6. Respect The Hustle
I was 21 and my younger brother Kenneth was 11. It was a Friday, and I took him to the lake because I was off work. At about 12:30, we went to a burger place to get some lunch.
They had one pool table there, and Kenneth was watching four college kids play. Back then it was 25 cents to play and they were playing for a dollar a game and the challenger paid for the game.
My brother said, “Gimme a buck and a quarter”. All right, sure.
I had an idea of what was coming. He walked over and said he wanted to play. The guy who had won the last game said he didn’t want to take a kid’s money, so I said, “It’s my money. Don’t worry about it, just let him have a game”. OK.
There were four guys, about 20, shaking their heads and grinning.
Kenneth breaks hard and sinks a ball. He ran four more after that and then barely missed a bank shot. Those guys’ grins were gone. The other guy took his shot, missed, and then Kenneth ran the rest of the table. It was hilarious.
Now all those guys were drinking and laughing every time he sunk a tough shot—saying things like, “No way”!
and “Jeezus Christ!”
Kenneth picked up the two bucks and said, “Anybody wants to play”? They all did. One after another, they all lost, along with the waiter and two more guys who came in. We were there for hours. He made about twenty bucks.
It was the funniest buck and a quarter I ever spent. The kid had been standing on a box and playing pool in our garage since he was four.