Old Roads and Shadows

By Laudizen King

This ebook is a work of creative nonfiction by Laudizen King: stories, memoirs, and essays of travel and adventure that celebrate the human spirit. 'Old Roads and Shadows' includes many of the author's best-known works: discovering pool as a teenager and meeting the future road hustler and world champion Larry Lisciotti (Remembering the Dugout and Larry Lisciotti), a fire and its emotional aftermath (Paper and Fire), the story of two ascents on the highest peak in Southern California (Mt San Gorgonio), an account of a backpacking trip to the Cabinet Mountains of Montana where he (twice) almost met a violent end (Leigh Lake), and a look back at the hometown of his youth (Manchester Redux).

This volume also presents several stories from Laudizen's days in the US Army: the savage killings of two Military Policemen, James Workman and Eugene Cox, in a downtown Saigon bar in 1969 (Murder at Midnight), a night mission in Vietnam (Bridge Inspection), and an emotional duty assignment at Fort Bragg in 1971 (Burial Detail), an assignment that led the author to visit unexpected places and emotions.

Within this collection are stories celebrating various artists (the singer Joan Osborne, writer Richard Brautigan, and the great American chess player, Bobby Fisher), while memories from childhood come back to haunt the adult ('Worms' and 'September 1959') as lifelong lessons are learned and cherished as well (Snow Day). 'Cheers and Slainte' is a fond remembrance of the years spent working with British technology consultants in New Hampshire and Georgia.

'Blood Mountain' recalls the author's love affair with Blood Mountain and the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, and several other stories are taken from the trails of the American West ('Mt San Jacinto, Winter 1991', 'Mt San Jacinto, Summer 1992', and 'Dog-Day Afternoon in the Laguna Mountains').

Timeless and emotive, these stories will resonate with the reader long after their initial discovery.
(approx 118,000 words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: KeyZen9
• Release date: Nov 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301079353

Laudizen King

Laudizen King was born in Manchester, Connecticut. After serving with the US Army in Military Intelligence, he pursued a career in project management along with his passions for motorcycling, photography, and exploring the White Mountains of New Hampshire.His poetry has been published in the US by the Wilderness House Literary Review and in the UK by Gloom Cupboard. His stories have appeared in the Tonopah Review, Word Catalyst Magazine, the MilSpeak Memo, the Raving Dove Literary Journal, and the Wilderness House Literary Review.Laudizen writes memoirs, travels, and stories that celebrate the human spirit and honor the diverse moments that comprise a mortal life.A Laudizen story, "Passages in Stone", appears in the 2011 print anthology of stories, "Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grandmothers".Laudizen currently lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

Old Roads and Shadows

Laudizen King

Smashwords Edition

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The White Mountain Chronicles

Copyright © 2012 by Laudizen King

Cover Photograph and Design Copyright © 2012 by Laudizen King

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved

This book and quotes that are excerpted in brief form are used in accordance with fair use interpretation of U.S. Copyright Law and the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. Every attempt has been made to attribute and credit excerpted material correctly; any errors or omissions should be brought to the attention of the publisher and will be corrected in future editions of the book.

Authors Note: many stories in this eBook appeared in Mosaics, an eBook that is now out of print.

