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1 www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com C OTTON’S Tales ••• Pool Hustler Stories from Robert LeBlanc and Friends ••• Special Feature “Surfer Rod” Curry Page 12 November, 2012 • $4.00
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November, 2012
www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
COTTON’S Tales
••• Pool Hustler Stories from Robert LeBlanc and Friends •••
Special Feature “Surfer Rod” Curry
Page 12
November, 2012 • $4.00
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Cotton’s Tales November, 2012
www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
The long-awaited outrageous tales of well-known pool player and roadman Robert LeBlanc is now available!
A lifetime of Cotton’s thrilling experiences—30 years on the road lead-ing up to becoming Technical Advisor and a cameo actor in the 2003 cult hit movie, “Poolhall Junkies” starring Christopher Walken—are
contained within 350 shocking pages of his very personal memoir, “Confes-sions of a Pool Hustler.” Great photos are also included throughout.
“Funny, I had a great little part in “Poolhall Junkies” playing St. Louie-Louie and I never shot a ball…Cotton made every one of the trick shots. God bless him.”
—Mike Massey, Nine times “World Trick Shot Champion”
Order your copy today! http://www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com$24.95 plus $4.95 postage & handling (Canada and International $10 postage)
Digital EditionsKindle: www.amazon.comOther: www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
COTTON’S TALES
PublisherRobert J. [email protected]
EditorSydney [email protected]
Production and DesignLyn Fisher
ContributorsBobby “Cotton” LeBlanc“Surfer Rod” Curry“Michigan City Sam” Langford
For subscription information visit:www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
Cotton’s TalesMonthly digital publication$4 single copy$24 annual subscription (12 issues)
©2012, Cotton’s TalesLeBlanc and Company
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Hey, all you pool players and pool lovers— welcome to you! I’m so excited about our first issue of Cotton’s Tales! I’m looking
forward to y’all reading the stories from all of the road men and scufflers from back in the good ole days; it’ll bring you back in time to when we were all gunfight-ers ! There will be many stories from the backers to the underground road men —how they made a living playing pool on the road and how they survived the life. There will also be many of my stories that I didn’t include in my book “Confessions of a Pool Hustler.” www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
Now, here’s a little news about what’s going on in the pool world. Dick Clark, my friend from Alabama, was just out here in Las Vegas promoting his exciting new pool game, “6 Pocket”! The game is a new concept that accurately determines who is the best player, all offense, no blaming bad rolls and those kinds of things. We met with one of the most influential people in the pool world and he loved the game. He must remain a secret for now, lol!
Well, in our first issue you’ll hear from “Surfer Rod” Curry the most feared 8-ball player in the country for many years! Surfer Rod had more nerve than a tight-rope walker as you will learn about when you read some of his exciting stories in this and upcoming is-sues. Also one of my backers in my traveling days, “Michigan City Sam” will have a few things to say in this issue. He is a man you’d want in your corner if things got tough, which they did quite often out on that lonely highway playing pool.
Check out the great new site www.goplaypool.com. In 2010, Mary Ann Starkey and Ramin Bakhtiari
had an idea when Mary Ann was talking to a fellow pool player. She learned that a sports bar located near where she lives had four high-quality tables. In the six years that she’d lived only minutes away from that es-tablishment, she had no idea they had Diamond tables. She thought, “There should be an application or web-site that offers a description of pool halls and sports bars and tells you everything you could possibly want to know about what they do.” The website was born, and is complete with pool hall and sports bar profiles with tournament schedules, contact information, pho-to galleries, products and services, and much more. (You might even see my book featured there!)
In closing, I’d like to mention there will be a 6-pocket event here in Vegas next year, so come out and have a good time, and stay tuned to “Cotton’s Tales” for the latest information. Well it’s time to “rack-em-up!” See you next month.
Your friend,
Bobby Cotton
FROM THE
PUBLISHER
Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc
“I’m looking forward to y’all reading the stories from all of the road men and scufflers from back in the good ole
days.”
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INSIDEPAGE 8SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD: SWEET PEA AND NINE BALL IN ARKANSAS Bobby “Cotton” LeBlanc shares a hair-curling tale about a gun gone wrong.
