Pete’s Baby Blue Mercury Monarch and the art of pool (3 photos)

Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by René Hackstetter.

Pete owned the Pool Hall. I racked balls, cleaned spittoons and swept up three nights a week, two bucks a night, cash.

If you looked north on Okanagan Street, past the Advertiser office, that would be the “Ball Hall.” Inside, past the shuttered ice cream parlour and café, lay six tables, the first and best, reserved for Pete and his old pals who played when the hot, dusty Spallumcheen day was drawing to a close.

There was a little red Coke machine that swallowed our dimes. We always tried to extricate an extra one of those cool little green bottles with it’s magic fluid that propelled us through an afternoon in Armstrong.

I skipped Latin to shoot pool. My old man discovered the correspondence lessons inside the chest of drawers one day and that was it..summer school to finish the damn things off..through June!

My ability to conjugate amo, amare, amati, amatum is not nearly as good as my pool game. Veni, Vidi, Vici, said Caesar when he went into Gaul. Sure.

Only the angel who falls knows the depths of Hell. We all wanted to be Fast Eddie Felson. Paul Newman was our hero in The Hustler. We all wanted to play against Minnesota Fats and beat him.

There weren’t too many hustlers in Armstrong, unless you counted Simpson or Becker. They sure had the hair and the moves. Grease, pure and simple. At least that’s what it looked like when you were a fourteen-year-old outsider with two teachers for parents and you wore specs. Geez.

Pete always drove an immaculate, polished, baby blue, 1952 Monarch. He kept that in perfect shape. It was at least fifteen years old but looked mint! Pete would drive that car back and forth from his house on Wright to the Pool Hall.

Pete wore St. George armbands to keep his sleeves up when he leaned over the number one table to take a shot. As I said, that was the table reserved for Pete and his old buddies that congregated with him in the darkness of the Pool Hall. The younger guys had to rent the tables further down. Their baize was more worn than the first two or three tables. As your game improved you advanced, by degrees, up to the front.

Pete’s bridge wasn’t very pronounced. In fact, he seemed to keep his left hand limp, with the thumb barely touching the forefinger to bridge the cue. He often tapped the cue ball very lightly, always knowing exactly how much “drift” was on the table. He had a light hand.

Pete’s gone and so is the car, but I’m still shooting pool. I learned my game from Pete, and also learned a few lessons from working for him. He didn’t say much, mostly taught by example. It wasn’t about winning or losing, it was about playing the game.

Play shape. Know where your ball lands after you hit it. Keep your smoke off the edge of the table and don’t sit on the balk. Important stuff like that. Latin be damned. Veni, Vidi, Vici.

Copyright René Hackstetter 2020.