*****

Table of Contents

Passages in Stone

Breakfast in Pahrump

Remembering the Dugout and Larry Lisciotti

A Special Cup of Coffee

Joan Osborne

The Ocean House

Bobby Fischer - In Memoriam

The Cosmic Bridge of November 1999

Talking to Carla Jean

Reunion

Murder at Midnight

Blood Mountain

Brautigan Gift

Dog-Day Afternoon in the Laguna Mountains

Salters Pond, Beau Geste, and the Return of the Vikings

Suit

Snow Day

A Husband Dies

Worms

Cheers and Slainte

Shoehorn

Burial Detail

On a Beach on Nantucket

La Grange

Mt San Jacinto, Winter 1991

Mt San Jacinto, Summer 1992

September 1959

Out of a Blue Sky

Mt San Gorgonio

Leigh Lake

Paper and Fire

Manchester Redux

The Dreams of a Young Man

Empty Bottle

I'm Seeing Keith Richards in the Morning

In the Grass of Mt Diablo

With Carlton Fisk, Forever

Induced Enlistee

First Flights

Leaving the Army

Snow Day at the Dugout

Off the Shoulder of Orion

In the Mind of the Artist

Baseball and Coffee

Foul Ball

Sto Lat

Dreams

Saint

Sentinel Snow

Norman

Beginnings

October 5, 1980

Pasadena Lunch

Scouting, and the Tattoo Merit Badge

Chairman of the Board

The Product

Houseboat

The Fokker U 2

Piece of Work

Death Valley Wind

Awash and Adrift on the Hockanum River

Little Tokyo Moment

Born to Love Baseball

Heinrich Harrer

Reluctance

Song for Hollister

The Road to Paradise

Oscar Wilde on Death

The Queen City

Popcorn

Elevator

Incident at Evergreen Lodge

Maizie

Bridge Inspection

The Power of Symbol

Cuyamaca Mountains – Joy and Renewal

Postscript

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*****

Old Roads and Shadows

Passages in Stone

A portal between the generations is closed

Shirley and I hiked together in all kinds of weather and on all types of terrain, and we developed a special intimacy built upon those experiences. We spent six wonderful years hiking in many diverse locations throughout the West. She was a grandmother when we met and I was in my 50s, and we quickly learned each other’s traits and behaviors in an environment far removed from normal domestic life. A person has no veneer when they are wet, cold, and struggling at the end of their physical endurance to continue on the trail when a great distance remained to reach the relative comfort of camp or car. We learned each other’s quirks related to preparation for the trail and recuperation from pain, as well as those things pulled up from deep down when the trail is hardest and the going most difficult. However, human pain is the deepest pain.

Shirley had one particular ritual that I had the pleasure to experience. On every trip, she would collect a couple of stones. These were not stones of geologic value, but rather rocks with interesting shapes and swirls or those with varied colors or patterns. When we reached a summit, made halfway, or even took a needed rest, she would peruse the ground around us looking for stones of interest. She would pick one up and run the stone through her fingers, turning it over in the palm of her hand to inspect the rock in detail. If the stone met the standards of some ineffable checklist within, she deposited the stone in a pocket on her daypack for transport back home.

Two fates awaited these stones upon our return. We put them in the great urn by the fireplace that held other stones from other trips. Alternatively, if the find was special enough, the stone was set aside for Chad, a grandson by her son Danny. He was the younger of two fine sons born to Danny and his wife Stacie in central California. Shirley and Chad developed, like every grandparent and grandchild, a special relationship built on the likes and interests of a child as they grow up and become aware of themselves and the world around them. When Chad was six or seven he seemed to enjoy this activity of looking at rocks with grandma, whether at a family outing at the beach or in the mountains. Moreover, Shirley continued to foster this interest.

Shirley enjoyed this activity and shared the stones with Chad whenever the occasion allowed. When together, she would give the stones to Chad to hold and inspect as she related the story of their origins in detail. She would describe where the stones were from, what the weather was like, and what the trip had entailed. He enjoyed this activity, and it gave his grandma a chance to interact with him and look inside the young boy as he grew. Sharing the stories of the stones also provided Chad an opportunity to look inside his grandmother, whether or not he knew or appreciated that fact at the time.

This activity kept the connection between Shirley and Chad intact as Chad grew older. Chad’s mom was cool to Shirley and, at times, Shirley felt excluded from family events as Stacie appeared to keep her mother-in-law at arm’s length. Who knows the reality of the situation; every family must deal with their own set of dynamics. But whatever the reason, Shirley always carried the frustration, in her perception, of having limited access to Chad and his brother as they quickly grew through their childhood years. So when the opportunity presented itself, Shirley used the stones as a vehicle to connect with Chad, to tell him of her travels and adventures, and in this way, she also learned the same about Chad.

