The Old Bell City Pool Hall

My first visit to the Old pool hall was in 1949 where I ate my first hamburger that I remember. Dad and mom had bought an old hill farm just out of Bell City and we were moving to it from Commerce Mo. I was with dad and we stopped for a burger. Little did I know that this would be a big part of my life, for later as I was gorwing up I would go to the pool hall every chance I got, I learned to shoot pool and snooker and got to be fairly good at it. Harl Tropf owned it for the first few years I went there. He added a garage on the side of it for his new Mercury car. I thought this car was really neat. His son Leamond and wife Millie later took over. But before doing so he turned the garage part of the building into a tee-town, dance hall for the kids where I learned to do the jitter-bug. I can still remember hitting the floor to the sound of Rockin Robin. I was about 12-13 years old at this time. The back room was the pool hall where there was 2 regular pool tables and one snooker table. We had some great times in this old building. As a young juvinile with many others we were all looking for ways to kill time and get into meaness. There was a couple old fellows thatlived just outside of town in an old house with a tin roof on it. Now these tow brothers were Jake and George Fisher. Sometimes at night in the summer after the pool hall closed and nothing was happening some of us guys would go up over the hill to Jake and Georges house they lived on a road that had lots of gravel on it with good sized rocks. Around 10 or 11 oclock after they went to bed we would rock their house. When the first big rock hit that tin all hell would bread loose. Out would come one of the brothers with a shotgun yelling I'll kill you bastards. Lucky for us no one ever got hurt but as I look back I sure dont blame them. Now George had an old team and wagon that he came to town in. We would see him comming and get ready for some fun. Now George had to cross the rail road tracks to get to the grocery store of post office. When he got on top of the tracks one of us in the pool hall would yell wooooa and te old mules would stop right on the railroad. George would start cussing and raising hell. We would finally keep quiet and he would come on int town where he tied up his mules. He would pull up to his parking spot and get down from the wagon at this time someone from our gang would yell getup and the old mules would start to walking off and George would start cussing and yelling for the mules to stop. We would wait for him to start to get back up into the wagon and someone would yell getup, this just made him madder but as young bucks we didn't care we were just having fun. Now Jake his brother had a small store on the wrong side of town, but this is another story. Hope you enjoy