DOES ANYBODY PLAY SNOOKER?

I was never very good at pool. I played quite a bit when I was in my late teens, early twenties. But I shot too hard. And too crooked. I tensed up. I choked. I just wasn't too good.

When we bought a house one time, there was a slate pool table in the basement which the owner had no interest in trying to move. I thought it would be great to have my own Brunswick table.

Mostly we put a table tennis top over the felt and played ping pong more than pool. I wasn't very good at ping pong either. I could never put the juice on the ball that made it hard to return and my returns were always too high resulting in a slam by my opponents. Well, not always, but I was probably better at pool.

The game I liked was snooker with the red balls, unnumbered, and the score that was recorded on a wire from the ceiling. A slide of discs indicated how many points one accumulated. But it was hard and had to be played on a snooker table with even smaller pockets.

Pool helped pass my college free time. It was good that I didn't have to try to make a living at it, or help pay my way through school. Had that been the case, I'd have lasted no longer than a semester. Maybe just a Mid-term. But it could have been worse. I could have had to wager on ping pong.