INTRO - James Franklin Reid Jr., August 23, 1946 - 8lb. 13oz..
                Jimmy Reid, alias - Hippy Jimmy.

1959... Winter in Gloucester Massachusetts, snowing, 12 years old, in the 7th. grade.
Taking the school bus from my hometown of Magnolia to St. Ann's Grammar School in Gloucester.
Don’t want to go to school today, wanna play hooky and go to Nick's Pool Room and Shoe Shine Parlor. Can't wait to go back and shoot some pool, a lot of pool... After getting off the school bus I snuck away from the other kids and school.
It was cold and I had a couple of hours to kill until Nick opened. With a pretty good walk from St. Ann's Grammar School to Nicks, I soon discovered three warm stops to kill time, the post office, city hall and library. All nice warm buildings with public rest rooms...Later on I had to change this routine, people at the post office, city hall and library started asking questions...Nick didn’t ask questions... Made some money shoveling snow yesterday when we had a schools out, buses ain't running, snow day.
Later in the afternoon the sun came out, they salted the roads and I hitched a ride to town where I ran into a friend of mine from school by the name of Johnny Bischao, neither of us had ever been in a pool hall or had ever played pool before, but we both wanted to go into Nick's and see what the cool big guys were doing and and how they played pool...Nick's Pool and Shoe Shine Parlor is (or was) located in the center of Main Street, downtown Gloucester.
There were glass windows all across the front of Nick's and they provided for a beautiful bright shoe shine parlor. Nice to get a shine in or just sit in those shine chairs and see and be seen by Main St. passersby. There were 8 beautiful antique wrought iron and leather shine chairs, 4 on the right and 4 on the left in the entry room, all built atop a very high shoeshine stand, this was my favorite shoe shine stand of all time, I even enjoyed working it...Johnny and I walked in through the shoe shine parlor to where the double door entry into the pool room was. The contrast caused temporary blindness, we found some seats and started watching some guys playing pool on a few tables and 3 cushion billiards on another. There were 10 tables total, 9 regulation pool and 1 - 5X10 billiard table.We watched for quite a while, read the rules on the wall and went to the last table in the back where the balls were racked and ready to break.
We decided to play 8 ball for a quarter and after about 30 minutes I won... It was posted on the wall that Nick only charged a nickel a cue per game. After I paid Nick his 10 cents, he explained to us that we weren't very good yet, that we played too slow and if we wanted to play more he would have to put us on time @ 60 cents an hour...Man did I wish I had time right then to stay and play some more, I'd show Nick how I had just gotten the hang of it when I made that last shot.
But it was getting late and I had to catch the last bus to Magnolia at 5:15 pm..
Johnny had to get home too and had a long cold walk ahead of him. So we quit... On the bus home I was thinking......What a nerve, telling me I wasn't very good, I was always better at everything than all my friends and he didn't see that last shot I made... It's a good thing he said yet!  I was in love...Next day, hooky...TWO YEARS LATER 1961... Freshman at Gloucester High, the largest R.O.T.C. high school in the United States, the following summer Mr. End, the Dean of boys, called my parents to congratulate them and yours truly for having won a $500 college scholarship bond for the highest S.A.T. score in America. My mother (Mary) answered the phone and told Mr. End (as he later repeated for me), "You tell the little son of a bitch if you find him, I haven't seen him in weeks." Don't blame my mother though, she had pulled me out of Nicks by the ear a couple of years earlier. She just didn't understand true love...1962... Beating everyone in Gloucester playing straight pool, 9 ball, lucky 8, and 3 cushion billiards. Rented a very big house and living on my own. Sure there were a lot of losses but nobody played more pool than I had the last 3 years... One Friday afternoon and night I won $1,400!!!
Winning some of it in a 5 handed lucky 8 game and the rest of it playing straight pool with a road player from Peabody Massachusetts by the name of Jerry Houla... The next night Louie Ryan (my best friend) and I go to the Mines Pool Hall in
downtown Boston next to the Olympia Theater, we win a few hundred there and I Want to fly to N Y City but Louie has to go home, so he gives me his I.D. (25) and leaves. Earlier, I had already secured a ride to the airport for $5 from a friend of Boston Shorty. Logan Airport in Boston to Idlewilde (or whatever I forget the spelling) in NY was about an hour flight by converted WWII 4 prop paratrooper / cargo plane.
Larry ( Boston Shorty) Johnson mentioned a couple of pool rooms that I might check out in New York, Guys n Dolls and Ames...
Wow Ames, the same pool room I had recently seen a new movie called "The Hustler" wild horses couldn't keep me away. Between the taxicabs and subways I finally got to Ames Billiards, I think it was on 8th Avenue and 46th street but I'm not sure. Finding a seat near the front door I decided to scope the place out. Ames was relatively slow with only a couple of tables going. Seedier than depicted in the movie the atmosphere was none the less electric. It was breathtaking, I could smell the action that must have gone on here in the past but not tonight. Somehow I managed to pick a mark and make a few more dollars before whoever was running the place carded me, laughed and asked me to leave. You see I was only 15 and didn't shave yet. Louie (my I.D.)was 25... There were flights from The City (NY) to Boston every hour or two so I cabbed it to the airport and flew back to Boston the same night, then I hopped a cargo train home, and I do mean hopped, hobo-hopped! Some weekend!During school the next Monday, I grabbed the principal's mic and invited the whole school to Schraft's Drugstore for milkshakes. Imagine going to school at 15 with over a thousand dollars, lunch was just 22 cents, 3 cents more for an extra milk! Suffice it to say, I’VE BEEN RUINED EVER SINCE !We will continue from 15 years old later... Jimmy