(An excerpt from my memoir, My Life In The Sunshine)
I first learned to play pool at the Glenville YMCA when I was fourteen. There were hours the kids could shoot and other hours the counselors had the table. They never let the younger people shoot when they played. One day, though, Aubrey, one of the counselors, motioned me over. “Come on, Prewitt, nobody else is here. I’m going to let you play with me.”
After I beat him five straight times, he let me shoot with the other counselors who would bet nickels and dimes on the games. One day, my mother stopped me as I went upstairs to my room. “What are you doing with all that change jingling in your pocket?”
“Collections, Momma.” I had a paper route, so it was a plausible excuse. She gave me one of those looks but said nothing else about it.
When I turned sixteen, there was a pool room on East 123rd Street near my house. Although I was underage, the owner would let me shoot on Saturday mornings. That’s where I met a much older man named Blinky. One day, he asked me if I wanted to play. For about a half year, Blinky would shuffle around the table, squinting, grunting, and taking all my quarters.
During one session, Blinky looked up from the table and said, “Son, you are a good shooter, but I’m a better player.”
It took me another year to figure out what he meant, but it finally hit me. It was all about ball control. Once I mastered that, I was off and running.
As an aside, I was sitting in Larchemere Tavern one day telling this story, and a lady friend turned and said, “Blinky was my father.” Small world, and all praise to Blinky.
I first began hustling in Riley’s pool room on 105th Street and Massie Avenue when I was seventeen. I played and beat folks like Winston Willis, who owned various businesses legal and otherwise; Carl Stokes, the former mayor of Cleveland; and Charles Ashley, who owned the Shrimp Boat restaurants.
Winston called me after I’d finished an interview with National Public Radio about my first novel and said, “Prewitt, I didn’t know you hustled pool.”
I said, “Winston, remember a seventeen-year-old asking you to play, and he beat you out of seventy-five dollars?”
Winston laughed. “That was you, MF?”
I graduated from Glenville High at eighteen and enrolled at Ohio University. On my second day at OU, I ventured into the pool room to see what kind of players were there and who was betting. A guy named Jeff was sitting on one of the stools, telling anybody who would listen that he was the best pool player in the school. That was like a red flag to me, so I challenged him.
He was the best, and I lost about twenty-five dollars. Thinking back, it was a stupid move for several reasons. You’ve got to leave your ego at the door in competition, and you especially don’t challenge the best player in the school. Even if I had won, nobody would have wanted to play me. It was a lesson that stayed with me throughout my competitive years.
As it was, I was still one of the school’s best eight-ball, nine-ball, and straight pool players and made quite a bit of money.
One summer Saturday evening, my mother came home glaring at me. I said, “What’s wrong, Momma?”
She stood there with her hands on her hips. “I just came from a bridge party, and all the mothers talked about how their children had so many different excuses for needing more money at college. So I said, My son never calls to ask for more money. Then, one mother said, ‘Your son doesn’t ask for more money because he takes my son’s money on the pool table.’ I was so embarrassed.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t be gambling.”
It wasn’t gambling, I said to myself. Gambling is when you don’t know the outcome.
I transferred to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania after punching out of OU in my third year. On my first day, I went to the pool room. I told myself not to make the same mistake I made at OU, so I played a friendly game with a few of the guys. I kept winning and ended up playing this guy named Pig. I beat him a few games and should have noticed people were beginning to watch and whisper.
After the third game, Pig says, “You want to play for something?”
“Sure.”
I can’t recall if it was Ed Hill, a fellow Clevelander, or Robert James, a guy from New Jersey I had just met who said, “Man, you effed up.”
“Why?”
“Pig is the best player in the school.”
Damn! I did it again.
I liked Lincoln, though, because its location allowed you to travel by train throughout the East Coast. On weekends, I would go to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Manhattan, and Newark to hustle pool. Eight out of ten times I would come home with the bread.
My modus operandi was to find a large poolroom and sit watching the players. Sometimes, I would wait and watch for hours before finding a game I liked. I played in large poolrooms because it was easier to remain anonymous. Even so, players could become a little testy. I’ve been shot at, involved in a couple of fights, and threatened by two ex-cons I busted who tried to double-team me in a nine ball game.
On one of my trips, I decided to visit New York. I chose Ames Billiard Parlor in Times Square, where they filmed the movie The Hustler, as my next venture. After walking up the creaky wooden steps and down the dusty hallway, I entered a world only those in the game could appreciate. I did my usual, taking a seat and watching.
What I saw on about every table were guys I had heard or read about. On one table, a player had banked a five-rail shot; on another, a player jumped a ball and ran out; on a third, a player pocketed a three-way combination.
A guy who had just walked in asked me if I wanted to play.
My response was a quick, “No. Thank you.”
I had learned my lesson about letting my ego get in the way of my common sense. I might have been able to beat a few of them, but the probability of walking away with any large sum of money was slim to none. So, I caught the subway and ended up at a poolroom called Sunshine something, won about $120, and waited for the train to take me back to Lincoln.
While I was in Grand Central Station, I decided to celebrate. So, I ordered a steak dinner and my first martini. After a second martini, I went to a bench to watch some folks bowl while I waited for the train. After a while, those two martinis took their toll. When I woke up, some of my money was hanging out of my pocket, and my pool stick had slid onto the floor. I looked around, grateful that someone hadn’t taken advantage of the situation.
When I returned to school, I told one of my New York friends what happened, and he laughed. “Nobody was going to bother you, Prewitt, because they knew nobody was that stupid to have money falling out of their pocket in a place like that. They probably figured it was a setup.”
Although I was the best player in the school, another student named Israel “Kissy” Floyd was almost as good, so when the NCAA Eastern Regional Billiard championships were held in Baltimore, I let Kissy enter the straight pool tournament, and I would play the three-rail billiard match. We were the only black people in the place.
Even though we didn’t have a billiard table (a table with no pockets) at Lincoln, I entered to play anyway. I had been good at billiards but was rusty. I remembered one of my elders telling me that if you are off your game, roll easy to the red. This strategy requires the other player to kick at the balls, possibly leaving you in a better position to score.
Kissy lost, but I won the three-rail billiard tournament. A reporter from the Baltimore Sun took my picture and got my information, but the story never appeared. Nor was I invited to the nationals. Welcome to the 60s in America.
After the tournament, I played an exhibition match with Luther “Wimpy” Lassiter, one of the world’s best pool players and a national champion. When we finished, he asked, “When are you going to join us on the circuit, young man?”
I shook my head, remembering the sometime life-threatening moments I’d experienced during my journey. “No, thank you, sir. Although I love this game, I think I’m going to pursue a profession that’s a little less hazardous to my health.”