Could Fast Eddie Felson be this cool with a dart in his hand instead of a pool cue? Yeah, right.
Death of a Grand Game
I love to play pool. Despite that love, I have probably played pool twice in the last two years. Why so little time with a game I enjoy? There are a lot of reasons, really. I don't get much time to just hang out in bars these days, but even when I do, the chances that there will be a pool table there are pretty slim. Not surprisingly, I'm playing more darts as I get older. These events are not unrelated.
Pool is dying.
There was a time when there was a pool table in nearly every bar, and most towns had a number of pool halls with multiple tables to choose from. Pool has always been a blue-collar kind of game, and uniquely American. Pool in the U.S. came to be synonymous with a sort of rough crowd, and people who liked to blow off steam with a friendly (or maybe not) game at the bar or pool hall. This, of course, is distinct from Billiards, an English game with a much more regal tradition. In the Musical "The Music Man", it's easy to see upper-crust (or even middle-crust) America's attitude toward pool in the lyrics to the song "Ya Got Trouble". First, we establish that Billiards (as opposed to pool, or "pocket billiards") is a fine, gentlemanly game:
Well, ya got trouble, my friend.
Right here, I say trouble right here in River City
Why, sure, I'm a billiard player
Certainly mighty proud to say,
I'm always mighty proud to say it
I consider the hours I spend with a cue in my hand are golden
Help you cultivate horse sense and a cool head and a keen eye
Didja ever take and try to give an iron clad leave
to yourself from a three-rail billiard shot?
But just as I say it takes judgement, brains and maturity
to score in a balk-line game
I say that any boob can take and shove a ball in a pocket
And I call that sloth;
Sloth? Now, granted, I've never actually played Billiards, and it looks tough, requiring a supreme measure of touch and a supreme understanding of angles and leaves and strategy. Of course, pool requires all of these as well. Still, pool for better or worse acquired the reputation of a game for the lower classes. Check out the following verse from later in "Ya Got Trouble"
Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents
I'm gonna be perfectly frank
Would you like to know what kind of conversation goes on
while they're loafin' around that hall?
They'll be tryin' out Bevo, tryin' out Cubebs,
tryin' out tailor-mades like cigarette fiends
And braggin' all about how they're gonna cover up
a tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen
Now one fine night they leave the pool hall
headin' for the dance at the Armory
Libertine men and scarlet women and ragtime
Shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter
into the arms of a jungle animal instinct- massteria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground, trouble!
Townspeople: Oh, we got trouble
Harold: Right here in River City
Townspeople: Right here in River City
Harold: With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P'
and that stands for 'pool'
Jungle animal instinct? Ragtime that'll grab your son or daughter? Gee, why not just write this verse: "Don't be a fool! Black folks play pool." But pool, like so many great games, or music, or books, couldn't be confined to just one culture. Pool continued to spread throughout the country, reaching a zenith in the '70's.
A quarter a game, rack 'em up.
And then, video games came on the scene in the late '70's, and two things happened. First, kids are going to play a video game before they play pool. Pool is hard. Video games are easy, and they light up, and they take you to another world. Pool takes you to another world, but that world is mostly frustrating, especially for a kid who can't hold the cue the right way. Kids stopped learning how to play pool.
Then, over time, bar owners saw that their pool tables weren't making as much money as they used to, that the younger kids who were now of drinking age didn't play on them, and when they did, they didn't know not to set drinks on them, or not to shoot masse shots that make expensive divots in the felt. It got to be very expensive to lease a pool table in a bar, and keep it in good upkeep. Not only that, but pool tables take up a LOT of space, space that could be used to sit people down at tables, which of course generates even more revenue.
And then the dart boards came, with soft tipped darts and networked games and electronic scorekeeping, and voila! Pool is now comparatively an iconoclast of another era. There are no lights that flash. Pool tables aren't networked. And they don't make nearly as much money as the dart boards, per square foot.
Goodbye, pool.
As I write this, I'm thinking about my dad. My dad is a pool player. I can't say for sure how good he is, because I never saw him at his peak. But I can tell you he's the best pool player I've ever seen. He grew up in a family that owned bars. From the time he was 11, his family owned a now-departed establishment in Topeka called The Shack. I remember being there as a small child. It was dark, a working-class bar. And it had a lot of pool tables. My dad's job, from the time he was 11 to the time he went in the army at age 18 was to take care of the pool tables. Every day he would brush them, make sure the cues were in good repair. And of course, he learned how to play pool. He doesn't get to play much these days, but when he does, I am still amazed at what he sees on the table. He can make the trick shots, but never seems to need them, a true testament to his skill.
I wonder what he thinks about pool's gradual disappearance. He may not see it like I do. He may not get out as much to the bars, or the places he does go to may still have their solitary table, sitting under the turned-off table lamp featuring the Bud Clydesdales in plastic bas-relief. But I think he knows. We used to go out and play a bit when I was in college. It was a good reminder to me that I wasn't anywhere near as good as I thought I was, and that beneath my dad's somewhat plain exterior was a guy who at one time was a very serious competitor in a game that requires a high level of skill and practice.
I remember one time I was in college and he and I went out to play (at a bowling alley, the only place we could find a table that day). He noted that the games cost 50 cents each, and he about hit the roof. He grudgingly played, but in his mind, pool was a quarter game, and that was that. Pool should be cheap enough to play for awhile, I think was his reasoning. How can you get better if you can't afford to play for a few hours? He flat-out said that he won't play on a table that costs 75 cents to play, just out of principle. Damn. Now that's a love of the game.
His head would explode if he knew I had to put 7 quarters in the table last time I played.
I'm not one for goals, really, but I have always wanted to own a pool table (and the space to really play with it). I'll have my dad over for visits, and he won't have to pay a damn dime to kick my ass all over the table. Somebody in this family is going to have to show Linus how to really play pool, and it's probably best that it's not me.
12:04:45 PM 
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