This guy Tom
is probably dead now and there wouldn't be any record. I don't even know his last name. The last time I lived in Grand Forks, he was sleeping in the basement of the science building at the university--there was a little side door down a ramp and he'd figured how to disable the lock and he'd just slide in there at night, pretty late usually because he'd be out 'til bar time playing pool. This is why I thought of him, because just today Sean Thomas Dougherty's anthology of writing about pool came out--Double Kiss, it's called, and when I saw the post for it, I remembered this guy Tom. We were friends for about six months, I guess, through one winter. He was homeless in Grand Forks in the winter, which can not be a ton of fun. I mean, one time they canceled classes there because it was going to be 60 below zero--minus 100 with wind chill. Not a place where you could find a park bench or a little spot by the river. I know he was a big time drunk, moreso than me, even (I was 22 and I'd guess he was 50), and we were drinking probably every single time I ever hung out with him. He was maybe 5'9 with reddish grayish hair, mustache / beard / goatee. Always dressed ragged, carrying a green Army pack. Cheerful dude. He was a literary guy--he would always talk about Emerson College. Maybe he went there? I don't know, and he would show up for some of the poetry readings on campus and in town, and liked to talk about Whitman and the Beats. He was pretty much living the beat life, like... beatific and beat down. I didn't know a lot about him, but I loved to play pool with him.
At least a couple nights a week, I'd meet up with him at one of two places--The Down Under, which was this dirty shit dive under a disco-y night club, where you could get dollar pitchers of beer from noon 'til close on Fridays (even then that was incredibly cheap and also a recipe for fun-slash-disaster on a Friday), or else at Whitey's, which was on the Minnesota side of the river, and was kind of old mob classy, sort of--supposedly East Grand Forks was where the Chicago mob would send dudes who got "too hot" for the city, and Whitey's was where they'd hang out. Both places had decent coin-op pool tables, and I'd meet Tom at one or the other place, and we'd break racks all night. Dude could flat-out play, and he had a long tolerance, by which I mean that his drunk zone was big--like, if he was straight sober, he'd be okay, but then once he got a few in him, he'd catch fire, and while a lot of players might have a good half hour of drunk pool in them, he could sustain that for a long time. He was, I'd say, the single best pool player in that town, and probably the second best player I ever played regularly with (behind another great billiard character named Howard, who I worked with in Reno, Nevada, at Keystone Cue and Cushion--I sold pool tables there and Howard was the installation manager, but you could never call him Howard--he insisted on being called "Biff." Funniest guy. Best pool player I ever knew.) Anyway, with this guy Tom, you always wanted him as a doubles partner, and I got him as a partner a lot. Some nights, you could drink free for hours just riding him. But I liked to play against him quite a bit, too. I didn't beat him many times, but when I did, I knew I'd played well. How did he play? Well, he was just simple about it. He didn't crouch too low, which I do, or didn't, like... get too intense or like dance to whatever's on the jukebox, which I do. He just looked at the table maybe twice, saw the shot and the leave, bent at the waist, lined it up with a couple wrist cocks to get the feel, and then popped it. He could spin, but didn't need to a lot, because his positioning was spot on. If you hooked him, he could make a bank, but he didn't need to very often because he controlled his ball. On these little bar tables, he'd run a rack at least once a night, and, I mean... on seven-footers it's not that uncommon to see someone run a table, but I mean... I was a decent player in my twenties and I probably ran... maybe a dozen tables in my life, I'd guess, but the point is, he'd run me down once at least every single night--like, maybe I'd get a turn in a game, make three or four balls, and then he'd run the rest of that table. Then he'd break and run the next rack top to bottom, break again, make five balls, miss and leave me hooked. I'd try some desperation rail shot, scratch, and then he'd take ball-in-hand and finish that rack, before breaking again and making another four balls. I might go 10 minutes and not even get a turn. Tom could tear it up. He was a flat-out stick. We'd play all night--doubles when there was someone to play against, and then singles when no one was around. I'd buy, because I could--I was waiting tables then and always had some cash--and because, well... loser pays, right? And at bar time, they'd play that "Mister Sandman" song, and I'd find some way back to my apartment while he stumbled through that cold city back to campus, to the science building, where I guess he'd sneak in and sleep in a lab.
