18810408 15:38:11

MK-S-4798

18810408 15:38:11

Richard's grin spread widely across his face as he watched his father wring the white powder over his dark hands. However, he didn't keep his gaze on the hands for long, and let his eyes dart around the room to drink the scenery into his body - the mere act of being in the room was excitement enough. As he looked across the room and saw pictures of people he didn't recognize, and books with no words on their spines filling the shelves in the cases, he gently rocked his body back and forth as both of his hands clung to the stick. Carbondale spoke up and quickly snapped him out of his state of entrancement.
"So's we gonna play pool, we need to set it up. First word we usin today is gentle. Gentle. Pool gets mean when you make it mean. Keep it gentle. Now, gently, lean that stick on the side there and set it up. That green table is like a baby's bottom. Treat it gently. Get the triangle up there and get the balls up there."
Richard dutifully followed the order and got the cedar triangle placed on the table's surface before making a lap around the rails to pull the balls from each pocket. He held his arm over the table to collect them all in one trip and brought them over to the side where the triangle rested.
"Awright. Now, you got two kinda balls there. Some's full color, some's got a stripe of color on there. That's solids and stripes. OK, now, put em all in there, any old way. We'll switch it up right after that." He watched Richard stack the balls into the frame and nodded as it slowly filled.
"Good. Now, find that yellow solid ball. It's the one ball. There in the back, you see it? Yep, now, change that with the very top, flip them around. Good. Now um, yeah, now you wanna find the eight ball. It's black. There on the side, yeah that. Put that right behind the one, in the next row. Flip it with that purple one. Yeah. Good. And... yep, that's how you want those corners, see it there? You got one solid and one stripe. Can't be the same on those corners. OK now push it all up really tight. Put your hands over it and push up with your thumbs. Oh yeah, yeah, and roll it so that the yellow ball is over that dot in the middle there. Yep. Yep. Push it again. Yep. Good. Now do it uh, um - what's the word we usin here?"
"Gentle?"
"Sright, gentle, cus this is a gentleman's game, right? Now, gently lift that triangle up and put it under the table."
Carbondale lined the cue up on the table and watched Richard lean down to put the triangle away and return upright.
"Now, before we get into the rules and start playin there's two basic things to know here. One, there's only a few times where you want to snap the shot really hard. This is one of them. This is the first shot - this is the break. Like this." Carbondale pulled the stick over his bridge and let the stick glide in two pumps before he pulled back, held the stick back for a brief moment, then snapped it forward. The break was pretty clean and shown the packing to have been pretty good. No balls sank from the strike.
"And number two. And this is most of the time with pool here. Most of the time, you don't want to shoot as hard as you can. Most of the time, you just want to shoot it just enough. Just enough. You want to use something the say is finesse with your shots. Like this."
He lined up a shot for the three ball which rested immediately next to the corner pocket. A soft tap sent the cue rolling over the click against the red ball and deflected it directly into the pocket.
"That's a key here. You just want to give it exactly enough. Not too much. Not too little. Enough."