PAGE 11FOOTLOOSE AND FANCY-FREE “Michigan City Sam” Langford races against a track star. Who’s the winner?
PAGE 12MOHAIR SUITS, PURPLE SHOES, AND WHEELCHAIRS “Surfer Rod” clears the air about Jew Paul and spinning a player around in his wheelchair, resulting in a face-down dragging across the parking lot.
PAGE 14INTERVIEW WITH A POOL HUSTLER Author Sydney Leblanc questions her brother Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc about his introduc-tion to pool playing and his early years on the road.
PAGES 22 & 23RESOURCES, PODCASTS & VIDEOS Links to websites that any pool enthusiast will be sure to enjoy.
“I shoot better than my boyfriend. Wanna Play?”
SIGN UP TODAY for 12 exciting issues of COTTON’S TALES (a monthly publication)
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Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc
Shot Through the Head Sweet Pea and 9-Ball in Arkansas
It was hot and sweltering in late July, 1967 when I was awakened by
the shrill sound of the telephone ringing from across the room. As I stumbled out of bed to see who was calling I had no clue of the time. I figured it was around noon from the piercing light that was sneaking through the cracks in the blinds. I was annoyed that someone was calling me so early ‘cause I liked to sleep in, just in case I was in action late into the night.
Well, I finally found the phone, a heavy black one with the rotary dial. I picked up the receiver — it had to weigh at least three pounds — and I heard the gravelly, jovial voice of my friend “Sweet Pea” from that little hilbilly town, Brinkley, Arkansas. He said, “Wake up we got action down in Helena, there’s some Mexican down there challenging everybody to play some $30 or $40 9-ball at the pool room.” Im-mediately my juices started flowing at the thought of playing a stranger; I lived for this kind of excitement! Sweet Pea said, “I’ll pick you up in an hour and a half, so be ready!
So, I jumped into the shower, put on my nicest clothes
(I liked to look good when I was playing), and went outside to wait for my tooty horse, Sweet Pea. It was only a few minutes until he arrived, but I was already drenched in sweat from the humidity. When he rolled up in a brand new Coupe Deville Cadillac, I jumped in with my cue in hand greeted by a wave of cold air, George and Tammy on the radio, and Sweet Pea’s chubby, freckled out-stretched hand. We had about a two-and a-half-hour drive to
Helena, but I was excited about the ride because Sweet Pea had so many stories to tell about his gambling. He was probably the best
“Hicky Pitch” player around (a short card game)!
It seemed like we had been driving just a few minutes when we arrived at downtown Helena at the pool room. As soon as we parked the car, I bolted toward the pool room doors like a scared rabbit, ready to break them
balls! Sweet Pea hollered, “wait up” so we could walk in together. As we entered the pool room, smoke was in the
air, hillbillies at the bar drinkin’, and a crowd of people in the back room where there were six beautiful well-manicured 4x8’s
just waiting for me. On the back table knocking the balls around was a stocky, mean-looking Mexican with a scarred-up face shooting in balls at warp speed with this beautiful slip stroke! You could hear the balls slap as they entered the brown leather pocket. What a great sound!
I walked back toward him and cockily asked him, “What ya’ wanna do?” He kinda’ looked me up and down and grinned and said, “I’ll play you some 9-ball for $30 a game!” I hurried back up to the front of the bar to tell Sweet Pea what he wanted to play for and he said, “Go shoot him down.” I went back to the pool table and said, “You got a game. Let’s move up to the front table and call it,” as I took a quarter out of my pocket. I won the flip and broke the balls 100 miles an hour and nothing fell. The Mexican ran out shooting every ball dead center into the wicket. The next game he broke the balls, same results, nothing fell and I ran out! Before I could break the balls, I heard all this commotion up front at the bar. There was yelling, cussing, and as I ran up there to see what was going on my friend Sweet Pea was standing toe-to-toe with some big, mean-ass-looking hillbilly. They were shoving each other and all of a sudden the hillbilly started to take a swing and Sweet Pea took out
“Immediately my juices started flowing at the thought of play-ing a stranger; I lived for this kind of excite-ment!”
