and prudent Yankee enterprise. There’s a special grace about Evansville, a low-keyed horse and carriage pace that makes the living relaxed and easy. A visiting Elk might miss it but it’s there and you feel it after you’ve been there a while. And there’s a devilish, almost Janus-like fascination about the town at night, around the witching hour when the old wildcatters like The Preacher and The Colonel and Ladies Man Louie and Young York and Abie The Oakie stroll into the McCurdy lobby for the morning paper and a cup of coffee and a slice of nostalgia; and the past becomes the present when these Night People weave stories about the Runyon crowd that swept onto the scene and loved and sinned and hoodwinked and lived high and hard and put a splotch of rouge on Evansville’s haughty old face.
In 1939 Hubert Cokes, with a new stake and a new bride, took it all in and liked the odds. Evansville, indeed, was his kind of town. So he settled there and after a few more gushers poured in he went into the oil business on Main Street. He built an elegant home on the fashionable East Side and joined the Elks Club and the Petroleum Club. He might have been a pillar of the community too, except that in Evansville, Indiana pillars of the community come from a select circle of old-line families, the old rich, as it were, as opposed to the new rich, who are mostly oil people like Hubert Cokes who stayed on after the boom.
He is one of them now but after 26 years he is still a heavy who sits below the salt at the dinner table. And that’s how it will always be with Hubert Cokes, for as he defied the town bosses and their strond boys, so too, has he stuck out his tongue at the Sunday social mores of the Midwest. He remains the gambling man because it is in Hubert Cokes’ blood to take odds and give odds and protect himself in clichés.
Because of his wealth, Cokes is constantly singled out for the big hustle and sometimes the propositions, not to mention the stakes, are staggering. Several years ago on a sabbatical from the oil derricks, Cokes was vacationing in Las Vegas and between visits to the roulette wheels and blackjack tables he got to playing a "little money pool -- just for kicks." He had not picked up a cue in eight years ("it felt like a broom," he remembers) and his stroke and his eye showed it. The Giant looked ripe for a toppling. Word spread quickly and overnight hustlers seemed to walk right off the desert. Everybody came to get a piece of Hubert Cokes, including one of billiards’ all-time legitimate champions who flew west to propose a $50,000 summit meeting on the Vegas Strip. The cunning Cokes smiled and said he was, indeed, interested providing of course, he could name the games -- left-handed, one-handed and jacked-up. Indignant, the champion termed Cokes’ proposal "debasing" and grabbed the next plane East. Cokes chuckled all the way to Evansville but the hustlers, sensing a bonanza, trailed him like bloodhounds. "They knew my game had fallen into a rabbit hole," Cokes said, "and they all wanted odds, even the ones who could play me straight up."
Nonplused at having to sidestep such action, Cokes bought a second hand pool table and moved it into a vacant room above Joe Larvo’s Restaurant in Evansville and for a few months he worked at his rusty game, honing it to a stiletto sharpness. Then he took on all comers and took might be too mild a word. "I busted one of the country’s best players, smack down to his car and then I won the car, too." Cokes said. "I thought about getting in the used car business for a while."
A few years ago Larvo’s Restaurant was gutted by a pre-dawn blaze and Cokes’ table was lost in the mound of rubble. Since then he’s switched his training camp to the game room at the Elks Club and there he and his "sparring partner" play five nights a week to see that Daddy Warbucks’ game remains respectable.
His partner is tall, slender, blondish and 32 year old Larry Meyer who grew up in Louisville, KY and moved to Evansville a few years ago. By ordinary standards Larry is a good pool player but he doesn’t belong on the same table with Cokes. "I’m Mr. Cokes’ punching bag," says Meyer. Cokes gives outrageous odds in the game room sessions, yet, he says it’s necessary. "I’ve got to protect myself from those rascals (the hustlers)," he explains. With a $5 wager on each game, the Elks Club training sessions go something like this: (1) eight or no count one-pocket, meaning Cokes must drop eight straight balls in one pocket without a miss or start again from scratch. (2) one-pocket even, Cokes shooting left-handed. (3) one-pocket even, Cokes shooting WITHOUT his glasses. (4.) One-pocket even, Cokes shooting with one hand. (5.) Banks even. Despite the la Russian Roulette rules under which Cokes chooses to play, over a nine-month stretch, Daddy Warbucks led the long series by 24 games going into September.