And so they came, stone after stone. Small rough stones came from the high passes of Yosemite; rounded stones came out of its watercourses and waterfalls. From Death Valley came samples out of the low salt flats of Badwater, the high trails in the Panamint Mountains, and from the craters of Ubehebe. We gathered stones from every area of the Pinnacles National Monument, from the seashore at Morrow Bay, to the coast at Malibu. From the Los Padres to the San Gabriel Mountains came small pieces of wonder to hold and describe. Shirley gathered stones when we hiked in Southern California: from the Cuyamaca and Laguna mountains, from the wonderful Anza Borrego Desert, and from Mt San Jacinto high above Palm Springs.

One hot summer day we traversed a narrow trail above Donner Canyon on Mount Diablo, east of San Francisco. It was dry and dusty and with Shirley out in front, we pushed a real sweat as we trudged our way higher up the slope. She stopped at a turn on the trail and looked down to something at her feet. She bent over and picked up a small dark stone with three bands across the face. She first ran her fingers over the bands and studied the rock as it lay in the palm of her hand. Then, with a look of sadness she tried to conceal, she slowly tossed it to the ground on the side of the trail.

Things change, and time moves on. Chad was now almost a teenager and his wonder over the stones his grandmother showed him, and the stories of where they came from, was now of little interest to him. He had crossed a threshold leading to adulthood and the door of that threshold closed forever; gone was the portal that had connected Chad and Shirley in such an illuminating way over the last six years.

The look on Shirley’s face spoke of pain and resignation. I walked up the trail to her side and we embraced. Feelings of anguish come to all of us throughout our lives. We need to see these passages for what they are, appreciate them for what they were, and let them go. There is beauty in what is brief, and for those formative years that were so important to Shirley, those stones provided special access to the young man growing up before her.

We stood together on the trail for a few seconds, sharing the moment. We lifted our faces from the stones at our feet and gazed over the canyon spreading out below us, and up at the peaks and ridges rising into the blue sky above. We then continued up the trail to discover the unknown wonders that waited for us there.

At home, the urn of stones sits by the fireplace.

(the urn of stones)

(note: the above story appeared in the 2011 print anthology, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grandmothers)

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*****

Breakfast in Pahrump

Remembering another silent breakfast, forty years ago

We drove into Pahrump, Nevada, late on a Sunday morning after spending a few days in Vegas at the casinos. The October sky was clear and bright and the distant mountains stood sharp against the sky. My wife and I were on our way to Death Valley to explore several canyons and to cruise the roads of the vast desert park. I gassed up the car and we entered a small casino in search of breakfast. After a few moments, our eyes adjusted to the darkness and we found the cafe where we grabbed a table in the non-smoking section, a table without ashtrays. Shirley and I ordered waffles and coffee and settled back in our chairs.

On the other side of the cafe, a small group of diners caught my attention. At one end of a long table sat a young Marine Private in his dress blue uniform, the white hat with its patent leather black brim resting on a chair beside him. He seemed so terribly young to be wearing a dress uniform. He was quiet and absorbed in the breakfast on the plate in front of him. At the far end of the table sat a large older woman wearing a huge sweatshirt. She sat at the table and smoked, dropping her cigarette ashes on the remains of the breakfast that sat on the platter before her. I took her to be the Marine's mother. A young couple sat on one side of the table and they seemed totally engaged with each other, eyeing and touching one another without a care in the world. Across from them, a young woman sat and busied herself with a small child strapped into a stroller. The group at the table had a sense of aloofness and distraction about them; there was no conversation.

I tried to imagine what this breakfast was about, here in this sad casino on a bright October morning. I could not remember seeing such a low ranking Marine, especially someone as young as this, wearing a dress blue uniform. I did not think they were celebrating a wedding, as the casual dress of everyone else, along with the somber mood, did not mesh with the occasion. Was this a sendoff for this young man? On the other hand, could they have been at a funeral, the funeral of a friend perhaps. The young mother tended to her baby and the couple wanted to be somewhere else alone. The Mom smoked and had nothing to say while the casino’s slot machines hummed away in the background.

