About 20 years ago I took my best buddy, the late Gary Spaeth to a bar table tournament at the Chatanooga Billiards Club in Downtown Chatanooga Tennessee. We thought that Gary should be "The Nuts" in this little $50 entry bar box tournament. We arrived a day early to scope the place out in the hopes of trapping a local and maybe making up part of the "nut" for the week.

      As soon as we walked in the door Phil Windham, the owner, walked up to us and introduced himself. He immediately looked at Gary and said "You're Gary Spaeth aren't you?" Gary tried denying his identity and made up a phony name. Phil said "No, I know who you are, I saw you beat Jimmy Rempe 10 years ago in L.A.. Wait here, I can prove it." Quickly he went back to his office and produced an old program from some long forgotten tournament. It had pictures of most of the players in it. Phil pointed out an old picture of Gary with hair down the middle of his back, wearing bell bottom pants. We all laughed and couldn't deny Phil, "the pool detective", his glory. We apologized but Phil wasn't mad, he understood how tough it was back then. We continued to look at the pictures of the players in the program. Gary turned a page and there was a picture of Buddy Hall in his bell bottoms with a big grin on his face. At this point Gary really put his foot in his mouth by saying with a chuckle,"Check out Buddy, he was sure ugly back then."Phil had Gary autograph the old program and we all kind of laughed and went on about our business.

      As the day progressed our original assessment of Gary having a lock on this little tourney started to wane as one after another Champion after Champion walked in. David Howard, Earl Strickland, Dave Matlock, Reed Pierce, Bucky Bell, Mike Massey, Buddy Hall on and on. We thought, "Damn what's next?"

      Well the tourney got under way. Gary was playing very well! A few rounds into it Gary came up against Buddy Hall. To everyone's surprise, Phil Windham got on the PA as he was announcing the matches and told the story of our entrance to the Poolroom. He explained how he had gotten the program and mentioned Gary's (not so bright) comment about Buddy. Upon Buddy's arrival Phil asked him to autograph the program also. He kind of chuckled when he saw the old picture of Gary. This made Phil bring up Gary's comment which spurred the response from Buddy "I may have been ugly, but not as ugly as Gary". Phil thought this would be a good area for the audience to get involved. As he explained the whole story to the entire crowd he said we we're also going to have an "Ugly Contest" with the two entries. The crowd was to be the judge by way of applause on cue. (No pun intended! lol) Well with a lot of help, from me and a couple of Gary's other good buddies, Gary Spaeth won hands down. We whooped and hollered and cheered Gary on to victory. He even won the match, which was miraculous after the harassment he'd just received. Unfortunately that was the last match he won and he ended up finishing just out of the money. Things weren't much better for David Howard and Earl Strickland. That evening we got together at the motel and were swapping war stories. After an hour or two of "road tales" David Howard came up with the statement that started me on this story to begin with. He simply said "Yeah this pool's tough!... But somebody's gotta do it!". There's hardly a week goes by that I don't think of that statement. I often substitute "cuemaking" for "pool" when I use the words, but the thought's the same. David and I got to be great friends after that and made several road trips ourselves.

That's all for now....thanks.

Sherm Adamson

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sherm@shermcue.com

Sherm