Like most men his age, Cokes is myopic. He reads the newspapers, even the fine print on the stock market page, with the naked eye, but on a pool table he is helpless without glasses. He tried bifocals but cue ball and object ball never seemed the same size and Cokes’ game suffered markedly. "That’s when I got these," he said, picking up what he called his "pool cheaters." The glasses are extra large. The black frame and prescription treated lenses are about the size of a cue ball and when Cokes puts them on they cover his eyes, his eyebrows and a goodly portion of his forehead. They arouse memories of old fashioned racing goggles, the kind Sunday drivers used to wear at the wheel of the old open touring cars, and when Cokes stares out of the thick lenses he looks more like a Mad scientist than a tired businessman relaxing at the club.
The game room is one of those long, narrow, masculine looking clubrooms where cigar smoke and spilled beer are part of the "men only" decor. Four outmoded ceiling fans hang overhead and although they haven’t been used in years they are part of the decor too, fossils of another age. The six pool tables get a good play from the membership and so does the bar which is on the other side of a swinging door at the far end of the room.. There is nothing special about the bar except that it doubles as the music room for the regular Monday night vocalizings of the 23 voice Elks Club Chorus and on occasion the assorted tenors, altos and baritones provide amusing background music.
One night last summer Cokes, in deft stroke, ran a quick eight balls to win an eight or no count version of one pocket and as he pocketed the last ball, as if on a prearranged cue, from the bar the chorus sang out lustily:
"Be my little baby bumble bee... "Buzz around, buzz around, buzz around and ‘round."
Tenors: "Baby...baby...baby...baby..."
Baritones: "....Buzz...buzz...buzz...buzz...buzz."
"The maestro out there," said Cokes, acknowledging the musical salute, "must have bet on me."
Later, when Cokes’ game was less stimulating, the chorus burst forth with a solemn, throaty version of the old tent revival hymn, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord." Cokes smiled and Meyer, shooting surely, ran out another game.
"Damn," said Cokes, "this boy’s getting good enough to take on the road."
The road...the road...the road. Any pool player who has broken a rack in a serious money game has at one time or another found himself on the road. It’s the only place to go when the action slows down, which is the way it was for Hubert Cokes in 1913. He was 16 and attending high school in Hot Springs, AR, and during a long hot summer things were slow, even in Hot Springs. Young Cokes had heard tall tales about the "money action" up in St. Louis and one night when things were slower than usual. Cokes and his pal Hubert Bray, the police chief’s son hopped a freight train for St.. Louis.
"We told them we came from Hot Springs and we wanted action," Cokes said. "And we got it --nine ball at 25 cents a game. We played all day and all night. We were $22 ahead when we hopped a freight back home. After that I was a rolling stone."
The hobo ride to St. Louis convinced the teenage Cokes that a cotton farm was no place for a young gambling man and soon the took to the road for good. His wanderings were to last for 25 years and take him across the country a dozen times, living out of suitcases and earning his keep in grubby horse parlors and chandeliered casinos. When he ran short of capital he headed for the nearest pool room. His game was always good enough for eating money.
"I played pool as a boy in Hot Springs and I thought I knew the game," he said. "But I was educated in 1916. That’s when I met Jack Hill in Tulsa. He originated one pocket out there around 1912. He liked me and took me on as his protégé. He taught me the fine points. That was my college education in pool." And Cokes graduated with honors for today, almost 50 years later, he remains one of the best one pocket players in America, especially if the stakes are high.
