The knock at my door was my neighbor, and when I answered, Karen Davis presented me with a bunch of lilacs that she had clipped from her bushes. As she was leaving my porch, she was hailed by another person. “Wait, wait,” the woman called out as she hurried across the street toward my lawn. “I haven’t met him.” Karen introduced me to Gayla, who told me that she had seen me walking up North Hawthorne Lane toward 10th Street. “Are you the man I see going to the bus stop?” I asked Gayla if she had seen me walking with a long pink case and told her that the case contained my pool cue, and I was taking it to the nearby tables. “Do you hustle,” Gayla asked with a smile. “Not anymore,” I replied.
Walter Tevis wrote The Hustler, a book about pool players who try to “hustle” other players into a competition with the hope of winning large amounts of money. That book became a movie starring Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, George C. Scott, and Piper Laurie. The movie came out in 1961, but I had been shooting pool for some years before that, and don’t remember seeing it before 1965, when I met a pool player at my one of my jobs.
After graduation from high school, I entered the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, left my job as a page in the closed stacks of the University of Pittsburgh library and went to work as a psychiatric attendant at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. I went from shelving and retrieving books to interactions and wrestling matches with psychiatric patients. One of the perks of the psych job was the three Ps: Piano, ping pong and pool. The 8th floor had those three, but I spent most of my free time on the pool table. One of the other psychiatric attendants was an excellent pool player and we became friends; when a space became available in the home that he was renting, I moved in. Donny was a former Marine who was working the night shift while attending the University of Pittsburgh. I learned a lot more about him when we became roommates, and most of the lessons were on the pool table. Donny gave me my first custom cue and showed me the finer points of the game, and when I needed money for art supplies, he showed me how to hustle.
Donny and I would go to a pool room and pretend that we did not know each other. We would shoot pool and exchange money. Other players would see our games and get involved; I would retire from the game and Donny would win lots of money, and I would have money for art supplies.
As I told Gayla, I no longer hustle. I will not play the game for money in bars and pool halls. When others ask to even play “for a beer,” I decline. Outside of Las Vegas, gambling on pool games can be a dangerous activity, especially when the loser did not expect to lose, and expresses anger in body-damaging ways. I love the game, and will not give it up, but I will not gamble even a sou. (A small amount of money.) I compete, and want to win, but I don’t need “bar money” to get satisfaction from winning. When I lose — which is often — I am still able to take satisfaction in the way that I played.
Gayla, I shoot pool; I don’t need to be hustling to be happy on the pool table.
cjon3acd@att.net