Crossroads: The Legacy of Johnston City

George (left) and Paulie (right) Jansco (with Eddie Taylor) turned a quiet farm town into the epicenter of pool in the '60s.

IT WASN'T much more than a backwoods beer shed. There was a green felt pool table, the smell of booze and cigarettes. The building was 100 percent concrete, with a neon "Members Only" sign posted outside. But the Cue Club, George and Paulie Jansco's down-and-out tournament venue in Johnston City, Illinois, was just four hours drive from Indianapolis, three and half from Louisville and two from Kansas City. It sat at a crossroads.

This month's column I devote to the famous tournaments held in that backwoods dive on the occasion of their 50th anniversary. The First Annual World's One-Pocket Tournament in 1961 attracted only 14 players. The public was largely absent. Later ones were a circus. For more than a decade, from 1961 to 1972, hustlers, tournament players, the media and the public descended upon Johnston City, a town of less than 4,000. It was a pool tournament that never should have been.

Why care about Johnston City? The reasons are many. First, they helped put one-pocket and 9-ball on the map, and marked the beginning of the end for straight pool. Rudolf Wanderone - aka Minnesota Fats - also came to the world's attention thanks to Johnston City. And perhaps most important of all, the tournaments were the first in America to embrace the sport's gambling culture. In the process, the Johnston City tournaments perfectly embodied the resurgence of the sport during the 1960s.

Some may complain about Johnston City, especially its celebration of gambling. But gambling has always been a part of pool. It just took the radical forward thinking of George and Paulie Jansco to recognize this truth, to embrace it and to make money off its promotion. The brothers were the first important promoters to understand instinctively what the pool establishment did not: that for many of those trapped inside the comfortable purgatory of American suburbia, pool hustling and the gambling life symbolized the fantasy of escape. The Johnston City tournaments brought together hustlers from all over, men traveling from town to town, winning what they could - but without the heavy responsibility of family or home. In their secret congress, these men proclaimed the sort of freedom that only those adrift in society can enjoy. They inspired the imagination of many.

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