"I never felt like a complete player until 1925," Cokes says, "and I think I played my best around 1945. I was 47 and at my prime. I could have handled anybody in the country back then. I busted everybody who came through Evansville, everybody but Willie Hoppe but he was out of my class in cushions. I played him an exhibition at the Elks Club and he gave me a good lesson. But 20 years ago I owned the hustlers. I broke ‘em all."
Cokes insists he was never a hustler himself. "I never said I was a bus driver or a traveling salesman," he says, "They always knew who I was. Today if somebody calls me a hustler I say, "No, I’m a producer of hustlers." This hustler image came out of Hollywood hustlers and I’m their producer. I back ‘em all with cash is the proposition looks good.
Among the early hustlers backed by Cokes resources was a roly-poly, nonstop talking fat boy the oil man met on Broadway in 1930. His name -- Minnesota Fats (nee New York Fats) is a household word in any pool room today but in 1930 the Fat Man (Rudolph Wanderone, of Dowell, IL) needed backers. "Fatty looked the same as he does now, a little lighter perhaps, and he talked, talked, talked, the way he babbles now. I backed him in some $500 nine ball in New York. He was walking all over the place, talking to everybody, spilling powder all over the floor and not paying attention to what he was doing. I walked up to him and said, "Look Fatty, that’s my money you’re playing for. Concentrate on the game." He laughed and said, "Don’t worry Hubert," and without looking at the table he shot and pocketed the nine ball. If Fatty couldn’t run off at the mouth he wouldn’t run six balls."
One of Cokes’ inseparable road companions was the incomparable Titanic Thompson, a legend himself. Thompson once won $10,000 by throwing a peanut atop a Chicago building (the peanut was filled with mercury). He gathered a fortune shooting golf right-handed, losing a small bet on a close game and hiking the wager by boasting he could beat his score left-handed. Thompson a natural lefty, was a par golfer from the port side and his list of pigeons was long and impressive. He once propositioned Cokes out of a tidy sum, though not on a golf course.
In the 30s, when hard times fell on everybody, Cokes worked as a pharmaceutical salesman. In writing endless order, the spelling of medical and drug terms became routine and when the foxy Titanic wagered Cokes couldn’t spell asafoetida, Hubert plunged heavily. "Hell, I know how to spell asafoetida," says Cokes, "but I lost the bet. There are actually four different spellings so any way I spelled it Ty said it was wrong and showed me a different spelling in an old dictionary. I paid off but later I found out Ty had hustled me good. I can laugh about it now but back then I felt like a sucker." Cokes laughed. He likes to laugh and does often. There’s a Katzenjammer side to his personality. He likes a good joke, even if it’s on him, or on his father for that matter. His father was once an unsuspecting victim of the son’s levity.
The father was from Arkansas and Hubert’s mother was a Mississippi farm girl. The elder Cokes, a barber by trade, put down his clippers and tried his hand at cotton. But both marriage and the crop were failures and when Hubert, an only child, was still a toddler, his father quit the farm and opened a barber shop in San Antonio, TX. The years raced on and Cokes was a grown man before he saw his father again. It was in 1921, when Cokes was 24, that he wandered into San Antonio. He found his father’s shop, walked in and said he would have a shave.
"The old man," said Cokes, "was a pleasant, easy going sort but he was very proud about his trade. He claimed he was the best barber in the whole state of Texas. Well, he started shaving me and I drew back. I made a face and said," Damn man, can’t you sharpen that razor?" He made all sorts of apologies and tried another razor and I yelled, "That’s worse than the first one-- are you trying to slit my throat?" Now he didn’t know me from a load of hay but he gave me a cold look and said, "Sir, please get out of my shop, I don’t care to serve you." I jumped up and hollered, "Well Mr. Cokes, you’re not only a bad barber, you’re not much of a father either -- don’t you know your own son?" He was so glad to see me he shut up the shop and we had dinner together."
Cokes, laughing heartily, took a long pensive draw on a cigar. "That was a long, long time ago," he said, "a long way back."
