Racking Up the Wealthiest 2% of Americans

Some 30 years ago, I was a High School Jr. living in Mansfield Texas. At that time Mansfield was still a small town of several thousand people, mostly spread about the surrounding countryside. There was an old downtown area at the corner of Main and Broad with a few ramshackle store-fronts that had seen much better times decades before. In one of the buildings on Main St., across from the hardware store, there was a pool hall that looked like something out of an old western. It was a long and narrow space with a beat up and dusty wood floor, a jukebox and five pool tables lined up parallel. On the walls were the house cues, racks and chalk. I don't recall a sign out front, but the proprietor's name was Fred, and everybody called this place Fred's Pool Hall.

Fred was a crusty old guy of indeterminate age, maybe 70, maybe 80. He was about 5' 2" tall, and I would guess around 250 lbs. Every time I ever saw him, he was wearing the same pair of worn out blue denim bib overalls, a lumberjack shirt and work boots. In his mouth was a moist and chewy cigar, that he pulled out when he growled and mumbled his largely unintelligible speech. He smelled like tobacco smoke and the sweat of a working man. Old Fred was like a bull-dog watching over this pool hall, snapping at anybody who got out of line and generally keeping the order. That was his job and he took it very seriously.

Clipped to the right side of his overalls was chain that hung down maybe ten inches, and looped back up and into his pocket. Normally his right hand was in the same pocket, while his left was busy fingering his cigar or jangling the bulge of quarters in his left pocket. When somebody needed change for the pool tables, Fred pulled the right hand out of the pocket along with a very fat wallet on the end of the chain. He opened the wallet, stuffed in the bills, and dropped it back into his pocket. The left hand then fished out several quarters and spread them out on the edge of the table to complete the making of change, then reached back up to his soggy cigar. This went on hour after hour all day long.

It was normally on evenings or weekends when my friends and I would stop in. I was no pool player, and being of modest means, I simply did not have money to spare to drop into the slot. I was mostly there to hang out with the guys, and crack wise. From my description of Fred, you can probably guess that he was not too keen on wisecracks or wiseguys in general. In fact he commonly ran somebody off for some minor irritation or infraction of his rules. As you can imagine, being a wiseguy, I was inclined to live on the edge; I wanted to push the envelope, but stop short of getting banished from the hall. On one such occasion, I happened to have an extra dollar to play pool, so I called Fred over to our table. He walked over with his smell and his grumpy attitude, snatched my dollar out of my hand, and began the routine of making change. I remember the stack of money in the wallet was especially impressive this day. There was more money in there than I had ever seen. So, I reached out my hand with pointed finger, touched the bills inside the fat wallet and said something genius like, "Wow look at all that; You're Rich!" That was when Fred smacked me up side of the head with his smelly cigar hand and snarled "GIT OUTTA MY MONEY!" My friends were falling about the place laughing as I put on a stupid comic's grin. Fred coolly laid my four quarters on the table and walked off chewing his cigar. His expression didn't give away much emotion, but the twinkle in his eye and the fact he didn't run me off told me he got a kick out of the episode. I think old Fred got this one right; He had worked hard for that money and I had no business in it.