When I was an upperclassman at a large parochial high school in the midsize city where I grew up, a group of us hung out at an old-fashioned, dark, downtown pool hall. Although we were working class kids (this was in the days before parochial schools had tuition), we didn’t fit the typical profile for young guys who hung out at the pool hall. Most of them had more experience dropping out of school and/or being in trouble with the law and/or other things that will go unmentioned.

For my group, hanging out at the pool hall was part of our walk on the wild side. By doing so we were striking a blow for those parts of ourselves the responsible adults in our lives were telling us we had to get rid of to have a good life. The hall’s chief attraction was that it was an unwholesome world, away from our high school’s regular hangout – a Friendly’s restaurant. Even though we embraced this unwholesomeness, being part of our pool hall group was not synonymous with being one of the dregs of our student body. Our ranks included some fairly high achievers, academically and/or athletically and/or socially.

Old men used to come to the pool hall, sit along the wall, and watch the action in front of them, similar to the way old men go to parks on warm summer nights to watch admission-free baseball games.

One Saturday morning, an old man sitting along the wall keeled over onto the floor on the side of a pool table. Some of the pool players walked over to him, and one of them, who for whatever reason felt qualified to make such a call, pronounced him dead. This was in the days before CPR training was so widespread, and nobody stepped up to do anything about the state of the body lying on the floor. Dead was dead.

No one uttered a prayer, or said some somber words, or called for a moment of silence. Our definition of the Holy Grail of “cool” had more than a healthy dose of irreverence in it, and didn’t include within its narrow boundaries respect for the solemnity of any moment, including an old stranger’s death.

It being a Saturday morning in a pre-climate change New England winter, there was a snowstorm going on outside, which we’d trudged through to get to each other and to the sanctity of the pool hall. As a result of the storm, it took the first responders an extended period of time to get there after the pool room attendant called them. I can’t remember exactly how long it took, but I feel comfortable saying an hour.

During this interim between the pool hall attendant’s emergency call and the arrival of the first responders, everyone went back to their tables and resumed play. Everyone, that is, except the guys who had been playing at the table next to where the body lay. Their not resuming play at that table was not done out of respect for the body lying there, but because, as one of them declared loudly to the attendant, “I ain’t payin’ for no table with him in the way.” The speaker of those words was not one of my parochial school classmates, but rather one of the more bona fide punks who hung out there.

What my buddies were thinking I didn’t know. At that time in my life, the object was not to show or tell what you were really thinking or feeling if it had any gravitas to it or showed any weakness. Such revelations of self were outside the boundaries of cool.

Although I didn’t know what my friends were thinking, I remember taking in the way the man was dressed (in those days I took in very closely how everyone was dressed). He had on an expensive camel hair overcoat, a suit underneath, and fine shoes, a cut above the typical dress of the old men who sat along the wall. I remember thinking, “Here’s this guy who probably lived a dignified life, and he ends up on a pool hall floor, with nobody paying any attention to him.” And when I said “nobody,” I meant nobody. Not one person, including myself, spent any time with the body.

When the police and the EMTs got there, they thought it might have been a false alarm. All they saw was a bunch of guys playing pool, and no one acting like there was anything unusual going on. My friends and I thought that was funny.

After someone pointed the first responders in the direction of the body, they located it and took it away.

The table the old man had lain next to was opened up again, and we all continued playing our games.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.

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