As Frontenac is celebrating its homecoming, aka Mining Days, this weekend, I’m rerunning this column from October 14, 1996. – J.T.K.
We had a classic pool hall on the main street of Frontenac when I was a boy. It was called O’Hara’s Recreation for Owen “Cobb” O’Hara, the brassy but benevolent Irishman who owned and operated it, but, since it was the only such place in town, we just called it “the pool hall.”
Growing up, I’d heard numerous pool hall tales from my dad who’d spent his fair share of time in Bert Lispi’s, Slim Renzacci’s and John Fuertsch’s. Fuertsch’s, was the only one I even vaguely remembered — as a dark cavern smelling of sweet beer, outside which my brothers and I would wait for the old bus to take us from Frontenac to Pittsburg.
It was in 1960 that Cobb, a life-long Frontenac resident and former pipe fitter, bought Joe Doti’s bar and set up pool tables. Two standard tables, a snooker table and a one-pocket table.
He also put in a grill, which not only added the aroma of frying hamburgers to the mix, but, when you factored in the presence of his gracious wife, Erma, gave the place a bit of a small-town diner atmosphere. I say a bit of a small-town diner atmosphere because it was still a pool hall, after all, and the presence of any woman besides Erma — save for her granddaughter, Cindy, whose dad was serving in Vietnam — was something of a rarity.
My brother Steve, a seasoned fry-cook by the time he was 13, volunteered to instruct Cobb and Erma on the art of burger frying. They served ‘em up on a foot-square piece of tissue. Cobb’s eyes would sparkle and he’d call out, “Get ‘em while they’re hot, boys. They’re good as mother’s and better than others!”
O’Hara’s was the place where I got my first real taste of the fraternity of small-town men, complete with drinking (only if you’d reached the drinking age of 18, at which point Cobb served you a free 10-cent draught in a frosty glass), salty language, storytelling, joking, eating, card playing and, of course, pool.
Pool. I fell in love with pool. The more I played, the more I felt called to play.
At first, I knew little about it, but between watching the old-timers play and listening to my dad, I got to know it pretty quick. I’m not just talking about the rules — or how to hold the cue, use English, play for position or see the geometry of a bank shot.
I’m talking about the crack of the cue ball against the other 15 to signal the game was on. The deep colors of the balls set on the cool, green felt. The subtle dust of the blue chalk. The precision cut of the 8-ball into the corner pocket. The slow roll of the cue ball down the full length of a snooker table. The jump & jive of the players and spectators around a betting game of nine-ball or high-low. The jargon ... the “rack,” the “kiss,” the “cut,” the “two rail.” The good-natured, heckling call of “Don’t clutch!” as an opponent lined up a game winning shot. I’m talking the small-town poetry of pool.
Frank Riffel, a lifelong bachelor, then in his late 60s, was a regular at O’Hara’s. He was a good-natured man, an avid hunter and fisherman and a passionate baseball fan who hung out at the local diamond every night in the summer. He played a deliberate style of pool — annoyingly deliberate when he leaned over a combination shot, looked over his bifocals, then back through them, then over them again before stroking the cue ball into the pile to kiss the 9 ball in to win the game.
After a couple of years, Cobb moved his operation across the street to a newer building, the site of the old Club Royale. There was a large room to the side that he rented out for dances and a small back room where I learned to play “poker with the joker.” The place was newer and didn’t have the same old-time feel as Doti’s bar, but it soon took on the spirit of O’Hara’s. Of course, the pool tables were there, and although I didn’t have the same passion for pool that I’d had a couple of years earlier, I still played.
As I got older, the pool hall became the jumping off point for many a night out, whether it was to the drive-in, a dance, a movie, or a ball game. Many times it was also where I ended my night, playing pinball as Cobb brushed down and covered the silent tables, shut off the grill ... and gave the “last call.”
There were other nights — when I was lost in my adolescent struggle to figure out just what was going on — that I’d play alone for hours at the back table, silently meditating on the rhythm of the game.
On one such night, Erma looked up from wiping down the 24-foot mahogany bar and said, “What’s the matter kid? You look kinda’ down.”
“My best girl’s out with another guy,” I replied.
“Aw, don’t worry about it,” she said. “There’s lots of girls out there.”
“Not for me there’s not,” I sighed as I turned and walked to the back table, stopping only to select the heaviest cue in the rack with which I broke the triangle of balls ... and proceeded to play pool.
If you have a story or photo for Little Balkans Chronicles, contact me at 620-704-1309 or jtknoll@swbell.net