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his pistol and cracked this guy on the forehead. As he did, the gun went off and the bullet went through the top of the guy’s head! It was deafen-ing, and the guy crashed to the floor!
It only took a couple of minutes until the police and ambulance arrived. They put the guy on a stretcher, handcuffed Sweet Pea and off they went, me still standing there with a shocked look on my face wondering what in the hell I was gonna do. Needless to say the pool game was over, so not knowing when Sweet Pea was going to get out of jail, I walked over to the pay phone on the wall, called my buddy Ronnie Carter from Memphis, told him what happened and asked him to come and get me. He said “I’ll be there in a hurry.”
As soon as I hung up the phone it wasn’t more than 20 minutes later when Sweet Pea came walking back in the poolroom with a big ol’ grin on his face. I asked him, “How did you get out of jail so fast?” He just smiled and kinda’ laughed— with a look on his face that told me he just conned the cops somehow. What luck!
Well, we didn’t get to finish our pool game, everybody left the place which was probably a good thing cause the Mexican I was playing was none other than “Mexican Johnny Vasquez” the best player in Chicago at the time. I didn’t make any money on that little road trip, but I rode back to Memphis with my friend Ronnie, still shocked at what happened. But I heard that Sweet Pea wound up bustin’ all of Johnny’s backers later that night playing Hickey Pitch anyway! q
“... the gun went off and the bullet went through the top of the guy’s head! It was deafening, and the guy crashed to the floor!”
“Michigan City Sam” Langford Footloose and Fancy-Free
More than 20 years ago, probably in 1976 or so, Robert and I were in Seymour, Indiana and we done busted everybody in the bar and this girl she was some kind of a pool player Robert beat,
maybe a girlfriend, not sure. But I do know that she ran track. So, this is not a pool story, but one that is kind of unusual that happened at a bar so I thought it would be fun to tell it. She was talking about wanting to race me! How strange is that! So, everyone in the bar all scraped up $100 because she said she wanted to race me one square block on foot. Robert didn’t want me to race because she was real fast. He wanted to play pool and not waste any time on this nonsense.
I did it anyway, and we got out there and the whole front highway had people lined up watching on the street. We took off running and we got about half-way down the block, and I’m ahead of her by about six yards and she’d seen I could run and shouted, “Oh!” and then she fell. Ah- HA!! So she fell on purpose. She said, “Mister, mister help me I twisted my ankle.” But I knew that she was going to jump up and take off running — that was what she was going to do. She was going to trick me. But, just in case she really was hurt, I went back and I helped her up and took her by the arm. I put my arm around her waist so she couldn’t get away from me. She said, “Don’t take our last money.” She was kind of whimpering. She said, “We are dead broke.”
I said, “Well that’s your guy’s money, and I can’t help that. We are all broke.” But anyway, everybody is wondering why we were walking and not running, and when we come around the corner Robert and the others were standing around wondering what happened to the race. I told ‘em what happened and that I thought she was going to try and trick me with a twisted ankle and take off running again. I thought that was really funny, her trying to trick me out of winning and taking her money. Well, I didn’t take the money because she put such a sad story on me. Oh well, it was okay since we done beat everybody in the bar anyway. Robert laughed so hard. q
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“Surfer Rod” Curry
Mohair Suits, Purple Shoes, and Wheelchairs
In Robert’s book, Confessions, he said he thought I beat Jew Paul pitch-ing quarters, but I didn’t. I tried to get him to pitch a quarter to the spot on a pool table, but he declined and offered to do so outside to a crack
in the sidewalk. He was my elder so I would retrieve the quarters each time for the next pitch. It was snowing so hard that the crack was covered with snow after every toss so we had someone sweeping the crack clean each time. After a while though, my fingers froze and he beat me out of $2000. When I got back inside, Cornbread Red said, “Why didn’t you wait? He would have pitched to the spot sooner or later.” But I have no patience for stalling around; I wanted action as fast as possible. He was right, though.