I remembered a silent breakfast with my father at Union Station in Hartford, Connecticut, back in 1969. I would soon board the bus that would take me to Fort Dix in New Jersey to enter the Army and we were having a final meal together early on a frigid January morning. The specter of the war in Vietnam loomed silently between us. My father smoked and had eggs, and I had eggs as well; we did not talk. After breakfast, we walked over to the terminal together and I prepared to get on my bus. The last thing he said to me was, Be good and take care. We shook hands and he pressed a twenty into my palm. I climbed into the bus and watched him disappear as he stood on the curb, watching the bus and me pull away from the station. Now, I was revisiting this memory here in a casino in Nevada almost 40 years on.

The Marine and the others finished their breakfast and got up to leave. The Marine carried his hat out in front of him in a manner that would have made the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns proud. They filed out quietly and the mom said thank you to the cashier.

The world goes on as before: young men and women enter the armed services and some find themselves sent off to war. Amid all the uncertainty and fear, silent families gather with nothing to say, and the generations grow up apart.

I thought about this young Marine and reflected on where he would be in forty years, whether or not he would still be alive. I wondered if he might, as an old man, see a young fresh faced soldier at breakfast one morning, and if the sight of that soldier would send his mind back through the years to revisit this breakfast here today, this silent breakfast in Pahrump, Nevada.

(the above story first appeared in the Tonopah Review)

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*****

Remembering the Dugout and Larry Lisciotti

A teenager discovers the game of pool, and meets the future world champion

I was thirteen years of age when I made my first visit to Manchester, Connecticut’s own den of iniquity, the pool hall known as the ‘Red Sox Dugout’, or just the 'Dugout' for short. The year was 1963, and I was in the seventh grade at the Illing Junior High School. That year I also met the fine young pool player and future world champion, Larry Lisciotti.

The pool hall had quite a bad reputation among the parents in town. Most considered the place a haven for hoods and thugs, but the Dugout was not a hangout for the stereotypical tough of those years, a sneering youth wearing a leather motorcycle jacket. If you are old enough to remember the days of the ‘Mods and Rockers’, the Dugout was definitely a ‘Mod’ type of hangout. The people who gathered and played pool at the Dugout in the mid-1960s were primarily a well-dressed group who sported penny-loafers, chinos, madras shirts, and a white London Fog raincoat when required.

On Saturday nights, the older players, those that owned and drove cars, would stop at the Dugout for a game of pool before heading out on a date. They typically sported a crisp cotton shirt (usually with a pack of Kools, Camels, or Lucky Strikes in the front pocket), a pair of leather shoes, and a nice pair of slacks. A couple of shady characters did frequent the place, but the regular group was not comprised of the miscreants and degenerates envisioned by the local ‘Legion of Decency’ do-gooders.

The Dugout was located in the middle of town on one of Manchester’s busiest intersections, Main and Center Street. A large building with a curved front sat on the southeast corner and this structure housed several businesses, including the pool hall, which was located in a basement beneath the Center Restaurant. The entrance itself was in an alley off Main Street where a set of cement steps led down to a portal on the right fronted by a large heavy green door.

The pool hall was a dimly lit world and during the daytime, your eyes needed a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Once inside, you stood in a corner of the basement and the room extended off to the right. Eight pool tables sat between the large square concrete pillars that stood spaced throughout the dark cellar. Two lights, with large green metal shades, hung down over each table to illuminate the felt playing surface below. Several small rectangular windows with frosted glass were set in the wall of the building about seven feet above the basement floor, and they allowed a small amount of light to filter in from the alleyway during the daytime.

From the entrance, a pool table stood just inside and to the right of the green door. You skirted around this table on the left and then turned right along a cement wall for a few steps. When the wall ended, a hard left brought you into the ‘office’, a small open area where the owner, Don Fitzgerald, conducted business. The office consisted of several small chairs next to a desk and a cash register, a dim desk lamp, a small TV, and cabinets filled with the sundry supplies required to operate a pool hall.

On a pillar by each table hung a dark wood box containing four small shelves, each just big enough to hold cigarettes, lighters, and small snacks. Attached to the walls were large flat wooden frames that held an assortment of house cue sticks of various lengths and thickness. The cement floor was perpetually dirty and dusty. High above one end of each table hung a string of beads on a heavy metal wire used for scoring straight pool games; the player used a cue to count and move the beads along the wire. Stools for spectators sat clustered near the walls of the cellar, and against the far wall stood several vending machines. One machine was an old red Coke dispenser with a large flat paddle in the front that, for a dime, would rotate the circle of soda bottles until a full one appeared at the opening, a small 8-ounce Coca-Cola in a heavy glass bottle, served ice cold. Wooden cases for the empty bottles stood stacked against the wall.

