Johnny Daytona

By John Isaac Jones

At an early Age, Billy Johnson learned that the clicking sounds of the ivory balls on a pool table held a special fascination for him. In this story, you will witness not only Billy’s love of the game, but the hero worship he had over the years for a billiards champion named Johnny Daytona. If you like to play pool, you’ll love this story!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Isaac Jones
• Release date: Feb 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370908899

John Isaac Jones

John Isaac Jones is a retired journalist currently living at Merritt Island, Florida. For more than thirty years, "John I.," as he prefers to be called, was a reporter for media outlets throughout the world. These included local newspapers in his native Alabama, The National Enquirer, News of the World in London, the Sydney Morning Herald, and NBC television. He is the author of five novels, a short story collection and two novellas.

Book preview

JOHNNY DAYTONA

The year was 1949. Harry S. Truman was president, Jersey Joe Walcott was the heavyweight champ, Hank Williams’ Your Cheatin’ Heart was the top pop song, and Billy Johnson was eight years old and living with his parents on a small farm in the pine-studded hills of North Alabama.

During late November of that year, the youngster’s days were mostly preoccupied with his studies as a third grader at the local country grammar school. After school each day, he would return home, help his father with farm chores, have supper with his parents, do his homework, and then go to bed. The following day, the cycle would repeat itself.

During that period, the highlight of Billy’s week was Saturday. This was the day he would go with his father into the nearby town of Hamilton to attend to family business. With great anticipation, the eight year old always looked forward to those Saturday trips in the family pickup with his father. He loved the excitement of driving the 12 miles into town and reading the road signs along the route. Once in town, he was always fascinated by the local townsfolk, and he loved to see all the downtown stores built side-by-side, each and every one offering its own particular goods and services. Most of all, on these trips, Billy looked forward to going to the local Wrenn’s ice cream parlor and getting a double-dip chocolate cone.

On one particular Saturday afternoon, the father and son had driven into town to pay the electric bill and then stopped by the local hardware store to buy some paint. After they left the hardware store, Billy asked his father when they were going to Wrenn’s. The father explained that he wanted to stop by the family lawyer’s office first, and then they would go for ice cream.

As the father and son walked back up the street from the lawyer’s office to the family pickup, the father stopped abruptly in front of a dark, windowless building on one of Hamilton’s back streets. It was an older, often-remodeled structure with a single, triangular-shaped window high on the building’s door. Above the door, a neatly painted sign in black letters read, Al’s Billiard Parlor.

The father turned to his son.

Let’s go in here a minute, the father said.

With that, the father opened the door and Billy Johnson, close behind his father, entered a pool hall for the very first time.

Inside, the eight year old suddenly found himself in a world unlike anything he had ever seen before. There was a lively buzz of men’s voices in the place. A heavy pall of cigarette and cigar smoke hung in the air. All around him, scruffily dressed men—both young and old—moved mysteriously under bright, fluorescent lights playing a game in which players wielded pointed sticks and punched a white ball around a felt-covered table that knocked colored balls into pockets. As Billy surveyed the surroundings, his father turned to him.

Wait right here! the father ordered, indicating a row of seats along the wall. I’m going to the back.

Obediently, Billy took a seat and watched eagerly as the men around him played this strange game; they laughed, talked, joked, and cursed among themselves, using all types of tobacco and spitting into