Weenie Beenie's last hot dog stand

Weenie Beenie
Originally uploaded by jakedyer.

This is the last remaining Weenie Beenie hotdog stand from a chain of several, at one time owned by Washington, D.C. pool hustler Bill "Weenie Beenie" Staton. The seed money for the purchase of the very first hotdog stand was raised during a gambling trip to Cleo Vaughn's Arkansas poolroom during the winter of 1960.

This is what Staton said about that trip:

"I like to say I made over a million dollars. (That’s because) I won $27,000, and I went home and wanted to invest it. I told my lawyer that I won this money, and I wanted to invest it. He said, ‘Bill, you have to declare that on income tax.’ So, I declared it on my income tax, and then built a little hotdog stand. It was 12 foot wide and 20 foot long. It’s still located in Alexandria, Virginia. The way I figure I made $1 million is from the rent I’ve been collecting all these years."

This picture was sent in by pool fan William McVeigh, who divides his time between Washington DC and Quepos, Costa Rica. This is what he said about the stand:

"The yellow phone pages list only one Weenie Beenie in N. VA, and that is the one in the photos, at 2680 S. Shirlington Rd., Arlington, VA. I remember seeing others in years past, but I don't see them now so they must have disappeared. ... It is significant that this stand is a mere 100 yards down the street from Champion Billiards, the only decent pool room in Arlington County, founded about 15 years ago. But I never happened to see the Bean play there. ..."

-- R.A. Dyer

Memories of Norfolk and Wimpy Lassiter

In my continuing spring cleaning efforts, I'm transferring some posts from an old blog that I'm about to discontinue. Here's one from a few years back featuring a letter from Ken McCarthy, who recalls fondly his years in Norfolk, Virginia, a favored haunt of Wimpy Lassiter. Lassiter was a giant there in the 1940s, during and right after World War II. I've got a fair amount written about Wimpy's exploits in Norfolk in Hustler Days. I also wrote an article about Norfolk a few years back in Billiards Digest. Although the formatting is screwed up, an online copy of that article can be found here.

Just below are two notes from Ken McCarthy. According to my records, he sent them to me sometime before 2006. And just below these notes from Mr. McCarthy I've reproduced some other online memories of Norfolk....

Read on...

"When I was in the navy (1961-1965) I was stationed in Norfolk ,VA and played pool every minute I had at St. Elmos pool hall (2nd floor, a few buildings up from the YMCA). As you know this is where Wimpy played when in town, and it is where I saw him ( I still have a perfect vision of that white head standing out in the dimness along the left wall watching the goings-on). I was just starting to play pool and my friend pointed him out to me as a great player, although at the time I really didn't realize HOW great a player.

"In 1963 or 64 I bought a Willie Hoppe special (Brunswick) cue through the owner (a kindly, short, bald-headed man). I then sanded off a section on the top of the butt, bought a Parker ink pen and asked Mr. Lassiter to sign it. He did, and I still have the cue and the pen. I have recently picked up the game again and I now know that he was actually at the top of his game when he signed my cue!"

I wrote Ken back later, asking him if he had any photos of the St. Elmos to post up here on the Untold Stories website. I also asked if he had ran into other players like Fats at the pool hall. This is his response:

"I do not have any pictures of St. Elmo's even though at the time I was an amateur photographer and my ships official photographer. In 1963 there was no such thing as a family billiard parlor. This was an old time pool hall where you keep your mouth shut and pay up when you lose. I think you can imagine that taking pictures in an establishment like that may have made one "un-popular" with some of the notoriety. But now I sure wished I had.

No, I never run into Fats or Willie. I did meet Art Cranfield once simply because he was from Syracuse, my home town.

So I'm sorry to say that the only thing I can give you are my memories of St. Elmo's and a vivid picture of that white mane sitting along the side wall watching the players.

My good friend at the time, and the guy who started me in pool, played Luther once for five bucks -- a lot of money for a sailor in 1963. Fred broke and nothing went. The one ball lay down by the corner pocket and the nine up by the side. Luther stepped up, pocketed the one, came back up the table with the cue ball and knocked the nine in the side pocket. He turns to Fred and says 'My gosh, what luck. Let's play another.' Fred declined.

If there is anything else please let me know. I would be delighted to see any pictures of that venerable palace of pool if you run across any in your research.

Thanks.

Ken."

And now, here are a few notes I received on the same topic:
Brian the Bricklayer said...

