Read Online Old Songs in a New Cafe by Robert James Waller - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert James Waller
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people held that permission at
any time.
There is a beauty about billiards that’s hard to explain if you never have played. It’s like watching a ballet, or listening
to Bach. It contains within it pure form, an aesthetic of motion, point and counterpoint, fuguelike movement, and the sense
of a small universe into which one can plunge forever.
It was a different place from the cacophony of the pool tables only a few feet away. A place of silence, of concentration,
of men who knew what they were doing. And Sammy Patterson ruled that world with a fearsome and undisputed grip.
The showdown was, I suppose, inevitable. The teacher, the student, the game. There are vectors at work out there that we do
not understand, that bring us together in particular settings at chosen times, with the outcomes known only to those curious
gods of chance and logic.
If there was a definable cause, though, it had to do with Kenny Govro. Kenny was regarded as the second-best billiards player
in town, some distance behind Sammy. Shortly after his announced retirement from the game, he decided to renege on his promise
and was casting around one night for someone to play. All he could find was the kid who had bought his cue. Oh well, a little
practice to get the rust off. I slaughtered him. Sammy’s teaching and the constant practice were working.
Kenny blamed it on the loss of his cue, re-entered retirement, and left Braga’s cursing about cues and smart-aleck kids and
life in general. My shellacking of Kenny may have convinced Sammy that it was about time to see what the kid could do.
It all came down on one of those hot, humid Iowa evenings in June, around 1953.I was in the general vicinity of fourteen by
this time. Sammy and I never had really played a serious game. Instead, he would set up shots, show me how to attack them
(“medium left English, off the left side of the red ball, hit the side cushion, then the end cushion, then the other side,
and it’ll head right for that old spot ball down in the corner”), and generally was trying to make a first-class billiards
player out of the kid who followed him around.
I can’t remember how the game got organized. There always was a certain mating dance that occurred when two good players were
going to have at it. But, somehow, the little buttons on the wires overhead where the points were kept got shoved back, and
the cues were chalked.
Word had flashed around in that mysterious small-town way that Sammy and I were going to play. Ordinarily, this would not
have meant much, but the same communication system had already disseminated the news about my easy victory over Kenny, and
a fair amount of interest was generated.
In fact, quite a lot of interest was generated. By the time Sammy and I squared off, some twenty or thirty spectators had
gathered. For a fourteen-year-old boy up against the Master, it was the Coliseum at noon, the sun and the sand, a matter of
virility and honor lined out in some distant chant about young men and old lions.
We began. The match was to 500 points. I was on top of my game, running off strings of 20 or more points as my turn came.
Sammy was not playing well. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was because he had been conversing intently and at length
with his flask while we warmed up. After a while, though, the magic welled up within him, and he began to make some long runs.
It worried me. He was capable, I knew, of running off 75 points in one turn. I faltered, lost my confidence for a bit, recovered,
and got back into it.
To this day, I can feel what it felt like then—-the heat, the sweat, the smoke, the quiet murmuring of the men gathered around,
and the old words of my father and Sammy flowing with clarity through my mind (“shoot easy,” “high right English,” “four cushions
and get the red ball back up in the left corner,” “if you are going to miss, don’t leave him anything”).
I
any time.
There is a beauty about billiards that’s hard to explain if you never have played. It’s like watching a ballet, or listening
to Bach. It contains within it pure form, an aesthetic of motion, point and counterpoint, fuguelike movement, and the sense
of a small universe into which one can plunge forever.
It was a different place from the cacophony of the pool tables only a few feet away. A place of silence, of concentration,
of men who knew what they were doing. And Sammy Patterson ruled that world with a fearsome and undisputed grip.
The showdown was, I suppose, inevitable. The teacher, the student, the game. There are vectors at work out there that we do
not understand, that bring us together in particular settings at chosen times, with the outcomes known only to those curious
gods of chance and logic.
If there was a definable cause, though, it had to do with Kenny Govro. Kenny was regarded as the second-best billiards player
in town, some distance behind Sammy. Shortly after his announced retirement from the game, he decided to renege on his promise
and was casting around one night for someone to play. All he could find was the kid who had bought his cue. Oh well, a little
practice to get the rust off. I slaughtered him. Sammy’s teaching and the constant practice were working.
Kenny blamed it on the loss of his cue, re-entered retirement, and left Braga’s cursing about cues and smart-aleck kids and
life in general. My shellacking of Kenny may have convinced Sammy that it was about time to see what the kid could do.
It all came down on one of those hot, humid Iowa evenings in June, around 1953.I was in the general vicinity of fourteen by
this time. Sammy and I never had really played a serious game. Instead, he would set up shots, show me how to attack them
(“medium left English, off the left side of the red ball, hit the side cushion, then the end cushion, then the other side,
and it’ll head right for that old spot ball down in the corner”), and generally was trying to make a first-class billiards
player out of the kid who followed him around.
I can’t remember how the game got organized. There always was a certain mating dance that occurred when two good players were
going to have at it. But, somehow, the little buttons on the wires overhead where the points were kept got shoved back, and
the cues were chalked.
Word had flashed around in that mysterious small-town way that Sammy and I were going to play. Ordinarily, this would not
have meant much, but the same communication system had already disseminated the news about my easy victory over Kenny, and
a fair amount of interest was generated.
In fact, quite a lot of interest was generated. By the time Sammy and I squared off, some twenty or thirty spectators had
gathered. For a fourteen-year-old boy up against the Master, it was the Coliseum at noon, the sun and the sand, a matter of
virility and honor lined out in some distant chant about young men and old lions.
We began. The match was to 500 points. I was on top of my game, running off strings of 20 or more points as my turn came.
Sammy was not playing well. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was because he had been conversing intently and at length
with his flask while we warmed up. After a while, though, the magic welled up within him, and he began to make some long runs.
It worried me. He was capable, I knew, of running off 75 points in one turn. I faltered, lost my confidence for a bit, recovered,
and got back into it.
To this day, I can feel what it felt like then—-the heat, the sweat, the smoke, the quiet murmuring of the men gathered around,
and the old words of my father and Sammy flowing with clarity through my mind (“shoot easy,” “high right English,” “four cushions
and get the red ball back up in the left corner,” “if you are going to miss, don’t leave him anything”).
I
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