Just like Robert, I also teamed up with Mike Morrison from Huntsville, Alabama. While traveling with his magazine crew, he hit too many small towns that had no pool action. Our deal was we split the pool action and I was to receive money from two of his workers. They didn’t make any money, though. He would loan them an advance and after charging them for the motel and their food, they never had any money, either. He would send ½ the magazine money to his magazine HQ in Atlanta and at the end of the month, they would send ½ of that back to him. He was making good money, but none of his crew were.
Back then (probably in the 60s), we picked up two girls in Jacksonville, Florida and they rode with us in his Winnebago to New Orleans. Each of us liked the other guy’s girl better so on the way back, we switched girlfriends! While in New Orleans, we went across the river to a big card game. He was losing more than I was and when I saw them cheating (cutting the cards in a crimp), I quit. Mike didn’t know and I couldn’t tell him they were cheating so I just said, “Let’s go.” He was hesitant be-cause he was losing but was getting ready to go when one of the cheaters said, “Come back when you can stay longer.” Then Mike started yapping
about how much money he had, that he could buy them, etc. I thought we were going to get heisted right there. I feel we were lucky to get out of there without trouble.
We parted ways soon thereafter when I found out I couldn’t trust him. We were talking in private about our girlfriends and I mentioned an “asset” my girl had. That was in confidence and he told the girl what I had said. We said our good-byes after that. He was a hot head.
Mike was a go-off in that one time he and I were playing Monopoly for real money (1 % of the play money). When it was over, I had all the play money and all the properties. It was over $1500 in real money and he paid me some of it in mohair suits and matching colored (purple, green and orange) shoes. Ha! Another time in Huntsville, I was winning a lot of money from the locals. One of the players was in a wheelchair and acted friendly and put his arms around my shoulders now and then. I didn’t think much of it until one time he tried to hold me around my neck and sucker punch me. Before he could do so, I broke away from his grip and spun him around in his wheelchair. Now, all his bud-dies want to fight me for my ill-treatment of their wheelchair friend. I told them I couldn’t fight them all at the same time but would fight them one at time. The toughest one challenged me and I quickly threw him to the ground and drug his nose in the parking lot, face down. After that, no one else stepped up. Then I left, but in the fight, I ripped my new black mohair suit I had recently bought in Georgetown, DC. It was ruined but I had plenty more suits like that. They were cool back then!
See you next time with more stories. q
“Surfer Rod”
“I told them I couldn’t fight them all at the same time but would fight them one at time.”
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INTERVIEW WITH A POOL HUSTLER: Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc
By Sydney LeBlanc The following is an interview that I conducted with my brother, Robert “Cotton” LeBlanc where we discussed his early back-ground and his experience of being on the road. For the com-plete story, visit www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com. We hope you enjoy the conversation — Sydney LeBlanc
Syd: Robert, for those readers who don’t already know you or haven’t read your book yet, let’s talk a little bit about your time on the road. I remember you were about 14 when you left home for the road. Can you tell our readers more about that?
Robert: Well, I was playing pool around Memphis for a year or so and I was making a few dollars here and there. I ran into two buddies of mine, Dale Lane and Ronnie Up-ton at Bowl Haven bowling alley out in Whitehaven, an area of Memphis where Elvis Presley used to live. They said they just got back from a bowling tournament at the Cotton Bowling Palace in Dallas and while they was bowling there, people were trying to hustle them to play pool. And come to find out it was the biggest action pool room, actually one of the top two action pool rooms in Dallas. That’s also where my friend, the infamous George McGann, used to hang around with them. So while we were in Whitehaven, Ronnie and Dale asked me if I wanted to take a trip with them one weekend to Dallas and try to make some money, and of course I said ‘yes.’ That was actually my second road trip, but that’s pretty much how it all got started.
Syd: You were about 15,weren’t you Robert?
Robert: Yep, I was 15.
Syd: Weren’t you a little nervous to go on the road like that considering the fact
that you were only out on one trip before that?
Robert: No, not really. My first trip was with David Baker and Larry Spence and a few other good players down to Hernando, Mississippi. We beat this old millionaire out of quite a bit of money playing Tonk and then we went to New Orleans. After I got down there and saw ev-erybody gamblin’ it really got in my blood. I was ready to go back on the road, try to make some money and have fun.
