vapros
Verified Member
I couldn't use the title here, because Alfie already has.
The Other Side of the Road
Alfie Taylor takes us on an extended trip to a place that most of us have never seen before - the world of the pool hustlers, who call themselves crossroaders, with good reason. We may think we know what pool hustlers do, but we really don't. Although Alfie began by hanging around the pool tables at the Cotton Bowling Palace in Dallas for several years, most of his hustling was on the roads. Big towns, small towns, bad equipment, violent people and bad losers, the crossroaders tried to rob them all. They lied daily about their names, their games and their reasons for being there in the pool rooms. They looked not for competition but for victims, and they found them or went hungry.
Traveling ‘The Other Side of the Road' Alfie shows us adventure, outrageous scams, proposition bets and close calls with assorted disasters as he steals and tries to make his marks like it. He's an accomplished story teller with a great memory of his twenty years of hustling pool. Along the way I found some truly hilarious stories. He gives us many names, mostly not of the greatest players of the day, but of the ones who traveled and hustled with him. Familiar names to pool buffs such as we are. San Jose Dick McMorran is there, as are Bill Porter and Billy Stroud and lots of others who never appear on this site. There is even a four-page essay about pool widows and about Alfie, by a good woman who divorced him years ago. She enjoyed the life as long as she could stand it and wrote kind words about Alfie Taylor.
For two decades the author worked the roads, sometimes in overalls or pedalling a bike, living a life most others dream of, sometimes flush and sometimes busted. The end came right here in Baton Rouge, as he traveled with the great Buddy Hall. They were struggling and finding only bad matches and running out of money. Alfie kicked the habit cold turkey, asking Buddy to drive him downtown to the bus station so he could return to Houston. From there he went on to successes of other kinds. For years he ventured out to hustle once in a while but only for fun, and never again for his living. As the crossroaders say, he got in, got the money, and got out.
One of the best reads I have seen in a long time. Alfie didn't just publish a journal, he really wrote a book, and it has my recommendation for all of you here.
The Other Side of the Road
Alfie Taylor takes us on an extended trip to a place that most of us have never seen before - the world of the pool hustlers, who call themselves crossroaders, with good reason. We may think we know what pool hustlers do, but we really don't. Although Alfie began by hanging around the pool tables at the Cotton Bowling Palace in Dallas for several years, most of his hustling was on the roads. Big towns, small towns, bad equipment, violent people and bad losers, the crossroaders tried to rob them all. They lied daily about their names, their games and their reasons for being there in the pool rooms. They looked not for competition but for victims, and they found them or went hungry.
Traveling ‘The Other Side of the Road' Alfie shows us adventure, outrageous scams, proposition bets and close calls with assorted disasters as he steals and tries to make his marks like it. He's an accomplished story teller with a great memory of his twenty years of hustling pool. Along the way I found some truly hilarious stories. He gives us many names, mostly not of the greatest players of the day, but of the ones who traveled and hustled with him. Familiar names to pool buffs such as we are. San Jose Dick McMorran is there, as are Bill Porter and Billy Stroud and lots of others who never appear on this site. There is even a four-page essay about pool widows and about Alfie, by a good woman who divorced him years ago. She enjoyed the life as long as she could stand it and wrote kind words about Alfie Taylor.
For two decades the author worked the roads, sometimes in overalls or pedalling a bike, living a life most others dream of, sometimes flush and sometimes busted. The end came right here in Baton Rouge, as he traveled with the great Buddy Hall. They were struggling and finding only bad matches and running out of money. Alfie kicked the habit cold turkey, asking Buddy to drive him downtown to the bus station so he could return to Houston. From there he went on to successes of other kinds. For years he ventured out to hustle once in a while but only for fun, and never again for his living. As the crossroaders say, he got in, got the money, and got out.
One of the best reads I have seen in a long time. Alfie didn't just publish a journal, he really wrote a book, and it has my recommendation for all of you here.
