The only thing my Daddy ever told me not to do was to not play pool. I could walk to the Pines theatre, go to the Rexall drug store, and get a cherry coke. But Daddy made me walk straight home after the movie and the drug store. And I wanted more than anything else to play pool. But only “hoods” ever played pool, when I was a boy.

Tulley's Café. One Saturday, I saved a quarter from my movie money. I could have bought a big box of Junior Mints, a Slo‑Poke sucker, or some Sugar Babies. But I knew I was going to use that quarter to play pool in Tulley's Café. Every time I walked by that old café, I looked in and saw the huge green pool table right by the window. I knew that it only cost a quarter to play, and I had a quarter.

Pool table. My friend, Tommy, and I walked right in Tulley’s front door after the movie let out, and we raced up to that pool table. Both of us of us had our quarters. We dropped our first quarter into the slide coin slot and pushed it in—the balls all fell out of the side into the bottom tray. The noise was so loud that everyone in the café stopped and looked at us for a moment. But then, they went back to smoking and drinking coffee, like we weren’t even there.

Eight balls. It took us about a minute to accidentally knock the eight ball in the wrong hole, which we knew meant that the game was over. We just knocked the rest of them in for nothing. Then, the same thing happened in the second game, when I hit the black eight ball too hard on my first shot. Our quarters were gone, and neither of us won. So, we slipped out and headed home, wishing we had another chance at pool or maybe some of those Slo-Pokes.

Phone call. I still wonder who called Daddy. When I got home, he already knew that I had been in Tulley's, and I had played pool. I always thought that my grandmother, “Miss Beulah,” had something to do with it. I got spanked hard and hollered at—Daddy said I couldn't go to the movies for two weeks. He didn’t let Mama spank me, because she wouldn’t hurt me enough.

Playing pool wasn’t worth what I paid for it. I wasn’t even allowed to walk in front of Tulley’s Café after that day. Daddy made me cross the street before I got there. And I never found out for sure who tattled on me just for playing pool.

Secrets. Tommy and I later suspected that my grandmother had Mr. Tulley call Daddy, so I wouldn’t come in there again. Miss Beulah drank beer and smoked cigarettes there, and it was her way of keeping me from knowing what she was up to. She might have even had a boyfriend; I don’t know. She kept secrets from me when she could.

Pool, beer, and hoods. What was funny, I already knew what Miss Beulah was doing. I had seen her in there on other Saturdays, when I peeked through the door or window at that pool table. One day, I told Mama and Daddy that I had seen Miss Beulah drinking beer. They just told me to stay away from that place, or I would get hurt by the hoods that were there playing pool.

Miss Beulah was not a hood, and she didn’t play pool. But she drank that beer at Tulley’s, and tattled on me just so Mama and Daddy would keep me out of her beer joint. Maybe she was just paying me back for tattling on her.

Why were only hoods allowed to play pool, anyway? And only in beer joints?

© 2009 Tuck Mantooth All Rights Reserved

Were you ever told not to do something, yet you did it anyway? What happened?