Syd: I remember you just coming home for a while and then leav-ing again. You were always in such a hurry to get back on the road.
Robert: I would stay gone for months at a time, then I would go back to Memphis for maybe a week and stay with my mom and then as soon as someone suggested another place to go to try and make some money, I would take off again.
Syd: But when you would take off again, would you go with people you just met or with people you knew with a reputation? How did you size up some of the people that you went out on the road with? We always worried about the dangerous people you met.
Robert: Usually I would go with someone from Memphis, buddies of mine, like Danny Daniels, “The Mouse” and of course, Dale
Lane. Dale was the guy who died in the horrible car accident I was in back in Texas. I talk about that in my book. So, I’d go with people I knew from
Memphis and then we would hook up with someone in the city where we went, like in Dallas, and we’d have somebody take us around. These guys are called “steer men.” They would actually show us around where all the action was and we would give them a percentage like 20% or whatever.
Syd: But since you were so new to being on the road, how were you able to perfect the game and learn new strategies and things like that? Did you just do this on your own or did you learn from others who maybe were more experienced than you were?
Robert: Well, in the beginning, when I was just hanging around Memphis I met a top pool player named Richard Austin and I watched him play for quite a while
Too much sister!!! Robert, age 3, Sydney, age 6
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before I took off for the road. When I first started, I played mostly straight pool, but nobody gambled at that and then I started playing nine ball which is a pretty simple game, so I didn’t get good at other games like one pocket, or banks until years later. I was probably in my mid-to late-20s before I was playing good one pocket and banks.
Syd: Were you starting to get a reputation then as being a really good player and someone to reckon with?
Robert: Well, when I was 20, I went to California and wound up beating several of the top players that people always talk about now like, New York Blackie, Cole Dickson and Hawaiian Brian and all these top players. I wound up beating all those guys playing—which was an amazing thing because they were the best, they were the top players in the United States. Then I went to Phoenix and beat another great player there named Weldon Rodgers who is still around. The guy who owned the pool room in Phoenix, his name was Marvin Landau, it was called the Golden Eight Ball and we were at the pool room while the Johnson City tournament was going on in Tennessee. He called back there and told all the guys there if anybody wanted to spot me the last two playing 9-ball they could fly out and play a session for $10,000. Well, nobody came out and the last two playing 9-ball is like nothing and so everybody heard how good I was playing ‘cause nobody came out.
Syd: Wow, what a story; but the ones that you beat, all the really great ones and the legends, how did they feel about you beating them?
Robert: Well, you know, I played a few of them more than once, I didn’t beat them every time, of course, but there was a few of the top players I only played once or twice and I beat them and we never played again for whatever reason. Sometimes we became friends. For example Joe Salazar who I beat in California, we became good friends. I beat Cole Dickson and we became friends and never played again. So, they didn’t care, it’s all about the money, it’s not personal anyway, you’re try-ing to win the money and you keep score, it’s not like you’re in a fist fight and you’re mad, you’re just trying to win the money.
Syd: Yeah, I was just wondering because like they were older, they had more expe-rience and had maybe more skill, and at some point to have a young upstart beat them must have really surprised them. They didn’t say it was just luck or anything,
they knew you were really skilled?
Robert:Yes, they had heard about me playin’ everybody, I was a real like gun-fighter. Here is one funny story: Cole Dickson was in town and he came to the bar looking for action and I got there about an hour later and I didn’t see him, so I said, “Where did he go?” I knew he beat everyone in the country so I wanted to play him to see if I could beat him cause it was like a gunfighter type thing. So I was looking for him. Well, I heard that he just left the bar and went to Denny’s restaurant and me and my friend went down there and I dragged him out of there, back down to the bar and broke him, so it was pretty funny.
Syd: Did he not want to play you at first, or he was just hanging out?
Robert: Well, he was in the bar looking’ for action, so of course he wanted to play because he was one of the best players in the whole country. As a matter of fact, we were mistaken for each other many times. We were often described in the say way— we were about the same age, both had long blonde hair and about the same size so I was always getting mistaken for him and he was always getting mistaken for me.