The tables were old regulation tournament tables, the playing surface was a slate rectangle covered with green felt and measured 4 ½ feet wide by 9 feet long, and the cushions, or side rails, were covered in green felt as well. Every table had six pockets, one in each of the four corners and one in the middle of each long rail. The tables all had thick wood bodies and large legs that were fashioned from a heavy dark-stained lumber made darker by years of use and tobacco smoke.

I saw various pocket billiard games contested at the Dugout including straight pool, nine-ball, six ball, one pocket, pill pool, and eight-ball. A full rack consisted of 15 object balls, seven balls of different solid colors numbered 1 through 7, seven balls with different colored stripes numbered 9 through 15, and the black 8 ball. The shooter used a white cue ball to knock the colored and striped object balls into a pocket.

I started learning about pool by playing 14.1 continuous billiards; also known as straight pool. This game started with a full rack of fifteen balls arranged in a wooden triangle that shaped the balls prior to the start of play. In our straight pool games, the first person to pocket 125 balls was the winner. Other than a small wager, the bet was usually for ‘Time’, the rental charge for the table.

The basic strategy was to pocket fourteen object balls and then leave the last object ball on the table as a break ball. A player then placed the fourteen-pocketed object balls back on the table within the wooden rack once again, this time leaving the space at the head of the wooden triangle empty and placed over the table-spot. Strong players would leave the cue ball and break ball in 'good position', which meant that when they sank the break ball, the cue ball caromed into the rack of 14 balls and spread them out on the table, dispersing them for the shooter who continued on with the play (hence the term ‘continuous billiards’). Professionals can win a game by ‘running’ (pocketing) 125 balls in succession without allowing the opponent a chance to score.

I studied other players with a keen eye, especially the ones with talent. Eventually, I learned how the good shooters approached the game when they faced each other in a match. I saw how uniquely each used position play and how, and when, they took chances, and I began to understand both the style and pace that each individual brought to the table.

One older gentleman, Frank ‘The Bank’ DeVoto, took an early interest in my game. Frank was a Dugout regular; he was in his seventies and always wore an old suit along with a well-used fedora that covered a head of sparse white hair. A cigarette with a long curling ash continually drooped from his lips. Old Frank took me under his wing and instructed me on some of the pool game’s finer points: he taught me about bank shots, how to use English (putting spin on the cue ball), and how to ‘throw’ balls that were touching.

Becoming a better player was a process and I enjoyed the challenge that the game presented me. Over time, the quality of my game improved and within two years, I was a top player in my age group and strong enough to challenge some of the older players at the Dugout in cash games.

During the early years of the sixties, Larry Lisciotti was a regular player at the Dugout. He was a slim young man with a great sense of humor who enjoyed a good laugh with his friends. He had intelligent eyes and a wonderful smile with lips that turned up at the end, lending him a type of Cheshire cat grin. When money was involved and Larry played in a big game, those eyes became focused and fierce, like a cat on the prowl. I will always remember those eyes, and the intensity that shone out from behind them.

He would stand at the table and study a logjam of grouped balls searching for a hidden combination with great concentration, moving and bending and changing his viewpoint as he looked intently for the hidden gem, and he often found one. He had a smooth and beautiful stroke, and a prodigious break when required. He was a gambler and a pool hustler, and even though he was young, the stories about his exploits traveling around New England playing pool were becoming the stuff of legend. His close friends called him ‘Lice’, and they said it with affection and respect.

All through that first year when I was a regular at the Dugout, Larry often played a Sunday evening game with a young man named John. He was a fine player in his own right but was not a gambler and had no desire to make pool the dominant pursuit in his life. Aside from being friends, Larry just seemed to enjoy the competition. I watched those weekly games at every opportunity and gained a broad insight into the nuance and strategy inherent in the game of 14.1 continuous billiards: how the battle ebbed and flowed, how and when they played safe, and of the determination and confidence required to see the match through and best your opponent. I also developed a deep appreciation for the beauty and grace that the great players brought to the game of straight pool.

