VFW Pool Cue Ride

VFW Pool Cue ride


“The only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong.” – The Sundays

Christmas Eve. Podunk, East Texas, my senior year. Mom took us to visit my uncle and my cousins to whom I had once been very close.

It’s cold. The trees are bare. The dirty, old mobile home really doesn’t contain all of us and has evidences of varying addictions. Evening comes. The kids, including me, decide it will be fun to go play pool. The parents (my mom and uncle) decide they will go to the VFW while we do that. The kids drop the adults off and all agree that midnight will be pick up time; time to go home.

At the pool hall, we shoot a few, laugh, make fun of our parents, acknowledge how weird it is that we are at a pool hall on Christmas Eve. Joke about how silly it is that we are going to pick up our parents. Midnight rolls around. I am the eldest of the kids, and we have my mom’s car, so I am the designated driver.

The Veterans of Foreign War Hall is a lonely, sad, quite literally backwoods wooden building. We steer up a winding, gravel driveway to get to the practically hidden location. Opening the doors to the modest place, there is a long bar to the left. The bartender who looks about 65ish with a baseball style cap on has a withering chin under a huge mustache. The floor is worn and faded wood. The room opens into other rooms dimly lit with smokey, yellowish light. We look around and, not seeing our parents, ask the bartender whosays they are in the next room. My uncle is walking around the pool table with a cue in his hand, looking for a shot. My mother is sitting in some man’s lap that I have never seen before, and I doubt she has either.

I am shocked, embarrassed, and then incensed. I tell my mom, probably in a decently bossy and sassy tone, that it’s time to go. Beer in hand, she argues with me that she wants to stay. I know how she feels. At this point in my life, I very much like drinking, hanging out with my friends, flirting with boys, and not so much spending time with the family. There is one major difference: I am 17. She 37. Not to mention “the mom,” while I am “the child.” I raise my voice. I insist that we leave, that it’s 12:00, it’s Christmas Eve. My uncle tells me that my mom already said she didn’t want to go. I am incredulous. I think it must have been at this time that my cousins – clearly more skilled at this than I was – leave in their father’s truck parked outside. In any case, I don’t recall their presence after this point.

Through the yellow haze I take a tentative step toward my mom, reach out my hand, and insist that she come with me. My uncle reacts immediately. He raises the pool cue like it’s a bat and moves toward me quickly. A nearby man steps in between my uncle and me, holding my uncle back. My mom yells. I back up slowly, then quickly turn, and run.


This crisp air breaks across my face and jolts me. I’ll have to leave Mom there. In the dark, between the pine trees, I locate the car. Digging through my purse for the keys, I am surprised to hear Mom’s voice behind me.

“I’m coming!” She is annoyed, exasperated, as if I’d childishly interrupted a phone call to demand a Popsicle. Fine, I think. But no way is she getting behind that wheel!

“Well, I’m driving!” Though I had my obvious reasons for this, some good ole teenaged defiance and rebellion was mixed in, as well.

I don’t even remember what she said. She could be scary when she was angry, clenching her teeth and sneering. In any case, she is the one who ended up driving.

I did know enough not to get in myself, though. This, of course, angered her. And so we both set off down the sloping, winding, dirt driveway – me, on foot and mom behind the wheel.

I jogged a bit before she really took off, so I was ahead of her when I saw the headlights careening close – too close! I darted into the trees along the drive and she missed me. I am certain it was a case of drunk driving and not mal-intent, but it was terrifying.

Out of breath from running and from fear, I gaped after her as I walked along the drive. She slowed, and then stopped.

As I neared the bottom of the hill I realized I was miles from my aunt’s house where we were staying and that I knew no one else in this town. I felt I had no choice but to get in the car.

That moment defines the way I felt during this time as a whole. I tried to fight and stand up against my mother’s disease, but it was no use. I had no choice but to either be run over, left out in the cold, or to get into the car with her driving drunk.

We eventually made it to my aunt’s house, where I tried to call my father on the phone – no cell phones at this time – only wall phones. When I was dialing, my mother yanked the phone cord out of the wall. So, I could not reach my dad. I was at the mercy of her disease. So was she.