Syd: That’s pretty funny. But I don’t think I would have mistaken the two of you!
Robert: Yeah, it was really funny. He said after I beat him on a bar table he wanted to play me on a 4-1/2 x 9 but I didn’t play him then. I couldn’t have beat him on the 4-1/2 x 9 at the time. He was a great, great, great player.
Syd: He’s still around, right?
Robert: Yeah, he’s in his 60s, and the last I heard he was living in Montana. He had been living up in Northern California for years. I saw him about a year or two ago. He doesn’t play as much anymore, but he’s really a legend. He’s one of the best players around.
Syd: Well, let me ask you this: how did you manage to stay away from the bad ele-ment, the danger, all the drugs and the drinking, I know you must have done some drinking in your time, and I remember you drinking a beer or two at home behind mom’s back, but getting messed up on drugs, that would really be hard on you and it could be a disaster too, right?
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Robert: I’ve probably only taken pills maybe once and that’s when Weldon sug-gested it, even though I was against taking them. I was playing a guy named Nor-man Hitchcock in Oklahoma City, and about three months earlier he had just won the Stardust Open in Las Vegas. I was with Weldon and Norman beat me out of $6,000 when I was taking this drug, and yeah, it was horrible. I’ve always been real hyper anyway and I’ve been accused a thousand times of taking drugs because when I was playing and I was younger I had so much energy and I was so hyper, people would say, “This kid’s on speed.” And I never took any and I’ve seen so many people who did and now their teeth are falling out and everything is going bad, so I just never got into it. Luckily, luckily.
Syd: Well that one time you took a pill it was probably speed, so did it make you feel speedy or did it make you feel bad?
Robert: I was a nervous wreck. My friend Weldon dropped all this powder in my hand and I said, “What is that?” He said, “It’s a combination of like eight pills so take this and you’ll really play good.” I said, “I don’t want to do that.” He said, “Well, try it anyway; I’m putting the money up.” So, I ate it and about 15 minutes later I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t make a ball. It was horrible, truly horrible. I never did anything like that again.
Syd: No telling what that combination of pills was…. could have killed you.
Robert: I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t work, and I felt awful, and that was about the last time I took any speed or drugs of any kind.
Syd: So, nothing like cocaine to keep your energy going, huh?
Robert: No, no, no. I’ve been around mountains of cocaine, I would never do it. I have too much of an addictive personality anyway. I know if I liked it I’d probably do it again. So, I never even tried it.
Syd: That’s good, I’m glad to hear that you never needed drugs to prop you up and to help you win your games. Now, after having been on the road for so many years, I’m sure there are lots of things you learned along the way, things to do and things not to do. Is there one lesson that really stands out in your mind that you learned or something you would want to pass on to someone else thinking about getting into the life of pool?
Robert: Well, there are probably two things, important things. One would be that no matter how much money you win, take a percentage of your winnings and put it back to where you can’t get a hold of it. If you win $1,000 you can probably make do with $900, so put that extra $100 away where you can’t touch it because there will come a day when you’ll get sick of playing pool for money and there will be nothing to fall back on. That’s the number one thing. The number two thing is you’ll probably meet in your entire life only three or four people you can call your real friends and those are the people you always take care of, and you never turn them around.
Syd: Well, those sound like really good lessons, really important things to know. Again, as you look back over all the years that you’ve been on the road, were there a couple of sad things that really made you unhappy or things that maybe you even think about from time to time today?
Robert: Yes, I found my dog Ginger, a little 10 pound Terrier, in the rain in Mem-phis, Tennessee in 1972 and I had her on the road with me for about 15 years. She died of uterine cancer when she was 15 years old and that was one of the saddest times of my life. And another sad thing was my second wife, Sherrill (actually my third wife, but I don’t count the first wife that I married when I was 16 in Mexico) but Sherrill had the sweetest family and the sweetest grandmother and grandfather and then we split up. It’s sad how, for some reason, you just cut those ties and you lose contact and you never see those people again and that’s kind of sad, I think.
