BILL CADY Word Count: 149,227 - At My Friend's Place

Bill Cady, The Early Years … by Bill Cady 271
probably could still do it, as long as no one recognized him. When that happens,
depending on where he might be, the possibilities of a severe ass kickin‟ rise steeply.
People don‟t enjoy being hustled. It costs „em a whole bunch of their hard earned money
and embarrasses the hell out of „em.
It‟s never good to be in a country bar, or a small city bar, with about twenty
drunks who find out you‟ve been running a game on „em. They have a tendency to take
out their joint frustration on the frustrator‟s ass. Yet, those are the bars where the good
money is to be made. When you get to places where it‟s a hundred bucks a game, two-
fifty, maybe five-hundred, those people are pros. They‟re consistent. Trained to whip
the ass off a lucky hotshot and send his ass home broke.
Again, that won‟t help a guy eat. Only winning helps you eat and lets you have
the dough to afford a room that night, which beats the hell out of sleeping in your car.
Take my word for it. I did both.
I never really hustled around Lansing. For starters, if I did, people would come to
know me too soon and all the games would dry up. Worse, when you‟ve beaten a guy, or
a few guys, regularly, there‟s a secret revenge plan they all eventually get around to using
on you. Sometimes it will take a couple, three weeks, other times, it can happen in only a
few days.
You go to the same bar and win carefully, five bucks a pop at first, then ten, even
twenty. If you ever get to fifty bucks a game, you‟ve probably overstayed your welcome,
and they may well have their revenge plan in place. That means they‟ll bring in a ringer.
Maybe it‟s a hustler, but it‟s normally just a local boy with a helluva good stick. He, in
effect, will try to hustle you. He‟ll lose a couple cheap games, maybe at five bucks, and
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