"I have lived in Virginia Beach my entire life and you have brought back some fond memories for me about St. Elmo's. I was fortunate enough to have gotten one of those cherry wood grained tables when SE closed and I went to the auction. Unfortunately that table went up in a fire a couple years ago. In Lassiters last few years I was lucky enough to have met and talked to him quite a bit. He was full of stories very colorful stories of his life. He told me about when he won the US Open in 64 and going AWOL from Navy by jumping off the ship he was assigned to.
He died like he lived. Playing pool in Elizebeth City practicing the game he loved. What a character"

Anonymous said...

"I grew up in Ocean View and remember St.Elmo's as the old time pool hall it was. Like Brian I was also fortunate enough to aquire a table at the auction. Sorry to hear Brians pice of history went up in smoke."

And Foodbill said...

"I played there from august 66 to August 68. I was a Dental Tech at N.O.B and spent a lot of time at St Elmo's. I went there on the last night of my tour of duty at Norfolk and ran 49 balls in a straight pool match. I too wished l took some pictures. Last year l was looking through Ebay and won a bid on an old cue ball that was used at the pool hall before it was sold in 1970. I was telling a young pro in Conn. about that place all the money you could win or lose in those days. The owner back then was Carolina Witfield,his son worked there too. Does anyone remember Big Red? He love to play golf pool."

-- R.A. Dyer

Program from Minnesota Fats appearance

Here's a photo from Dale R. LeMieux of a flyer for an exhibition he saw with Minnesota Fats at the Pontiac Silverdome, then home of the Detroit Lions. The event was in the 1970s. Note: the top and side of the paper has Fats' autograph.

Dale writes: "The event was called The Billiard Bash and it was a benefit of the TRI-COUNTY EASTER SEAL SOCIETIES. This event featured Minnesota Fats as the one to beat. For a contribution of fifty dollars you were able to play him. I took my father there just to see Minnesota Fats ... (and) we were sitting in the audience watching, (and) I told my father that I was going to go down and talk to Fats. My father encouraged me to do so and said I probably would never get another chance.

As he was still standing there alone I went up to him and asked him about the movie THE HUSTLER. (Fats) talked to anyone who would listen. He talked for a while just like he had known me forever and I really enjoyed it because I had always really liked him (one of the few that liked him more than Mosconi). Then as another person started he continued to talk to me as the person ran some balls in their game of eightball.

Now it was Fats turn to shoot and when he got to the eightball a heckler starts in on Fats telling him he was no good at playing pool and that anyone can beat him. Fats says to the man "I'll tell you what I'll dooo. I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I will bank the eight three in the side." The man said no more. With no hesitation Fats banked the eight three rails into the side pocket. I think he said: "I'll just send old Elsie home anyway" and then he shot it in.

After the exhibition we were still sitting in our seats when Fats and a few big guys he had around him came back (to where we were) and ... as he was walking by he reached down and tapped me on the shoulder and said to me: "I will see you later Dale." That was the last time I saw Rudolph Wanderone in person.

Personal note... I have always disliked the way people (pool players) at least in this area after Fats got older and sicker tell of how they beat him. It also happened in this area with a great player I knew Cornbread Red ( Billy Burge). Now that he is gone it seems that everyone beat him. I know that I never beat him and he was one of the greats, He was colorful and liked to talk as well. I for one will miss both players."

-- R.A. Dyer

Memories of Minnesota Fats

Reader Ron Allday sent me this note back in 2007. It was posted on an old blog that I'm in the process of trashing.

"I was in the Le Cue in Houston one night back in the 70's. Fats had come in to do an exhibition. Fats was shooting and gabbing, and mentioned he had done an exhibition for the Houston Astros, and let one of the players win the first game of a race to three. Some kid in the crowd popped off then that 'If that had been me I'd have quit after one game so I could say I beat the Fat Man.' It got quiet, and Fats put his stick down, walked over and got right in the kid's face. He said 'Sonny Boy, wouldn't have done ya' any good. Nobody woulda believed ya!' Jersey Red was there, too. He told me he wouldn't walk across the room to watch Fats shoot, but he'd drive across the country to listen to him talk. That was a memorable evening."


-- R.A. Dyer

Pool & Gambling: The Debate Continues

I notice a lot of give and take from PoolSynergy writers and readers this month on the issue of pool and gambling.

