Jul 01 2007
Juke boxes
When I was in high school the favorite hang out after school was the pool hall in our small town. It had several business names through the years but everyone referred to it as the pool hall. They had a counter that at one time had been a bar, but when I was a teen they no longer served alcohol downstairs. There were also several round tables and then of course pool tables. There were 4 pool tables spaced in the main area of the room. There was also an upstairs area where you could sit to have a meal away from the noise of the pool players and they also served alcohol. The pool hall also had 2 juke boxes that we saved our quarters to play.
At that time the juke boxes cost fifty cents for five selections. We would spend hours listening to music and watching people playing pool and gossiping. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Whenever there was an athletic event all the kids would go up to the pool hall after to play the juke boxes and to shoot pool. Many times parents would also come to the pool hall and sit in the upstairs area to have a drink. We used to laugh that the upstairs was louder than the downstairs when the adults started drinking. The juke boxes would be pumping out our favorite songs and parents and children knew where each other was. It was the perfect set up for a small town. If you wanted to know what was going on all you had to do was sit in the pool hall and you would find out.
When the new police chief came to town he was concerned about having minors in an establishment that served alcohol. It was explained that the upper level was separated. He thought it would be too easy for minors to get served so he insisted on several new regulations. Slowly people stopped coming to the pool hall as often. The owners were in financial difficulty and tried several approaches to build their business back up, but they needed to close their doors. They had an auction to raise money for their new business venture. The juke boxes were listed as items that would be placed up for bid. A group of us thought it would be great if we could buy the juke boxes to have in someone?s garage. On the day of the auction we could not believe how high the bidding went of the juke boxes. There was no way that we could afford them.
The Monday after the auction we found out that the principal had bought one of the juke boxes to have for dances at the school. This was an earlier version of a deejay. The best part was that the selections on the juke box were free during dances.
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