Syd: That is sad, for sure. Is there anything that you regret about being on the road? Let me put it this way, do you regret leaving home and going on the road, and not going into some other line of work or another profession? (Like an author? Ha ha.) Do you regret any of it?
Robert: Hmm, well, no, I don’t regret it because things happen the way things happen I guess. I’ve had a lot of fun, met a lot of great people, been out with a lot of nice women, been married to some really nice women. You never know, if I had never left Memphis, I might be back there now weighing 300 pounds with eight grandkids bouncing on my knee. So, I don’t know. For my lifestyle, I think it’s turned out better for me this way.
Plus, I thought many times about if I could have any profession, what I would like
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to d. Be a lawyer, doctor, whatever, I can’t think of one thing I would have wanted to do. The only thing I’d like to do is if I could make a living helping animals some kind of way. Yeah, something like that, something to do with animals where I could help them out in some kind of way, whatever it may be.
Syd: That would be a great thing to do, for sure. We are both animal lovers and you always look out for them. I remember you even rescued a hurt pigeon once. Okay, so before I leave the interview with you Robert, do you want to tell our read-ers one or two stories? Then perhaps they can read more in your book?
Robert: Sure, let’s see. One time I was playing this guy in Dallas in a joint called The Airport Lounge where all the murderers hung around. A guy by the name of Don Fir owned it and me and Ronnie Carter were there. This is kinda stupid but I was down shooting the nine ball playing this guy for $20 a game which was of course, a lot of money back then, this is like in 1966 or 67, right before my car wreck. This bar was out on a road called Airline Highway, it was at the Airport Inn and the place was where all truckers went, a really rough place and they always had a bunch of hookers there. Well, I was down shooting this nine ball and Ron-nie’s sitting behind me watching the game and right when I got ready to shoot this girl was in my line of vision, straight ahead of me and had this miniskirt on and when I shot the ball, she kind of crossed her legs (like Sharon Stone did in the interrogation scene in the movie Basic Instinct) and it shocked me to where I, of course, missed the shot. There’s a lot more to the story than that but it was kind of funny that I totally lost my concentration!
Here is another quick story. When me and my friend Roy Lee Mullins were in Ala-bama for a while gambling down there, there was a guy who backed pool players and he also played pool himself. He had a really nice big house on a mountain with a nice pool table in his game room. His name was Charlie Gamble, what a cool name, Charlie Gamble. So, he called a big, overweight hillbilly player named Leon who looked like Junior Sample (the guy on the old TV show, Hee Haw) to play me some nine ball at the house. I beat him like eight or 10 in a row, and Charlie got me off to the side and told me that he asked Leon, “Leon, what’s the matter? What’s going on here?” And Leon says, “Hey Charlie, I just can’t get a toe-hold.” A slang meaning he can’t get a grip on the game, which I thought was hilarious. What a hillbilly!
Syd: Robert, before we leave the interview, for some of the people who are reading the magazine, they are probably all pool enthusiasts who love the game and some are young and some are old, but is there any general advice you might want to give somebody out there who is a real pool enthusiast who might need some kind of advice?
Robert: Well, I talk to all the young players, like I know some of the younger guys pretty well and I always tell them, you like doing this now, but don’t pass up any business opportunities along the way because a lot of times you meet these busi-ness owners and presidents of companies and they are always excited about the dark side of pool and they always want to butter you up and do something with you. Just don’t pass up any opportunities because you might be sorry you did one day. I’ve done it. I’ve passed up many opportunities.
Syd: So you can speak from experience then.
Robert: Yeah, don’t overlook anything.
Syd: That’s good advice because we don’t stay young forever and unless you are independently wealthy you’re still going to need a way to support yourself as you grow older.
Robert: Yup
Syd: Thank you for spending some time with us today, Robert. I hope you will be sharing more stories with readers of “Cotton’s Tales” each month. In the meantime, readers can pick up your book, Confessions of a Pool Hustler at your website www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com or on Amazon. You even have a Kindle version eb-ook. Until next time, Robert, stay out of trouble or big sis will be after you! q
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Cotton’s Tales November, 2012
www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com www.confessionsofapoolhustler.com
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