Turned out our friendship mostly ended on the night of my engagement party, which was on a Friday in the winter. Kari's parents lived (still live) in a little town called Park River, which is an hour north of Grand Forks, and after she & I got engaged, they threw us a party up at their house on a Friday night. Park River was a fun town back then, and I was excited to take my friends up there--we'd eat and drink at her parents place and then go to the little downtown, where there were a surprising number of fun bars for a town of a thousand people. So, Friday afternoon comes and everyone gets done with school and work in Grand Forks, and we're getting ready to drive up to Park River for the party. I'm with a couple of my boys--Kari's going up separately with a couple of her ladies--and I decide it'd be a good idea to swing by Down Under and see if Tom's there, which of course he is, and we don't have to twist his arm to convince him to come with us. He's happy to come. It'll be a fun night, and he'll get to sleep on a couch or a bed, so hell yes he's in. We drive up there and it's a beautiful, freezing cold night in the flat clear dark, under incredible stars, and we're talking all the way up there about life and books and Tom's telling stories and talking shit with my buddies & me. I suppose Tom's probably several beers deep already. And we get there and have a bite to eat at Kari's folks' place and drink some toasts and beers and hang out for a while, and we go downtown and Tom & I run doubles at The Club, which has a nice old table with red felt, and then we go back to the house, late, and by this time Tom's an absolute mess. He's gross and mean drunk, spilling and saying nasty shit and he can barely stand or even sit on the kitchen stool, where at one point he's reaching directly into a little crockpot of meatballs and fumbling around trying to grab one, until he finally just drops it on the floor and, slowly follows it down there himself, so that everyone's kind of laughing but also looking at him laying on the floor, like, "oh, shit, what the hell?" And so we hoist him up and get him into a bed--Kari's old bedroom--and he sleeps in there all night and all through the next morning to the point that it's Saturday afternoon and I've gotta work that night and so I go downstairs to that bedroom to see if he's alive, and he is, and I wake him up and he's seriously hungover--can't talk, just groans, needs help to get up out of the bed--and it's clear that he's been smoking in there all night long. It smells awful in there, and there's ashes and a handful of butts stubbed out on the end table next to Kari's bed. I don't know what I expected, and I didn't hate him or anything, but I ended up feeling embarrassed by him and probably... I don't know... a little afraid of something I saw in him, and so I just stopped looking for him after that.
At least a couple nights a week, I'd meet up with him at one of two places--The Down Under, which was this dirty shit dive under a disco-y night club, where you could get dollar pitchers of beer from noon 'til close on Fridays (even then that was incredibly cheap and also a recipe for fun-slash-disaster on a Friday), or else at Whitey's, which was on the Minnesota side of the river, and was kind of old mob classy, sort of--supposedly East Grand Forks was where the Chicago mob would send dudes who got "too hot" for the city, and Whitey's was where they'd hang out. Both places had decent coin-op pool tables, and I'd meet Tom at one or the other place, and we'd break racks all night. Dude could flat-out play, and he had a long tolerance, by which I mean that his drunk zone was big--like, if he was straight sober, he'd be okay, but then once he got a few in him, he'd catch fire, and while a lot of players might have a good half hour of drunk pool in them, he could sustain that for a long time. He was, I'd say, the single best pool player in that town, and probably the second best player I ever played regularly with (behind another great billiard character named Howard, who I worked with in Reno, Nevada, at Keystone Cue and Cushion--I sold pool tables there and Howard was the installation manager, but you could never call him Howard--he insisted on being called "Biff." Funniest guy. Best pool player I ever knew.) Anyway, with this guy Tom, you always wanted him as a doubles partner, and I got him as a partner a lot. Some nights, you could drink free for hours just riding him. But I liked to play against him quite a bit, too. I didn't beat him many times, but when I did, I knew I'd played well. How did he play? Well, he was just simple about it. He didn't