Marcel Camp showed up most years at the Cue Club to bet on the matches. Give Marcel some heavy side action and a Heineken and he was good to go. Marcel could sit there and watch match after match and be just as happy as a new dad. He would study every shot of every game and could remember the shots in any given game for days. He lost money betting against me once and he came up six months later and asked me why I'd banked a three ball cross-side instead of ducking. I didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about but he remembered it like it had happened that morning. Marcel Camp lived to gamble and he had developed routines and skills to suit that purpose.

His Achilles heel was that he had to have a bet down. One time Detroit Whitey and Cornbread Red were going to play a set and the word was out that Whitey would be dumping. A new stakehorse had shown up in Johnston City that year and Whitey had the fellow's cash before he ever got sat down good. Whitey got him to back his stick in a game against Cornbread and Whitey was going to dump for half the action. He and Red would divvy up the man's bankroll and send him on down the road.

When I walked in to watch the dump I saw Marcel sitting there with his little pad out and I knew he was figuring what he needed to bet, and on whom, for this match. So I went over and sat next to Marcel for a moment and let him in on the news that Whitey was dumping the game. Then I went off to be with some of my friends. As the match was coming to an end I overheard someone say: "Wow, that match is gonna cost Camp a buck or two!" I asked about it and he said that Camp had put a wad of money on Whitey. I couldn't believe it. I had told Marcel that Whitey was dumping. I went over to Marcel and he was still sitting there, considering the next match with a smile. "So, Marcel", I said, "I know that I told you that Whitey was dumping and then I heard that you bet on him anyway." He just looked at me and replied: "I had to Danny, I couldn't get any money down on Red."

Marcel was always fun to be around. One time he made a game to play 9-Ball and he really wasn't fond of the spot he had gotten. When they flipped quarters for the break his coin bounced on the table and jumped right into the corner pocket. He goes: "See, that's how bad I am. I scratch on the flip!" He made some crazy games. In Norfolk he used to make games with a pencil, shooting with the eraser.

Once at Gulfstream Race Track I was walking up to the windows to make a bet when I saw Camp coming away from a pay window, counting his money. He had his head down, counting, not paying any notice to me or anyone else around him. A young man ran up from behind him and snatched the money out of his hands. The thief was hauling full bore towards me and I clotheslined him and put my foot on his throat. I took the money and gave it back to Marcel. He said "thanks", walked off, and lost it all on the next race.

Johnston City defined the kind of action that Marcel loved. As the years progressed this action got a lot tougher because everyone had pretty much established a track record. The first few years you would find guys from Philadelphia who wanted to back Fusco, guys from L.A. who would put money on Ronnie Allen while the Detroit group would always bet on Cornbread and so on.

But after these guys matched up with one another a few times the money got smarter. No one is going to jump up and lay cash on a guy playing straight up against a player who has flailed him the last five times. The spots got so tight it was hard to make a solid, consistent score anymore. Without big winners in a good mood the whole money thing falls apart. The more that money moves around in a place the more chance you have of snagging a piece of it. You can't get to it if it stays trapped in a pocket.

So the action began to slow down among the regional backers in Johnston City as early as 1966. One year Camp and I walked into the Cue Club together and bumped into Eddie Taylor. Eddie had been there a few days ahead of us to test the waters. When he saw us he just shook his head and said: "No good, guys. Even the bite is off 40% this year."

When one pond dries up you must either go to another pond or make one. In Johnston City the action that was lost on the pool tables shifted over to the golf course or to tossing coins or sports betting. For a while it seemed like everyone was coming up with a new proposition. Even the broadcasters got into the action. For six years ABC's Wide World of Sports came and filmed the tournament at Johnston City and even they got in on the action. Back then it was called "The World Hustler's All-Around Championship". The title was rather ironic since one of the head honchos with ABC, Chet Forte, had a lot of hustle in him.

He was an all-star basketball player in college, and he came in one day while some guys were putting together a proposition involving basketball and he really snuck up on them. Chet Forte had been around sports all of his life and he knew the importance of ego to the success of anyone in athletics. He realized that athletes never reach a zenith until they believe in themselves. Before you can know that you are the best you must believe that you are the best. In pool, the only sticks in any game with a chance of winning are the ones who believe that they will win. No one can win at anything by thinking and feeling like a loser.

