The Holt Billiard Parlor & Recreation Center

Every town has what I would call a center of gravity, a hub or a place that serves as a fulcrum to balance all of the other places of commerce and local  interest around it.  From that point of view, my candidate for Auburn’s social hub was the local poolroom located downtown on Lincoln Way.

This is not to say that the local pool hall was that common a gathering place.  On the contrary, the clientele was generally limited to three groups of “customers:”  the local louts, layabouts, and bar flies who populated the gin mills along with the “low end” poker players who weren’t welcome at the Tahoe Club or some other place where gentlemen gathered;  middle and high school boys like me who liked to have a friendly game of pool, along with a smoke, and a conversation filled with a lot of cuss words; and, lastly, the local “good” people who dropped in to buy a newspaper and, perhaps, a cigar or a pack of cigarettes.  Most of the customers were men, but, occasionally, a woman would come in to quickly buy a newspaper.  Women, however, never ventured past the cash register to where pool was played or beer was served.

While the official name of the place was “Holt’s Billiard Parlor & Recreation Center,” nobody ever called it that.  It was simply called “the poolroom” by everybody.

I would guess that the poolroom was built well before the end of the 19th century.  Its signature feature was that the bar ran through the front of the building out into the sidewalk area.  The inside and outside areas were separated by a swinging door behind the bar.  The only time I ever remember that the outside area was used to serve drinks was during the Gold Shows in 1948 through 1950.  I doubt if it was exactly legal to serve booze at the sidewalk, but the normal rules never applied during those Gold Show events.  In addition to the unrestricted sale of alcohol, you had an assortment of folks wearing side arms, and, occasionally, a coonskin cap.  Of course in contemporary times of gang shootings, those fellows wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary at all.

Having a bar that ran out onto the street didn’t seem to be unique to the poolroom.  There were several similarly laid out saloon in nearby Grass Valley and Nevada City.  On a trip to upper New York State, I also found one in the town of Nyack on the Hudson River.

On entering, the first thing that I would inevitably encounter was the smell of stale beer, tobacco tar, urine, and dust.  This was not unique to the poolroom, but universally common to all of the saloons in Auburn and elsewhere.  It has a moldy organic flavor reminding you of the yeasty process of fermenting beer or fruit gone bad.  You were also reminded that this was a septic place, and that you should never touch your mouth or private parts without first washing your hands.

Immediately to the right was the cash register area and the other unique feature: an electric cigar lighter.  This was a device that must have been made around the turn of the last century.  It was an oak box with a level handle on the front.  When you pulled the handle down and toward you, a wick on the end of the lever would pass over an electrode and ignite.  Not only would you get a flame, but there was a dangerous electric buzzing sound created when the wick passed over the electrode.  This device was designed to create interest and fun in boys of all ages.  I never tired of firing off the cigar lighter, especially when I was little and went with my father to buy the Sunday paper.

To the left, upon entering, was the magazine and newspaper section.  The poolroom no doubt had largest and most diverse array of periodicals for sale in town.  Of course, the best and most interesting were the girlie magazines that came with newsprint pulp pages and titles like, Club, Stag, and Player.  This was around the time preceding and immediately after Playboy was first published.  For some strange reason, they kept the Playboys in a little magazine rack behind the bar so you couldn’t get any “freebee” looks at the contents like you could with the other magazines.

The other magazines, of course, didn’t have pictures of “the girl next door bunnies” that Playboy contained.  These were ladies who probably knew how to roll their own cigarettes and ride choppers.  Thank goodness at least they didn’t have the tattoos on their bodies that are ubiquitous today.

The ceiling area over the bar reached to the top of the two-story building.  A series of paddle fans hung down from the ceiling on long pipes, slowly turning just enough to keep the smoke moving.

The pool tables were tucked into an area with a low ceiling across from the bar.  Each had its own set of fluorescent tube lights hanging low over each table surface.  This focused the light on the tables, and left the areas above and around the table in semi-darkness.  The whole tableau created the sense of a smoke infested surgical suite where the players concentrated on their work as if they were physicians.

There was a humorous hand lettered, cardboard sign attached to each light that said, “No Playing Pool Under 16.”  Since my best pool playing days were in middle school, playing at age thirteen or fourteen, outside the law, made things much more fun, if not a little more dangerous.

I had a yellow sweater when I was in the seventh grade that I was really fond of.  One day my mother asked me what all the blue stuff was doing on my sweater.  I looked down and realized that it was covered with smudges of pool cue chalk dust.  I thought fast, and fibbed to her that it was chalk dust from school.  She seemed satisfied, much to my relief.  I figured that I was fairly safe, as I doubted that she knew one end of a pool cue from the other.

The one thing you really had to be careful of while playing pool was to not rip the fabric on the tabletop.  In addition to the “No Playing . . “ sign, there was another little sign that said, “Rips in the table, $15 an inch,” or some such astronomical amount.  It was OK to bounce your cue ball off the table, but it would have been a disaster to have had to come up with the money for a ripped pool table.  Thank goodness the pool gods smiled on us, and that never happened.

The other features worthy of note were the little card room at the back, adjoining the rear door.  As you made your way to the men’s room, which was tacked onto the rear of the building, you passed the card room.  I don’t think I ever went inside, but I always took a peek to see what was going on.  Frequently there was a card game in progress.  I never recognized anybody.  I assumed that these were the soldiers of bad fortune who lived on the margin of life, coming and going as they saw fit.

Passing through the outside door, you could make a sharp left into the men’s room, actually the only restroom on the premises.  I guess I don’t need to mention that this place had probably never been cleaned since the structure had been tacked on to the back of the building as an afterthought.  Back to basics.  Don’t touch anything here, and don’t touch anything on your own person until after you had the opportunity to sterilize your hands.  Such places made me thankful that I had a standard middle class home to go back to.

Two snooker tables were situated between the pool table area and the bar.  Snooker tables are about half again the size of pool tables.  The pockets and balls were smaller.  I never figured out what the rules were concerning snooker.  But I always kept my eyes on the snooker tables because that was where the big guys played their game.

The numero uno guy who played snooker was a fellow named Bert.  Bert, supposedly, was a Hell’s Angel from the San Bernardino clan.  He was a serious snooker player, but he didn’t seem to exhibit any other attributes other than that he was capable of downing a lot of “short” beers around the table.

Bert seemed to come and go.  On one occasion, the local rumor mill promulgated the story that Bert had been seriously hurt in a motorcycle accident.  The story seemed to be true because he showed up one day in a foot to hip cast on one of his legs.  Like Peg Leg Pete, he seemed to be able to hop around the table without doing any harm to his game.

Our other local hero figure was an Indian from the reservation south of town named Torpedo Joe. Or, that was the name we knew him by.  Torpedo Joe’s utility was that, for a small commission of a few cans, he would buy us our beer when we were in high school.

I don’t remember any other celebrities that warrant mention.  As I moved toward high school graduation, my time and interests in the poolroom diminished.