Rack ’em up!

Attention all Fort

Bragg pool players: We need to offer our playing venues a viable solution for playing pool safely. The ideas, yet to be thought out, or implemented, must address how we engage playing safely, or we risk what might be weeks, or months before we return to playing pool again.

Some of the suggestions I have heard so far: One idea is to use a “ball person.” They would clean the balls and wipe the table between matches and would rack the balls and retrieve any scratched balls. Another idea was to simply have all players wear gloves and masks. A third idea was to have a reservation time like restaurants and reserve the table for a time period for a group of one to four people, again cleaning the table and balls between groups, and if required, wearing masks and/or gloves. A simple rag with water and bleach in a bucket would work fine for tables and ball cleaning.

They use that same method in restaurants while serving ten times more people than would be playing at a pool table. They wipe down tables, chairs, condiments, and salt and pepper shakers after use by each customer. We would need only to wipe the table, the rack and balls. It may well become a routine we will learn to follow for a while in order to play safely. It may even become another new normal in life.

Buffalo Billiards, which is a regular pool hall, and is open again to the general public, requiresmasks to play pool. They clean the pool cues and balls after they are turned in. They do not require gloves, but do clean the tables between customer use. That method is used for 20 tables and it would seem, would