crouch too low, which I do, or didn't, like... get too intense or like dance to whatever's on the jukebox, which I do. He just looked at the table maybe twice, saw the shot and the leave, bent at the waist, lined it up with a couple wrist cocks to get the feel, and then popped it. He could spin, but didn't need to a lot, because his positioning was spot on. If you hooked him, he could make a bank, but he didn't need to very often because he controlled his ball. On these little bar tables, he'd run a rack at least once a night, and, I mean... on seven-footers it's not that uncommon to see someone run a table, but I mean... I was a decent player in my twenties and I probably ran... maybe a dozen tables in my life, I'd guess, but the point is, he'd run me down once at least every single night--like, maybe I'd get a turn in a game, make three or four balls, and then he'd run the rest of that table. Then he'd break and run the next rack top to bottom, break again, make five balls, miss and leave me hooked. I'd try some desperation rail shot, scratch, and then he'd take ball-in-hand and finish that rack, before breaking again and making another four balls. I might go 10 minutes and not even get a turn. Tom could tear it up. He was a flat-out stick. We'd play all night--doubles when there was someone to play against, and then singles when no one was around. I'd buy, because I could--I was waiting tables then and always had some cash--and because, well... loser pays, right? And at bar time, they'd play that "Mister Sandman" song, and I'd find some way back to my apartment while he stumbled through that cold city back to campus, to the science building, where I guess he'd sneak in and sleep in a lab.
Turned out our friendship mostly ended on the night of my engagement party, which was on a Friday in the winter. Kari's parents lived (still live) in a little town called Park River, which is an hour north of Grand Forks, and after she & I got engaged, they threw us a party up at their house on a Friday night. Park River was a fun town back then, and I was excited to take my friends up there--we'd eat and drink at her parents place and then go to the little downtown, where there were a surprising number of fun bars for a town of a thousand people. So, Friday afternoon comes and everyone gets done with school and work in Grand Forks, and we're getting ready to drive up to Park River for the party. I'm with a couple of my boys--Kari's going up separately with a couple of her ladies--and I decide it'd be a good idea to swing by Down Under and see if Tom's there, which of course he is, and we don't have to twist his arm to convince him to come with us. He's happy to come. It'll be a fun night, and he'll get to sleep on a couch or a bed, so hell yes he's in. We drive up there and it's a beautiful, freezing cold night in the flat clear dark, under incredible stars, and we're talking all the way up there about life and books and Tom's telling stories and talking shit with my buddies & me. I suppose Tom's probably several beers deep already. And we get there and have a bite to eat at Kari's folks' place and drink some toasts and beers and hang out for a while, and we go downtown and Tom & I run doubles at The Club, which has a nice old table with red felt, and then we go back to the house, late, and by this time Tom's an absolute mess. He's gross and mean drunk, spilling and saying nasty shit and he can barely stand or even sit on the kitchen stool, where at one point he's reaching directly into a little crockpot of meatballs and fumbling around trying to grab one, until he finally just drops it on the floor and, slowly follows it down there himself, so that everyone's kind of laughing but also looking at him laying on the floor, like, "oh, shit, what the hell?" And so we hoist him up and get him into a bed--Kari's old bedroom--and he sleeps in there all night and all through the next morning to the point that it's Saturday afternoon and I've gotta work that night and so I go downstairs to that bedroom to see if he's alive, and he is, and I wake him up and he's seriously hungover--can't talk, just groans, needs help to get up out of the bed--and it's clear that he's been smoking in there all night long. It smells awful in there, and there's ashes and a handful of butts stubbed out on the end table next to Kari's bed. I don't know what I expected, and I didn't hate him or anything, but I ended up feeling embarrassed by him and probably... I don't know... a little afraid of something I saw in him, and so I just stopped looking for him after that.
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