Shooting pool with the guys at O'Farrrell's
When I learned to drive and had a car, I set pins at O'Farrell's Recreation in Waukegan. It was on Washington between Genesee and Sheridan. O'Farrell at one time was a second baseman for the Cubs. (He was the National League's MVP in 1926.) When done setting for the evening, we boys sometimes played a game or two of pool. O'Farrell's is gone today, leaving dozens of boys homeless (just joking).
Setting pins was hard work but you could make two bucks an hour. Good money for those days. I worked three nights a week. Two alleys, two leagues. It gave me my spending money my last two years of high school. Today all the pin setters are all automatic.
O'Farrell's pool hall was upstairs and over the bowling alley. It was a large, dimly-lit room with a dozen or so tables. There were always a half dozen boys shooting pool. One older guy watched over everything, turning off and on the table lights and racking balls. He'd turn on the lights and collect a dime each time he racked balls. We'd give him a ration about not giving us a tight rack, good-naturedly of course, and he'd walk away muttering. No time for nonsense, besides he was busy -- someone across the room was yelling for a rack.
Those were good times.
A couple of green-shaded lights hung low over the table. They lit up the colored balls and the green felt table, but beyond that the light was subdued. At the table, John was concentrating on a difficult bank shot. Crack, balls rolled around the table but nothing dropped, he'd missed. He swore mildly and picked up his cigarette off the rail. (Back then, swearing was a few basic four-letter words, not the sophisticated ebonic rocker-rapper inventions of today.)
Out of the shadows Weener came up to the table chalking his cue and surveying the situation. Lining up his next shot he placed his cigarette on the rail and stepped back. Again, cigarette smoke was lazily curling and drifting upward and disappearing as it rose above the green shades. That scene sticks in my memory.
Cigarettes were of the unfiltered variety then; only girls would smoke those Viceroys or Marlboros. Luckys were the choice with us -- Brando and James Dean. Filters were not in fashion.
It wasn't long before somebody sank the eight ball and the game would be over. Sometimes when the game was over someone would challenge the winner. If we boys didn't know him, we'd figure he was probably a pool shark, setting us up for a bet and then taking our money. We were wary of anybody that brought his own cue.
Harold Osborn
