Earl, According to Earl
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| Even against peers like Sigel (right), Strickland thrived. |
Strickland's almost cruelly passionate devotion to the sport didn't take root immediately. The game certainly didn't hold him in its clutches on that day in 1969 when his father, Ray Wilson Strickland, ushered young Earl into Carson Billiards in the tiny North Carolina town of Roseboro. The 8-year-old knocked the balls around for a spell, but didn't get back to the poolroom for nearly a year. The second time, however, was the charm. Earl was hooked.
For the next five years, Strickland avoided Roseboro Elementary School in favor of Carson Billiards at every opportunity. And by his sophomore year in high school, Strickland had determined that education wasn't going to get him where he wanted to go.
In 1975, Strickland's father, a newspaper typesetter, took a job in Houston. While his two older brothers stayed in Roseboro, Earl, his mother, Carolyn Marie, and a younger brother and sister headed to Texas. The big city and the vastness of the Lone Star State were perfect fits for Earl's nomadic tendencies.
"My parents tried to put me back in school," Strickland recalls. "But I didn't want any part of it, so I went off on my own with my road buddies."
Eschewing his cue for a year, Strickland worked with a carnival, and took up tennis.
"I met this guy from North Dakota named Rich Hammond at a poolroom," says Strickland. "We ran the carnival for a year, traveling all around Texas. I worked the games on the midway. It was a lot of fun. And we used to play tennis religiously. Sometimes two or three times a day, and sometimes at 2 o'clock in the morning. After we were done with the carnival, we'd go looking for a court with lights. Didn't matter what time it was."
After a year on the road, Strickland returned home and found his way, once again, to the poolroom. With his father among the railbirds one evening, Strickland received his gambling baptism under legendary fire.
"The very first guy I played beat me out of $100," Strickland remembers. "And when we walked out of the poolroom my dad said, 'Well, you're getting a job because you sure can't play pool!' I said, 'I'll tell you what. That guy there, I bet he's one of the best players in the city.'"
Strickland was at least partially correct. The player, Jack Breit - aka "Jersey Red" - not only was the best player in Houston, but at that time, still rated a spot among the best players in the entire country.
For the next few years Strickland shuffled between jobs and the poolroom.
"I was playing just good enough to get broke," he laughs. "I wasn't good enough to beat a really good player, and wasn't smart enough yet to figure my way around it."
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