re: Greenway Billiards Back in the Day

Do you remember the baseball game at the far right of the bar? I used to play this a lot back in the day.

Back when I used to crew workboats,I had this deckhand, Mike, he was a scrawny guy with blond hair and when he wasn't riding a boat, he hung out at the Greenway.. I wasn't crazy about hiring him, but sometimes you need a warm body to fill out a crew. Unbelievably, he was always able to pass a drug test.

My runners were all busy, so I took a ride over to Greenway to pick Mike up, feed him and make sure he was sober. He gets in the crew van and he likes to talk. He tells me he was at the big strip joint in Woodville, MS last night. how hot the strippers were, etc,. I know he doesn't have and transportation, so I asked him how he got from Woodville to the Greenway, he says "I had to give a guy a blowjob", just as simple as if he was saying he paid the guy $10.

I kept my distance in the future.

Simply the best amateur bowler ever. Couple of stories about him.

I called him one day and asked him if he would come to the bowling alley and help my kids with their bowling. He said of course. He had just gotten out of the hospital that day after a 2-3 week stay. But he came anyway. Sick and weak, he picked up a house ball and was going to show them a few things. He proceeded to bowl seven strikes in a row, with a house ball, with no practice. The eighth shot left the 4-6-7 split. In all honesty, I don’t remember if he picked it up or if he slid the 6 pin over and knocked the 4 pin down leaving the 7. Either way, an extremely rare and difficult shot. He then sat down and said he couldn’t bowl anymore, he was just too weak.

I asked Jon one time how many 300 games he had bowled. He said he didn’t know, but a few. He was maybe 19-20 years old at the time. I found out later it was somewhere between 25-30 300 games.

Jon was a very good bowler. I bowled against him in leagues many times.

Jared K. and I bowled on a lot of teams together as well.

Heard he was, but it’s been 2-3 years since then.