My Memoirs - Citizen of the World

French and Spanish. In fact, we hear more Portuguese music on
Portuguese radio stations in the United States than on the radio in
Portugal
My Pastimes and Recreation as an Adolescent
During my adolescence, when I wasn’t in school, I have great
memories of playing billiards. In those days, our billiard tables
didn’t have pockets, so everybody played French Billiards with
only three balls, one red and the other two white. Although I was a
fairly good player, there were others who were much better than
me. To play French Billiards, one player played with one white
ball while the other player played with the other white ball which
was marked with a dot. No one was allowed to play with the red
ball. A player would score by hitting a white ball so that it moved
to touch each of the other two balls. That would constitute one
point, called a carambola. The objective, depending on the quality
of players, is to attain one hundred points or carambolas. It is a
very precise game. A player would continue to play, provided that
he hit two balls with each turn. It was a good test of geometry.
Only a few players were able to score a large number of points. I
usually could score twenty or thirty points in a row, but I was far
from being an excellent player.
About forty years ago, when I moved to Bristol, Rhode Island, I
searched for a French Billiards game. I heard that a Canadian-
French priest in the city of Woonsocket, RI, owned one. I
contacted him and purchased it. It was one hundred years old – a
masterpiece, but in terrible shape. I contracted a good Portuguese
cabinet maker to completely restore it. It took me many years to
find it, but now I own a beautiful antique French Billiards table.
The problem, of course, is finding someone to compete with me,
because there are only a handful of people who know how to play
the game. Only people who are close to my age know how to play
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