Justin Collett, founder of The Action Report, praises the drama of one-on-one action featuring top players. "It really is no secret it is as old as time -- people want the drama of a contest," Mr. Collett writes in comments at the bottom of my PoolSynergy post, which is just below this one.

John Biddle, founder of the PoolSynergy project, argues that gambling is bad for the sport's image. "Pool has a very active gambling culture that harms the sport and many of its players, limits it audience and turns off potential sponsors," writes Biddle in his PoolSynergy post. You can read it here.

I write in my post that the opposite might be true -- at least with regards to Biddle's assertion that gambling has limited our sport's audience. It was, after all, the public's fascination with pool gambling that helped propel the popularity of The Hustler, the 1960s film starring Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman. That film ushered in a decade-long renaissance for the sport. I would also argue that the public's fascination with pool gambling helps explain the astronomical TV ratings of the Great Shoot-Out, which pitted Minnesota Fats against Willie Mosconi. The challenge match was the most watched pool event in American history.

One other observation: Mr. Collett notes that while his website "is about the action side of the game," it's also much more than that. "No one has done as much coverage of the high end custom cue scene as us as well as streaming traditional events like the WPBA, US Bar Table Championships, and the upcoming US Open 10 Ball," he writes. Again, you can read Mr. Collett's comments at the bottom of my PoolSynergy post, which is right below this one.

And by way of background, PoolSynergy is an online collaborative effort between pool writers who post essays each month about a common theme. You can read more about PoolSynergy here. You can also cast your vote on the issue of pool and gambling at the online poll, which I've posted up in the right-hand margin of this blog.

-- R.A. Dyer

PoolSynergy 5: Pool and the Sporting Life

This is the fifth in a series of posts written in coordination with other online pool writers. It's part of the Pool Synergy project hosted this month by Alison Fischer at NYCGrind. Look for more PoolSynergy installments in the future.

I note with interest the on-gain and off-again debate about The Action Report, which, as many of you know, is that online site devoted to high-stakes pool gambling. Founded by Justin Collett, The Action Report (better known as "TAR"), streams gambling sessions -- sometimes very expensive gambling sessions -- featuring our sport's top players.

The question is this: is glorifying gambling good for pool or bad for it?

“There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to this,” writes the anonymous blogger responsible for the online Pool Cue News and Review. “One camp will tell you that all TAR is doing is embracing what pool has always been. The seedy side of pool has a reputation for gambling and TAR is simply putting it up on a pedestal. The other camp will tell you that pool is a sport that should be recognized as such and the only way it will find its way into the mainstream (and the Olympics) is if the industry sheds its seedy reputation.”

It’s a fair question, and a particularly appropriate one considering our PoolSynergy topic this month. In case you haven’t been following along, PoolSynergy is a collaborative effort between online pool writers, each of whom agree to post essays on a single theme. Our topic this month is “Pool and the Mainstream,” which I take to mean: “How will pool ever gain legitimacy with the mainstream media and the general public?”

And this takes us back to the question of TAR, a website devoted to what many would deem the seedier aspects of pool. Does glorifying gambling help promote our sport, or does it harm its image?

Although the Pool Cue News blogger doesn’t come down one way or the other on this question, he does note that TAR's market strategy is not much different from the one employed by the city of Las Vegas. That is, Las Vegas gave up trying to promote itself as a "family-fun" destination -- that clearly wasn't working -- and instead now promotes itself for what it truly is: a city where you can go gamble.

I also won't come down one way or the other in this debate. But I will provide this bit of historical context. Know that pool's conflicting duality -- that is, the tension between respectability and tawdriness that is illustrated in the TAR question -- has been with the sport always. The game may have began as a pastime for nobility, but it soon migrated to the public rooms, where it then became a favorite of “blacklegs” and ruffians.

Even the term “pool” refers to the gambling "pools" that were commonly operated in 19th Century parlors where one often also would find a billiard table. As historian Mike Shamos points out, it was a linguistic misunderstanding -- that is, the habit of calling these betting parlors “pool rooms” -- that gave our sport its very name.

Brunswick later tried to clean up the sport’s image by attempting to change its name to "pocket billiards.” But like the attempt to project a family-fun image for Vegas, this really didn't take. As anyone who plays in an APA league knows, we’re pool players, not pocket billiard players.

There was also a great hue and cry over the release of The Hustler, a film that did more to bring our game to the public's attention than any single cultural event of the last 50 years. And yet thematically it's focus was exactly the focus of the TAR website: pool gambling. Willie Mosconi, who served as a technical adviser for the film, got an earful from his friends in the industry after its release. They thought the film would wreck the sport. Instead, it sparked a decade-long renaissance.

