CAL HOOVER-An old friend of the 50's-60's

Cal was an old man that hung around town, mostly the old pool hall where we would all gather for hours at a time. As I mentioned in one of my other stories Cal loved to play pool with MIllie Tropf. You could hear him for a block yelling for Millie (creepy) to shoot. Then he would laugh and holler when she missed the shot. Now Cal didn't have any teeth, so we all called him smooth mouth or Colgate. Cal didt't like this or he acted like he didn't. On another occasion a chain saw was stolen I think from the Pike township. Someone, just kidding said that Cal was the one that took the saw. He really got mad about that statement. So naturally all of us regulars that hung around the pool hall started calling him chain-saw. We would make him so mad he would jump in his old car and speed out of town over the old Bell City hill. Now he wouldn't stay mad long and before you knew it he would be back for more. One day I had been agraviting him and he got to chasing me. He could really run for an old man, but I could out run him. On this day he stopped just before I started across the railroad tracks that ran behind the pool hall and picked up a big rock that must have weighed a good 1/2 pound. He whizzed that damn thing at me and barely missed my head. If it had hit me it would probably killed me. But this didn't stop the aggraviting. I just stopped and yelled back at him to go get his chain saw and go cut a spear and see if he could do any better with it than a rock. Now if cal came to town and no one started on him he would start on someone. Cal and Sadie had good hearts because an old man by the name of Archie Stroud would come to Bell City and without a place to stay Cal and Sadie would put him up for days at a time. A story about Archie will be in the future.
These were days when not many dollars were floating around and this is how we amussed ourselves. It was all good fun for us at the time.
A few years later Cal died and I was honored to be asked to be one of his paul bearers along with 5 others that were all a part of the old pool hall crowd.
Cal had a son named Herb. Herb had a whole house full of kids and lived in a house that didn't have running water as a lot of us didn't have at the time. Now Herb was a dandy to say the least. Which calls for another story.