Forte crashed into the egos of these guys by letting a group that included Dave Sizemore overhear him tell one of the cameramen that he had beaten a guy one time at free throws and that he had shot his blindfolded. When Sizemore heard that it was like a slap in the face, an insult that anyone thought that they were good enough to shoot baskets blindfolded so he turned his head to Forte and said: "You better not give me that bet cause I'll shove it down your throat." And Forte goes: "Well, come on, big guy, let's see your money". Dave went for his pocket so fast I though he was going to break his thumb.

When word got around about this bet there were quite a few guys who wanted to watch so we wound up with another parade of cars going down to the High School. We all went in to the gym. Chuck Forte was dressed up nice like a pro golfer or something and the rest of us looked perhaps a tad scruffy. We were attired in every poolroom style of the day that you can imagine, which meant anything from Hawaiian shirts to green leisure suits, but all accompanied by alligator shoes. Forte walked down to the coach's office and the alligators parked themselves on the sidelines.

In a minute or two Forte came out, bouncing a basketball with the coach beside him, chatting him up. Forte was to shoot first and walked up to the foul line and squared his feet on the center of the foul line. Sizemore had borrowed a black bandana and he went up and tied it around Forte's head and bent down to make sure that he couldn't peek out from under it or anything and when he was satisfied that Forte couldn't possibly see tomorrow coming wearing that thing he handed him the basketball, stepped back, and said: "OK, shoot."

Forte popped in foul shots like 1,2,3! In no time he made eight out of ten free throws, took off the blindfold and looked over to Dave. Sizemore was standing there beside him with a crazed look on his face. He might as well have been out there with his dick in his hand. Dave still had to shoot and he was obviously shaken by events. He walked up to the line and missed his first three shots and it was over. Blindfolded guy 8, Sizemore 0.

Even so, the more the word got around the tournament about this feat the more guys came up and wanted to try it themselves. There's that good old predictable ego for you. "He might have beaten Sizemore with that crap, but he ain't beating me!" Forte took a couple of more guys on this wager but then shut it down. He figured that he had made his point and he didn't want this thing to somehow backfire on him on the air.

Forte had seen enough broadcast problems already. In 1967, when Wide World of Sports was filming the goings-on at Johnston City, they let all the players come up and introduce themselves to the camera "Hi, I'm so and so from wherever" and do a trick shot for the camera. This process was rolling right along when Martin Kyman, known as Omaha Fats, made his entrance. Martin's trick shot was an impressive one-handed spot shot and we were all sitting there watching him and he just couldn't make the shot work. He had done this shot hundreds of times, we had all seen it before, but this day he just couldn't make the shot work. He tried it forty-seven times and it never went.

Chet Forte smiled through all of this and after each new miss he would say: "That's OK, we've got lots of film, let him keep shooting, just let it run out." And Forte was trying to keep Martin focused and calm and get to relax, to just take it easy and keep trying, it has to go sometime. He finally made the shot and the room erupted in applause as Martin smiled, waved, and put away his cue.

The circus in Johnston City folded its tent for the final time in October of 1972. That was the year that I won the All-Around Championship by besting Boston Shorty and Billy Incardona in the final three-man showdown. It was also the year that the Feds raided the place.

The FBI and the IRS claimed later that they had an informant that told them that Paulie Jansco was the head of a huge bookmaking organization. So one night we were all minding our own business in the Cue Club when the doors filled up with badges and guns. They lined us all up against a wall like it was a heist and then arrested a whole bunch of us and took us downtown and booked us on various gaming charges.

The real pain was that they confiscated everybody's money, so we were all broke and had to pay lawyers most of our money just to get it back. Only Jim Rempe escaped the robbery. He had just won seven grand playing Nine Ball and had taken the cash out and locked it in the trunk of his car. It was still waiting on him when he was released the next morning and he drove away with his money. The rest of us had to go through the lawyers and a ton of paperwork.

The trials, those that occurred, were a joke. Most charges were dismissed before ever seeing a courtroom when the Feds realized how bogus their case was. When the Judge put Minnesota Fats on the stand it became the comedy hour. He told the judge "You should be ashamed! You got that player over there for bringing a ham sandwich across state lines. You got this guy for having a concealed hot dog." And he went on from there with a monologue that even the bench found humorous. Eventually they dropped all the charges against everyone, but it killed the event forever.

The man who had dominated Johnston City was Wimpy, Luther Lassiter. The best that any one player ever did in Johnston City outside of Wimpy was several guys won two or three individual or All-Around titles. Wimpy won fifteen of them! That's how serious he was. It didn't matter who was playing him what, except maybe Eddie Taylor at One-Pocket, Wimpy was the favored side of the betting line. He just played too good to bet against. People tried all kinds of betting lines on him and he wound up beating them all.

