Yeah, there are a lot of these on here. Making the Medium available gets people to write but most of this is probably never read except by friends and family who then have to lie about it. I am not under any illusion that this one is different, so take it as you will.
I learned things in school back when public school was pretty good. I learned a bit about the world and politics along with algebra and art. And we watched TV at home after we got one. Black and white at first. Yes, I remember when we just had radio, a big stand up one I dialed in things on. TV was better and as it got into the sixties, it got educational.
There was Walter Cronkite every night talking about that war. There was the Smothers Brothers educating us on music. There was Laugh-In and the US version of That Was The Week That Was, which was intensely satirical. And there in Life magazine or Time were the hippies and Woodstock. I turned 18 in 1969 and along with my peers, had to decide what to do about the draft. I registered, and then one night with my family, tuned in to watch some old men turn a barrel filled with cards, each with a date. You knew, by then, that the early numbers were fucked and you’d have to go or try to fake your way out of it or run for it. Or maybe you went. I later knew some that did go and got very fucked up. Luckily, the old men didn’t pull my number until towards the end, number 332. Every man of an age knows their number.
I was a scrawny kid, and never wanted to fight anyone. I made alliances with the big boys on the playground to avoid trouble and had a defender. Somehow made it through. I think I certainly would have died if I was sent over there, but you don’t ever know. I knew I hated the war and what it had already done to me and my friends. We knew we hated ROTC and wanted to grow our hair long and smoke pot and trip. I knew I wanted to get away from my family who were not very supportive of any of this. Yes, they did buy me or let me buy some records — the Beatles, the Doors — and let me go to some jazz concerts, the MJQ because I was listening to jazz on the radio and loved it. But my Dad hated the hippies and wasn’t that interested in whatever I was going to do anyway. I was his 7th child, although we didn’t find out about the first four until later. My Mom went to church, which I also hated, and tried to tell us all the awful things that could happen to us in life. I had to get away.
“Born on the Fourth of July” had a character for Ron Kovic’s younger brother and that seemed like me. My oldest brother had volunteered for the war but got sent back because of his poor vision. My next oldest brother stayed in school until he got his PhD and the war was over. Nice. They were at risk and survived, but I was a little young like Kovic’s brother. Later I met a guy that volunteered in ’72 of all things and came back fucked up, so it could have still happened. But seeing all this, having to go visit the Friends Service Committee and others to try to figure out how to dodge the draft was no fun, very serious. Seeing the four dead in Ohio was traumatic. I turned out for Gene McCarthy in ’68 and stuffed envelopes at the office, then went door to door with my best friend handing out lit and talking to people. That didn’t work, and then we were left to protest Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. The party didn’t matter to me at the time. I just knew he wanted the war and it was wrong, very, very wrong.
We brought him down, I think. All our protesting was too much for him and then we got Nixon, the lying bastard. But I thought by ‘72 that people would see he was lying about the war and wouldn’t end the war, but would send more people to die. After he won in ‘72, he ordered the biggest bombing raids yet, the Christmas bombings. I lost hope. If the country couldn’t see through a fake like him, what was the point? I didn’t do anything political again until 1987.
What I learned in all that was to smoke pot and trip. Luckily I never got into harder drugs except a little meth or coke on occasion. But partying was my thing through the seventies and I worked crappy jobs in hotels. Had a lot of fun though. One day we traveled across the country and I ended up in Washington state where I worked in restaurants and got very serious about shooting pool. I got pretty good but not the best in town or the best in tournaments, mainly because I choked. The success was always too much for me. But pool was good to me, I had friends, and learned a thing or two.
I learned I could beat the biggest toughest guy in the pool hall because I had more skill and a better strategy. I learned that there were lots of ways to do things and that you had to adjust your plan as you went along because the arrangement of the balls changed every shot. If you didn’t change with the flow of the game, you were not likely to win. This was a good lesson and served me well throughout life. You need flex.
I learned fancy and flashy isn’t always a winner either. It still came down to whether you could get in position for the shot and then make it. You needed good fundamentals. This was always a hard thing for me to manage because putting a lot of english on the ball or shooting a fancy shot is a lot of fun. It just lowers your chances of winning. It’s a balance then between showing off and getting the job done and taking down the cash.
There are levels to that, of course. A hustler will learn to look bad very convincingly. A fancy player may not really be that good. I was never any good at hustling because I could never hide my speed and never tried.
An old guy named Phil came into the pool hall one day after his wife had died. He just wanted something to do, but he was a good player. He had a nice Palmer cue from when they were really good cues. He would play nine ball or eight ball with us, but he liked to play line-up. What? Line-up is a variation of straight pool where you line the balls up on the spot after each turn. If you get them all in, they all line up, all 15, and you have to know how to end up with the right position and make the shots to run the rack. Phil could run some racks. After we got over our shock, we’d play with him for hours and learn all we could. Sometimes old people know things you don’t and are willing to teach you.
Some other players found out about Phil and put him to work on their pool league team. I guess he enjoyed it but then one night he just dropped dead in the middle of the match. I wanted to keep Phil and didn’t want him to go with them and blamed them a little for his death and the loss of my friend. He was a good guy. He just wandered in the pool hall, made friends, and had fun. I learned from Phil.
But it all broke down one day when I got fired from my cook job for complaining about my schedule. I found out I was lucky to have a schedule. It was devastating to me and I got depressed and threw in the towel. I called up my brother and said I’m done and I need help. He couldn’t do it, but my sister in another state could, so I moved and started over. It’s good to have family that are good family. We always got along. I didn’t treat my parents that well until late in my mother’s life.