John was a strong player but Larry competed at a different level; he was a juggernaut and regularly added new tools and tricks to his arsenal. And although Larry was young, he possessed a distinct physical presence when he stood at the table, a tangible power, and Larry’s opponents needed to combat this force of will in order to maintain their own poise and self-assurance during a match.

Another pool hall existed in Manchester during those years and this billiard hall was a modern facility located in a large well-lit basement under a restaurant over on Middle Turnpike. This was an upscale pool hall; the basement was much bigger than the Dugout and it held twice as many tables. The owner sponsored large ‘open’ tournaments that drew fine players from all over New England and beyond.

On occasion, other professionals would come into Manchester to challenge Larry. If they played at the Dugout, the stools would be set out three-deep around the best table for the crowd to sit on. If the game were in the other pool hall, we would travel across town to watch Larry play. I enjoyed watching top shooters compete in such a close and intimate setting, and my respect and admiration for the game and the best players grew as I came to understand that, underneath it all was the intensely personal and combative nature of pocket billiards that was both the essence and the beating heart of the game of pool.

When I was fifteen, I discovered nine-ball, and the world of pool, and gambling on pool, changed for me in an instant. The nine-ball game only uses the balls numbered 1 through 9, with the balls arranged on the table using a diamond-shaped rack with the 9 ball placed in the center of the other balls. The object was to sink the 9 ball, and you had to shoot at the other balls in their numerical order first. You could use a multi-ball combination to win, which meant that you could hit the 1 ball into the 9 ball and win if the 9 ball fell into a pocket. Instead of renting a table on ‘Time’, Don arranged the balls in the small diamond rack and charged a fee of fifteen cents a game. Nine-ball was a real gambling game and compared to straight pool, nine-ball was like playing speed chess instead of 2-hour tournament matches. When many tables were busy with nine-ball games, you would hear someone yelling Rack! almost constantly.

I continued to play and practice as often as possible, and the improvement in my game was noticeable. Over the years, I became a feared nine-ball opponent, especially at the Dugout, and the stakes I played for grew in size as well. I even acquired my own name at the Dugout, the 'Niz'. The word 'Niz', long a slang word for the 9 ball, now became my nickname. Larry Lisciotti would watch us play and if I sank the 9 ball on the break, or made one later with a nice combination, he would smile that Cheshire cat smile of his and say, Niz, drawing the name out in a long snake-like hiss of a syllable. Soon, other shooters began to call me by that name and I had arrived as a pool player.

During this period I, too, joined the coterie of friends who called Larry by the name 'Lice', and when I did, I said it with the same respect and affection as everyone else.

Those were turbulent times and the Dugout, along with the rest of the country, was not immune to the currents of change that swirled through America during the period of the late sixties. Drugs, and the violence that seemed to follow them, were becoming more prevalent throughout society and the country as a whole, and this scourge affected some of my friends. As the war in Asia grew, more people visited the dark confines of the Dugout in uniform. I, too, would join this line of soldiers soon after my graduation from high school.

In the month before I entered the Army, I had my longest run at straight pool, forty-five balls. Yet I knew intrinsically that I was not a good player; all I possessed was enough talent and intelligence to shine in a small local pool hall like the Dugout.

Then, for almost two years, I found myself separated from the game of pool. After joining the Army in 1969, I completed six months of training and followed that with a 30-day leave before departing for a twelve-month tour of duty overseas. After serving a year in Vietnam, I rotated back to the States for the remainder of my enlistment, but I never returned to my old pastime as a regular player. For one thing, my heart was no longer in the game. I despised the small coin-operated tables that dispensed pool balls in bars or Army clubs around the country and I hated the game usually played on those tables, eight-ball. For a while, I missed the game of nine-ball and the action that went with it, but new possibilities presented themselves and I turned my attention towards other pursuits. Nevertheless, every now and then when the conditions were right, I could rise to the occasion and catch some local pool playing bar stud unaware. I could still do that.