Likewise, the most watched pool match in history – the Great Shoot-Out between Mosconi and Minnesota Fats – embodied the tension between these two very different faces of pool. Mosconi represented its clean-cut image. Fats represented the gambling. The ABC broadcast had ratings commensurate with some World Series games. I would argue that it was this very tension between the sport's gambling image and its clean-cut one that helped propel its ratings.

Younger readers who have never seen The Hustler should do so immediately. It’s great. And if you're interested in looking at footage from the Great Shoot-Out, I have some posted up here. There's also my two books, Hustler Days and The Hustler & The Champ, that deal extensively with these questions.

So, do outfits like TAR -- that is, those who would romanticize pool's sporting life -- provide for us a way forward? Or, given the general apathy exhibited by the public, should we move away from this image as we look to bring our sport into the mainstream? I think these questions are among the most important for our sport.

-- R.A. Dyer

New Poll Question: Pool and Gambling

In preparation for my upcoming PoolSynergy column (which you'll be able to find here in a day or so) I've posted up a new poll question. As you may already know, PoolSynergy is an online collaborative effort between pool writers. This month's theme is "Pool and the Mainstream" and my upcoming essay touches upon questions raised by our sport's long association with gambling. So here's the poll question: Is this association good for the sport's image or bad?

You'll have to scroll down a bit to find the poll. I've provided four possible responses, and I of course welcome comments here and on the Pool History Facebook page.

And while you're busy mulling over this deep philosophical question, you might also cast your vote on the Greenleaf-Mosconi question. That poll is at the right. I've got plenty of information about both players here on this blog if you want to research the question before you decide. I also maintain separate Mosconi and Greenleaf blogs, and Billiards Digest will feature an Untold Stories column on the question in an upcoming issue.

-- R.A. Dyer

The History of Pool Cue Abuse

Earl Strickland's emotional outbursts have earned him a lot of criticism over the years. But judging from internet traffic, they also have brought a lot of attention to the sport. As of March 7, 2010, the image of Earl smashing his pool cue in frustration during a Mosconi Cup event has been viewed 181,233 times (181,238 if you count the five times I just watched it). I've included the video, above, for your amusement.

But know that Earl is not alone for engaging in such over-the-top antics. Some of the very greatest players in our sport have been known to snap a cue -- or worse -- in a fit of pique. Check out, for instance, the-- R.A. Dyer

Answer to Yesterday's Trivia Question

Looks like we have a winner! Reader Doug Riley of Columbia, Missouri responds to yesterday's trivia question by noting that Willie Mosconi was six or seven years old during his first match-up with Ralph Greenleaf, and that the score in that match-up was 46-50. Yesterday's trivia question asked: "How old was Mosconi during his very first documented match-up against Greenleaf?" Note the emphasis on the word "documented." The poster above, taken from the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History, provides the documentation. The poster touts the performance of Mosconi, who is described as an "11 year old boy wonder." But if you read the fine print (you'll probably need to click on the poster to see it better), you'll see in the upper left hand corner a testimonial from Greenleaf. In it, the great champion states "Having defeated seven year old Willie Mosconi 50-46 I have no hesitancy in saying he will be the future World's Champion." Doug puts Willie's age at 6 or 7 and correctly stated the final score.

Mosconi's incredible performance at such an incredibly young age calls to mind another amazing child prodigy, Jean Balukas. You can see footage of her appearance on a 1960s game show here. Like Mosconi, Balukas went on to great fame. And honestly, it scares me to see little children playing so well.

For his insightful answers, Doug receives a free BCA Rule Book. He can email his street address by clicking on my name, below, and I'll get a book out to him this weekend.

-- R.A. Dyer

Win Free Book with Pool History trivia

I've been continuing to research the Greenleaf and Mosconi question for an upcoming Untold Stories column. In the course of my work, I've come up with a good trivia question. Consider that Mosconi and Greenleaf played over 100 games against one another during the course of their careers. Consider also that Greenleaf was a bit older than Mosconi, and started his career somewhat earlier. So here's the question: How old was Mosconi during his very first documented match-up against Greenleaf? As a bonus, name the game and provide the score for that first match-up.

I'll send out a new copy of the Updated BCA Rules Book to the first person who can answer the questions correctly. Good luck!

-- R.A. Dyer