Taking a Cue From History

Hollywood could not have built a better set.

The musty air and cigarette smoke inside the pool hall waft up the stairs, as the crash of a cue ball splitting a rack echoes off the walls, signaling a good break.

For pool hustlers of the 1940s like Willie Mosconi, Harold Worst and Jimmy Caras, Broadway Billiards would have been a perfect place to score some easy money. Even though these pool legends may not have played here, locals with names like “Mississippi,” “El Toro Mac,” “Baltimore Buddy,” “Artesia Kenny,” “Pomona Roy” and “Bud Bull” left behind their own legacies on the tables.

“Bud Bull was the worst, or the best, of them. He was a hustler,” said Tom Miller, who has been around Broadway Billiards for 34 years, the last 27 as owner. Miller, a former minor league baseball player, can rattle off the names of local pool hall legends nonstop.

The basement pool hall has been in downtown Santa Ana, at 3rd Street and Broadway, for almost 70 years and is, for all the games played on its layers of smooth felt, an anachronism.

Today, most pool players are commonly found under bright lights in bowling alleys, shopping centers, casinos or sports bars.

But Miller’s pool hall, which opened in 1928, has few of the amenities expected by many of today’s players. Metal light fixtures with incandescent bulbs hang above the 13 pool tables and the four tables used for billiards, a game in which players use one red and two white balls. The linoleum tiles on the concrete floor are worn. The tired billiard strings, used to keep score, sag above the tables.

Some of the tables are 75 years old and have seen thousands of dollars change hands over the decades despite the prohibition against gambling.

Photographs of boxers and pool players--both obscure and famous--hang on the walls, barely visible in the dim light. Yellowed sports pages, some almost a century old, and newspaper headlines of memorable baseball games played long ago hang on the walls behind glass frames. There is the photo of a Mexican fighter named the “Yucatan Kid,” a 1930s contender who once fought in Madison Square Garden. Miller met the man when the former boxer worked as a dishwasher at a 4th Street restaurant and played pool after work. There is also a poster promoting a 1985 fight between lightweights Herman Montes and Chuy Rodriguez at the San Bernardino Arena. Rodriguez was once a regular at Broadway Billiards.

The headline on a Sept. 30, 1936, Los Angeles Times sports page announces the beginning of the World Series between cross-town rivals the New York Giants and New York Yankees. An Aug. 5, 1919, tear sheet from the Atlanta Georgian newspaper features an ad of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, endorsing “Nuxated Iron,” a nutritional supplement that supposedly helped him become a champion.

*

Most of the sports memorabilia was collected by Miller, who is a boxing and baseball fan.

Miller, 68, quit a factory job in Youngstown, Ohio, in the middle of winter 35 years ago to play golf in Southern California year-round. But he stumbled into Broadway Billiards and traded his golf clubs for a cue stick.

“I’ve played pool all my life, and one day I found this place. I played here for a while before I went to work for the owner. I bought it from him in 1970,” Miller said.

Jan Fullerton, described by Miller as a pretty good pool player, helped Miller run the place until she retired a few years ago.

“We used to get a few women in here years ago, but not today. You know, pool halls have always had a bad image,” Miller said. “I guess every mother has warned her son at one time or another to stay out of the pool hall. But we’ve never had any trouble here. We don’t get visited by the police, and we like it that way.”

His years as owner of a pool hall, where tables are rented at $6.50 per hour, have been rewarding, Miller said. But the smoky basement has taken a toll on his health. Today, he can work for only a few hours each morning.

“But I don’t have any regrets. There are worse things that a man can do for a living,” Miller said. “But I can’t work much anymore, because I lost a lung to cancer about 10 years ago. That’s what years of smoking and breathing secondhand smoke did to me. Now, I can’t be around smokers anymore.”

His customer profile has changed over the years. When Miller bought the business, most of his clientele was white and many were Marines from the El Toro or Tustin bases. Latinos began patronizing the billiards hall in the 1970s, and today most of Miller’s customers are Latino.

His customers included Santos Navarro and his father, Marcelo. After Santos Navarro discovered the pool hall in 1973, his father soon became a regular and by 1977 was working for Miller. He retired three years ago and moved to Mexico.

Santos Navarro began working part time for Miller in 1980 and was hired full time in 1989.

Navarro, soft-spoken but with a quick grin, greeted the daytime regulars who began trickling in at noon. Standing behind the bar, he glanced at a group of men crowded around a pool table, watching two good players shoot a fast-paced game of nine-ball.

At a nearby table, four men played a leisurely game of billiards.

“You’ll never see these guys shooting pool in a bowling alley,” Navarro said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Running the Tables

Broadway Billiards has been a fixture in downtown Santa Ana for nearly 70 years, much of that time with current owner Tom Miller behind the counter.

Profile: Tom Miller

Age: 68

Came to Southern California: 1962

Moved from: Youngstown, Ohio

Started at Broadway Billiards: 1963

Purchased the place: 1970

On his clientele: “I’ve got the world’s best customers. They’re all hard-working family men who come in after work or on weekends to relax and be around friends.”

On changes: “We used to get a few women in here years ago, but not today. You know, pool halls have always had a bad image.”

In retrospect: “I don’t have any regrets. I’ve enjoyed owning a pool hall. There are worse things that a man can do for a living.”

Source: Tom Miller; Researched by H.G. REZA/Los Angeles Times