A good friend, who grew up in Southeast Arkansas, but not in Warren, asked me recently about dominoes and playing card games in the city’s now long-gone pool halls.
Not in Warren, was my absolute reply.
By Maylon Rice
Saline River Chronicle Feature Contributor
And this may come as a shock to many of the younger generation, there was no jukebox in the pool/snooker parlor at Wayne’s.
The jukebox was in the back corner of the Wayne’s Confectionary dining room. Back where there were some fixed settee type seatings, about four booths, with one larger round booth that might have room for six at the back of the plate glass window that overlooked the pool hall.
And as were all things related to Wayne’s – Paul Whitaker had the jukebox turned down way low – and it stayed there.
No loud music was allowed. In fact, only on occasions could I remember that jukebox going at all.
There was, however, a busy, active jukebox at Rod’s Pool Hall (owner Rodney Parnell) down on North Main, just across the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks from Binns’ Bakery, the best bakery in the world (more on this delightful Pastime soon).
The jukebox in Rod’s was used quite a bit. And it carried some of the early rock and roll hits along with a good selection of country songs. Early rock tunes could also be found on this upright selection – two plays for a quarter.
I do remember one time in the summer when some traveling pool “hustlers” came through town and were playing the “local talent” for unspecified cash offerings.
The out-of-towner was one a losing streak and Rod, who was playing with some of the other locals, began giving some of us rubber-neckers, quarters to play some very loud, and obnoxious Al Hirt yackety-yak tune of a squawky trumpet tune.
The out-of-towner, to save face, tried to postpone the match until “those kids go home,” but Rodney wouldn’t hear of it.
The same song, played over and over and over.
But back to the question posed to me.
There was no domino parlor where table after table (all with four chairs) were lines up like they were in downtown Pine Bluff. Each of the tables had a scoring corner – a part of the corner of the table where with chalk, the winning hands could be kept up with.
Dominoes in Pine Bluff was a quick, noisy, tile slapping event. And money was laid out on the tables (along with cold beer in long neck bottles and cigarette ashtrays).
I never once saw a domino game in a pool hall in Warren. Nor heard that quick slapping of the 28 tiles ring out only the loud clack of the break, the soft clicking of the cue sticks and the soft bump of a rail shot.
And there were certainly no checkerboards either – save one hallowed board – that somehow Bobby Creed, Leonard Rufus “Rip” John and Hugh Allen Jones, knew where it was kept in a tiny little table where Creed perched in the back hallway of Wayne’s.
Only Rip, Hugh Allen or Bobby or some other person in that closed and intricate inner circle played checkers on those rare off times when no one was there and the chalking up the cue sticks was silent.
Now playing card games were all the craze at summer band practices in the old white wooden band hall off Cherry Street.
But I never saw a deck of cards inside a pool hall in Warren.
Those cut throat games, and I mean the meanest of evil games of Spades and Hearts were played in the band hall.
It is also where once the adult supervision was out helping others mark off those 30-inch paces or six-to-five-yard steps – always hitting the 6th step with the heel of the right foot, after leading off with the left foot from a starting point – that 21 and all kinds of Poker games were played.
Many of us learned more from hearts and spade games gone awry just how hard (and evil) life could be.
I did, on occasion, see a checkerboard out in some of the older barber shops, but not on a consistent basis.
Predating me, there seemed to be a domino game in some of the liquor stores – especially Hughes Liquor along Main Street – prior to voting the township “dry” in the preceding generations.
Upon moving to McGehee right out of Henderson State College, there were a couple of “pool halls” there, mostly havens for a game of dominos and the swilling of lukewarm beer.
It was also in McGehee on Railroad Avenue where pool halls and beer drinking thrived where I first saw a man getting a haircut, while also drinking a beer in the barber chair.
He just hid the beer can under the hair-cutting cloak and when the coast was clear, out game the beer can for another swig. All the time the scissors and clippers sawed away on his wild, wooly locks. The barber, in between trims, played checkers with all comers for cash. He usually won.
In Warren, the pool halls were really pool halls. The games were 8 ball, 9 ball, rotation and of course that gentleman’s game of Snooker was played most of the day – say from about 10 a.m.
There was a dedicated lunchtime crowd of snooker and pool players who often ate their hamburgers standing up with a cue stick in hand.
They played for about 45 minutes, just in time to jump back in a pickup truck and make it back to the Southern or Bradley Lumber Mills for the 1 p.m. work whistle.
The pool hall traffic was spotty until school let out about 2:30 and then it was constant until about 4 p.m.
After the dinner hour, say about 6 p.m. or so it picked back up until 9 or 10 each evening.
My former boss at the Eagle, the late James P. White, said he would get more orders for job printing at Wayne’s shooting snooker, than if he pounded the sidewalks and worked the phones all afternoon.
White was rather good with a cue stick, but not like Oscar King Littlefield – he was deadly, but he never liked the game. I once played the short, spry, and highly intelligent Mr. Littlefield in a pick up 9 ball game.
I took the cue ball and broke the rack set on the table.
He did the rest in less than 7 shots.
And I paid for that lesson (and the cost of the game) and it was well learned.
I seldom saw actual cast betting money on the tables, but the small chalkboards holding the score and the number of matches played, told the tale.
Settling up at Wayne’s, I know was done outside the pool hall, on Cypress Street.
That was the same place, I once saw a lanky farm kid from Hermitage whip the snot out of two beefy Monticello bullies in high school letter jackets who refused to pay up the princely sum of $2, after he ran the 9-ball table on them twice.
To my recollection a Warren Police unit was called by somebody.
By the time the patrol car arrived, the bloody nosed and quickly beaten pair of Drew Countians had paid up.
They were needing help getting up off the hard concrete sidewalk – never I imagine coming back to try and hustle locals.
So, this Pastime is full of memories, of card games, pool hall tales and how one mild mannered Hermitage guy out duked a pair of would-be toughies on the red brick streets of Warren.