Hubert Cokes looks back on 67 years filled with vigorous, hard-nosed, no- holds- barred living It would make a hellova novel but there are too many blank pages and that’s the way Hubert wants it. "I did a lot of brawling and scrapping," he says. "I don’t know if I could take it again. I’m just sure of one thing -- I’m a lot wiser than I was when I left the farm."
The knuckle-dusting Giant who captivated the myth-makers of the 20s has mellowed and sweetened with age. He has acquired the poise of a diplomat and the soft tenderness of a doting grandfather, yet beneath the lordly, dignified demeanor resides the jugular instinct of the Giant of old. Hubert Cokes can still be a ruthless brawler is someone pushes him
You hear all sorts of violent sagas about Hubert Cokes but when you sit over a late cup of coffee with the man and he smiles softly and tells sentimental stories, somehow the twains don’t meet. Some people have a let down when they meet him because there is a vast grey area between Hubert Cokes the Man, and Hubert Cokes the Myth.
"When I first met Hubert I was terribly disappointed, "say Evelyn Wanderone, the tall strikingly beautiful wife of Minnesota Fats. "I had heard all those stories about the Giant and I expected to meet someone nine feet tall."
"Evelyn," said Cokes, sounding very much like Daddy Warbucks lecturing Little Orphan Annie, "your trouble is you’ve been married to Fatty so long that you believe everything he says."
Billy Incardona's Instructional 1pocket DVD
Bill Incardona’s One-Pocket Instructional DVD
Accu-Stats' own Bill Incardona shares with you his common sense approach to successful one-pocket. This shows the most logical way to approach the one-pocket table. Bill discusses, and then demonstrates, each thought process that he deems important. He proves why banking, kicking, and taking intentional scratches are vital. He guides you through seven key thought processes from thinking offensively to destroying your opponent's shot, to the do-or-die scramble. Bill has always been a master of communication whether he's in the commentary booth talking to viewers, or just one on one. So spend some time with Bill Incardona and raise your one-pocket game to new levels. Pat Fleming
I have spent much time in the Accu-Stat’s broadcast booth with my old pal Bill, and while we may, and often do, disagree on what particular shot to shoot during our analysis, I never disagree on the thought processes he used to arrive at a shot decision. He has always been one of the great thinking players in our game. His DVD will give you a valuable insight into how he was able to successfully handle the high-pressure, big money situtions that he became famous for throughout his career. This DVD is vigorously recommended.
Freddy The Beard Bentivegna
60 min. $26 plus shipping. http://www.bankingwiththebeard.com/dvds.html#billydvd1
Me & Sugar Shack in Oklahoma City
I went to Oklahoma City in the early 70s and hung around Chester Truelove's pool room at 50th and May. One-Eyed- Tony Howard from Hazard, KY was still alive at the time and he was playing there too. I was on the road with the famous tush-hog, Sugar Shack Johnny Novak, but OK city at that time was still the scariest place I was ever in. There was a "range" war going on between the North and South side stick-up gangs, and Sugar and I were in the middle of it. Everybody had a gun but us.
A very bad gunman named Boatware had stolen my Ginacue and Sugar Shack was terrorizing all the bars in town trying to find him and get the cue back. I knew how dangerous Boatware was, and my nerves were in a constant state of shock. For some reason it didnt affect my pool game, as a matter of fact I never played better in my life! It's probably something a psychiatrist should study and look into. Finally, Boatware shows up at Trueloves, and has nine more brutes from the gang with him. They all had cue butts and Blackjacks, and Boatware had a .38 long. I figured this was it, and hoping maybe I could escape with a few broken bones.
To speed this up, Boatware called to Johnny, "You looking for me?" Johnny's reply, "Yes, I certainly am. I want that cue stick back!" Boatware opened his shirt and flashed the .38 in his pants. Boatware, "You ready to die for it?" Sugar Shack, "Yeah, show me a bullet!" Crazy as Boatware was, he realized Sugar was even nuttier, so he took another path. Among the nine cohorts was a famous tush-hog from Arkansas named Dennis Parker. He was about 6'4" and weighed about 240 lbs. Boatware, "You want the cuestick? He got it." pointing to Dennis Parker. Goofy as Sugar Shack was, fighting some big gorilla was a better option than trying to outrun a .38 slug.