Lassiter stood around 5' 10", weighed about 165 pounds and had gray hair. He spoke with a slow southern accent that could disarm you with its calm. And Wimpy was a nice man. He treated everyone well and he always over-tipped waitresses. Everyone who knew Wimpy liked him. People would try to get him to partner up and go out on road trips and Luther would say: "Naw, I got to get back to North Carolina. It's time to walk in the woods and look at the squirrels again." And he was just that way. He couldn't wait to get home. When he wanted action he would always just shoot up the road a ways to Norfolk and find another sailor.

Luther had his strangeness. Sometimes he would go on a binge and stay drunk for two weeks. Other times he wouldn't have a drink for months. He really was pretty much of a lone wolf and just stayed to himself. He had a real tragic romance one time where this woman just broke his heart. He fell in love with a local girl and they got engaged. He just loved her to death but he was the only guy in town who didn't know she was banging every hammer in town. He had already bought the furniture for their new apartment when a friend finally clued him in. He was devastated and I always thought that it cost him his trust of people.

I always thought Luther was a kind of a hypochondriac, but he finally died and won that bet. He would come to the tournaments and you would go in his room and there would be pill bottles everywhere. There'd be ten bottles on the dresser, and nine bottles on the back of the john and in his bag there would be more pills and he would take huge handfuls of vitamins several times a day.

I first met him in 1963 and he asked me how my health was. At the time it wasn't actually all that great and I told him I had a few problems here and there, that my stomach gave me a lot of trouble, and he looked up and he said: "Good, then you'll be a great player."

A promoter came up to Wimpy once in Johnston City. He had set up a deal for Wimpy to travel around and do a series of sixty exhibitions. Luther would get $1,000 for each exhibition. That was really big money, $60,000 for six months work in the sixties when a hamburger was fifteen cents. Lassiter politely thanked the man and declined. "Naw, it's time to go home for a while."

Luther really had no need to hustle on the road. All the action came to him since every hot shot knew that the road to the top led through him. People would wait around in Norfolk until he showed up and they would try him at Nine Ball. He loaned most of them the bus fare to get home.

Even with all of his greatness he aged into a sad, somewhat lonely character. In one of the Straight Pool Championships in Los Angeles the players would gather each evening in the hotel bar. One evening Danny Gartner was talking up this gorgeous hooker in there. I'm often surprised by the beauty and class of some of the call girls in hotels throughout the world. You might think that profession would draw nothing but trash but some of these girls you'd be proud to have on your arm anywhere, and this was one of those girls.

She was adorable. She had a body that demanded your attention. Just ripe all over and with this tiny little waist that looked like you could wrap your hands around it and still twiddle your thumbs. Her face looked like it jumped off of a magazine cover. Everyone in the room was blatantly staring at her as she sat there talking a deal with Gartner. Luther was in there and he was just overcome with this girl. He was sitting back in his chair and I swear his mouth was agape.

Gartner was a friend of Lassiter and he felt sorry for Luther, I guess, because of Luther's betrayal by that girl back home and all. Anyway, in his own weird way Gartner was trying to take care of Lassiter so he included him in his deal with this hooker.

Strangeness seemed to follow Gartner around. Even his nickname. They called him 'Young Greenleaf' even though he was older than Greenleaf. So he was asking this hooker about price and she said she could offer herself that evening for a certain price that she named and Danny accepted. Then Danny asked: "Well how much more if my friend over there gets to watch?" and he nodded his head toward Luther. And she said: "Oh, another fifteen bucks." So Danny said: "OK, let's go." And he went over and grabbed Luther by the arm and the three of them headed over to the elevator and Luther's eyes grew wider the longer that Gartner leaned into his ear.

Well, the whole bar knew what was going on. The entire negotiation had unfolded with an audience. So a group of us decided that the only thing to do was to climb up the fire escape and watch the entertainment. So here we went, a whole slew of pool players, and we went outside and jumped up and pulled the ladder for the fire escape down, and up we went, up eight flights of outdoor iron fire escape. You know, up a floor, across a railed landing, up another floor, etc.

We all knew which room these two were in, so up we went and we sat outside the window in this tight little cluster of voyeurism. We couldn't see all the way into the room because of the way the blinds were set. All we could see was Luther sitting in the corner watching. So that's what we did, we sat out on the fire escape and watched Luther watch.

Finally one of us lost it and laughed too loud. Then it was all hands hell bent for leather down the fire escape as Gartner threw glasses at us out of the window. Luther never got out of his chair. He just sat there and let his eyes wash his heart with that girl's body.

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