The last time I set foot in the Dugout was early spring in 1971. I was in Manchester with several Army friends on a short vacation from our unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. While my friends had coffee, I came down the well-worn set of cement steps one more time and entered the dark room of the pool hall. I stood inside the door as my eyes adjusted to the darkness; the place felt warm, comfortable, familiar. Several tables had games in progress but I did not recognize any players. I walked into the office and Don gave me a friendly welcome. We chatted for a few minutes about how the pool hall was doing, and about old times and friends. Then I shook his hand and left. I never saw Don again.

After the Army, I lived in Connecticut for a dozen years before moving to New Hampshire. Redevelopment came to Manchester and the town razed the old building that housed the Dugout. During those years, I crossed Larry's path only occasionally, but when I saw him, he always greeted me warmly. Friends would keep me abreast of Larry's exploits and relate tales of his life out on the road.

Those were good years for Larry. In 1976, he won the World Open Pocket Billiard Championship, and gained recognition as the world's best 14.1 continuous (straight) pool player. The following year the September issue of Hustler Magazine profiled his life as a professional player and gambler in an article written by Jay Levin titled ‘Larry Lisciotti, Pool Hustler’. In 1980, Larry chalked up another major victory when he won the Professional Pool Players Association Nine-ball Championship.

After living in New Hampshire, I moved to California in 1990 and heard little more about Larry Lisciotti or his exploits. I did remain connected to those times however, as even today, I have seven or eight friends scattered around the country who, when we talk, still call me by the old Dugout name of ‘Niz’.

In early 2004, my brother mailed me a small obituary he had clipped from a newspaper back east in Connecticut; it was an obituary for Larry Lisciotti who had died on February 9. A flood of memories and images of the old hometown, and of the friends I knew at the Dugout, came cascading back into my mind. Yet one thing in particular struck me about that small newspaper piece, something hidden among the words: whoever wrote that obituary had an appreciation for Larry as a player and as a man, perhaps even loved him.

Various pictures of Larry, and stories of his accomplishments, exist on the internet. One of my favorite images is the famous ‘Roadrunners’ photograph, taken in California in 1975 during the Los Angeles Straight Pool Championship. In that picture, Jim Rempe, Danny DiLiberto, Larry Lisciotti, and Mike Sigel pose in front of a white Rolls-Royce. Larry leans back on the car, supported by his right arm, wearing a white sport coat. In that picture, he is long and thin, handsome, and forever young. It is a beautiful photograph of a most talented and extraordinary group captured together for a fleeting instant, a moment in time now immortalized for future generations of players.

Another great image available on the internet is a picture of Larry's cue, a beautiful specimen with two ivory inserts near the butt; one insert displays his signature, the other displays, '~ 1976 ~  14.1 WORLD CHAMPION'.

You can also find a picture of a young Larry wearing a double-breasted coat and sporting big hair and an even bigger tie. The prominent feature on this picture of Larry is that engaging and enigmatic smile, his Cheshire cat grin.

I can close my eyes and see Larry now, and watch that Cheshire cat smile morphing into the eyes of a feral cat on the hunt. He was young and handsome in the Dugout days, and so very talented. There was such a mixture of power and possibility in the raw beauty of how he played the game back then, the way he held a cue, how he looked at the table, in the fluidity and grace of his movements.

There are also the hidden words I see shining through the obituary, and they are the words I want to use to describe Larry Lisciotti. He was a pool player and people loved him; he was more than a pool player.

He was beautiful.

(the above story first appeared in the Wilderness House Literary Review)

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*****

A Special Cup of Coffee

Four Coffee Cups and the Stories Behind Them

For me, moving days are always stressful and pensive. Today is no exception as, here on a Saturday morning early in the summer of 2004, I find myself preparing to move once again. I am packing up to leave a one-bedroom apartment in Woodland Hills, located in the valley above Los Angeles. My yearlong job stint is at an end and I am making the move back to northern California where I hope to find a situation closer to Shirley and the house in Modesto.

I turn on the television for the local news and weather and start to brew a pot of good strong coffee. The morning sun comes in through the blinds and the coffee drips and gurgles in the maker on the counter. The piles