Sugar Shack, "You mean all I got to do to get the cuestick is whip him? Ok, I'll meet him anywhere he wants, just him and me, and we will fight to the death for that cuestick!" Now big Dennis was no coward, but sanity was now starting to infect these lunatics. Fighting "to the death" for a piece of wood just didnt seem like a good idea. Boatware, now sensing that move wasn’t going to work either, next told Sugar to meet him out on some point on the highway about 9 PM and he would give him the cuestick. With that we all dispersed.
I begged Johnny not to go, I said it has to be a trap. He went anyway, met Boatware, Boatware gave him back the cuestick that he had stolen from me, said to meet him later at some action bar and he would dump his backer to us. We went, and he did (about $600), and we all would up getting drunk together. To close, now that all the horror was over, and the town was tame again, Sugar Shack wanted to leave, so we went back to Florida.
Now, about the earlier part when I said all that fear made me play my best: Old-timers know how good One- Eyed- Tony Howard and Norman Hitchcock played, I was robbing Tony Howard giving him his scratches dont count and he would play me 8 to 6. I was playing Hitch One Pocket on that real tough pocket table 10 to 8 -- me spotting him -- for thousand dollar sets! Now Tony is long dead, but Hitch is still alive(no longer) to confirm my story. They were both in Trueloves when Boatware came in with his boys. Boatware was later arrested in a shoot out with police at a motel and given a long prison term.
MORE SUGAR SHACK......
So. Carolina’s David Sizemore, played a nice game of 9 Ball, and had a reputation of being wild and crazy. He once cut a friend of mine, another So. Car. boy, David Gadsden’s throat. My friend was lucky and survived. In Johnston City IL, while playing the deadly, Hubert "Daddy Warbucks" Cokes, he missed a shot and smashed his cue stick. He was still carrying the jagged edge around while he ranted and raved. He came within a inch of getting his head blown off, as Hubert thought Sizemore might have been threatening him, and Hubert carried no less than three pistols on his person at all times. Lucky for Sizemore, a local grifter cooled Hubert out, saying David was harmless and was only mad at himself. Once Sizemore realized his mistake he dropped that broken cue like it was on fire and apologized to Hubert profusely.
Here's the addendum to the dangerous, Sizemore, Johnston City connection. The same year Sizemore almost got killed by Hubert Cokes in Johnston City, David asked my old road partner, the equally dangerous, Sugar Shack Johnny Novak, to give him some money to play Gin in the back room of the Show Lounge. Johnny gave him $300 with the instructions that he could play anybody in the room except, Jersey Red. Jack Breit.
Johnny left for the bar and returned a couple hours later to find Sizemore playing Gin with, who else but, Jersey Red. He asked Sizemore how he was doing, David replied that Red was beating him, and had him on his last game. With that, Sugar Shack gave Sizemore a backhand that sent him flying across the room and crashing into the wall. When Sizemore got up, he did nothing but apologize. Many sweators who knew of David's reputation warned me that he would sneak up on Johnny and get revenge. Knowing both parties, David, while a genuine lunatic, knew that Sugar Shack was a much worse lunatic, and was tickled pink to get off with just a ferocious slap and was content to end everything right there. Sugar Shack had a way to make many "crazy" people suddenly decide to become sane. Sizemore was eventually murdered while still a young man.
A very bad gunman named Boatware had stolen my Ginacue and Sugar Shack was terrorizing all the bars in town trying to find him and get the cue back. I knew how dangerous Boatware was, and my nerves were in a constant state of shock. For some reason it didnt affect my pool game, as a matter of fact I never played better in my life! It's probably something a psychiatrist should study and look into. Finally, Boatware shows up at Trueloves, and has nine more brutes from the gang with him. They all had cue butts and Blackjacks, and Boatware had a .38 long. I figured this was it, and hoping maybe I could escape with a few broken bones.
To speed this up, Boatware called to Johnny, "You looking for me?" Johnny's reply, "Yes, I certainly am. I want that cue stick back!" Boatware opened his shirt and flashed the .38 in his pants. Boatware, "You ready to die for it?" Sugar Shack, "Yeah, show me a bullet!" Crazy as Boatware was, he realized Sugar was even nuttier, so he took another path. Among the nine cohorts was a famous tush-hog from Arkansas named Dennis Parker. He was about 6'4" and weighed about 240 lbs. Boatware, "You want the cuestick? He got it." pointing to Dennis Parker. Goofy as Sugar Shack was, fighting some big gorilla was a better option than trying to outrun a .38 slug.
Sugar Shack, "You mean all I got to do to get the cuestick is whip him? Ok, I'll meet him anywhere he wants, just him and me, and we will fight to the death for that cuestick!" Now big Dennis was no coward, but sanity was now starting to infect these lunatics. Fighting "to the death" for a piece of wood just didnt seem like a good idea. Boatware, now sensing that move wasn’t going to work either, next told Sugar to meet him out on some point on the highway about 9 PM and he would give him the cuestick. With that we all dispersed.
I begged Johnny not to go, I said it has to be a trap. He went anyway, met Boatware, Boatware gave him back the cuestick that he had stolen from me, said to meet him later at some action bar and he would dump his backer to us. We went, and he did (about $600), and we all would up getting drunk together. To close, now that all the horror was over, and the town was tame again, Sugar Shack wanted to leave, so we went back to Florida.
Now, about the earlier part when I said all that fear made me play my best: Old-timers know how good One- Eyed- Tony Howard and Norman Hitchcock played, I was robbing Tony Howard giving him his scratches dont count and he would play me 8 to 6. I was playing Hitch One Pocket on that real tough pocket table 10 to 8 -- me spotting him -- for thousand dollar sets! Now Tony is long dead, but Hitch is still alive(no longer) to confirm my story. They were both in Trueloves when Boatware came in with his boys. Boatware was later arrested in a shoot out with police at a motel and given a long prison term.
MORE SUGAR SHACK......
So. Carolina’s David Sizemore, played a nice game of 9 Ball, and had a reputation of being wild and crazy. He once cut a friend of mine, another So. Car. boy, David Gadsden’s throat. My friend was lucky and survived. In Johnston City IL, while playing the deadly, Hubert "Daddy Warbucks" Cokes, he missed a shot and smashed his cue stick. He was still carrying the jagged edge around while he ranted and raved. He came within a inch of getting his head blown off, as Hubert thought Sizemore might have been threatening him, and Hubert carried no less than three pistols on his person at all times. Lucky for Sizemore, a local grifter cooled Hubert out, saying David was harmless and was only mad at himself. Once Sizemore realized his mistake he dropped that broken cue like it was on fire and apologized to Hubert profusely.
Here's the addendum to the dangerous, Sizemore, Johnston City connection. The same year Sizemore almost got killed by Hubert Cokes in Johnston City, David asked my old road partner, the equally dangerous, Sugar Shack Johnny Novak, to give him some money to play Gin in the back room of the Show Lounge. Johnny gave him $300 with the instructions that he could play anybody in the room except, Jersey Red. Jack Breit.
Johnny left for the bar and returned a couple hours later to find Sizemore playing Gin with, who else but, Jersey Red. He asked Sizemore how he was doing, David replied that Red was beating him, and had him on his last game. With that, Sugar Shack gave Sizemore a backhand that sent him flying across the room and crashing into the wall. When Sizemore got up, he did nothing but apologize. Many sweators who knew of David's reputation warned me that he would sneak up on Johnny and get revenge. Knowing both parties, David, while a genuine lunatic, knew that Sugar Shack was a much worse lunatic, and was tickled pink to get off with just a ferocious slap and was content to end everything right there. Sugar Shack had a way to make many "crazy" people suddenly decide to become sane. Sizemore was eventually murdered while still a young man.
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