Every Tuesday around 1:30 pm the pool tables of the Oxford Senior Center lose their brown leather dust covers. Around eight to 10 seniors from Oxford and surrounding areas gather around the two of them twice a week. 

They twist together cue sticks halves taken from leather carrying cases and rub blue cubed chalk to their ends.

They draw out a grid on paper. A row and column for each attendee of that day’s practice. One game for every combination of two players. Two games at a time. One game per table. 

“Nick and Ben. Gary and Gordon.” 

One player calls odd or even. 

“Even,” Ben Gung, 70, of Oxford calls.

They roll a well-worn dice made of green (maybe once yellow) foam. 

“Even it is,” Gary Ostendorf, 72 of Reilly Township, says.

Gung will start. 

“Take it easy on me, Ben,” Nick Asher, 84, of Hamilton, says.

Although they practice together on Tuesdays, the seniors compete in “tournament” on Thursdays. They separate into the same two teams every week: an Oxford team and a Hamilton team. Many of them have been on those teams for years. The oldest senior pool player, Gordon Fox, 88, has been on the Hamilton team for 25 years. 

Fox, Asher, Gung, and Ostendorf are all part of the Hamilton team. They’ve been on a losing streak. 

At practice on the Oxford team: Tom Wagner, 73, Danny Feakes, 72, and Steve Pace, 72.

“We’ve been killing the guys from Hamilton,” Pace said. “They lost a couple of players. Sometimes we have to lend them some of our players to keep teams even. It’s more about just having fun. Keeps me out of the house.”

He said he’s been part of the Oxford team for over five years, though he’s been playing since he was 10.

“I had three brothers so my dad bought a pool table so we could all beat each other at pool instead of beat each other,” Pace said.

The Oxford Seniors Newsletter called February 15th’s win of 227-184, the Oxford team’s own version of a “Valentine’s Day Massacre, thumping the Hamiltonians.”

“They’re better than us,” Ostendorf said.

Ostendorf has been playing with the team since this past June, when Asher asked him to join. Asher and Ostendorf have been friends since they started working together at Cincinnati Bell in the 1970s.

“He’s smarter than me,” Ostendorf said. “Just ask him. He was a pretty good repairman.

“They called me Nick at Night because I was on late night repair,” Asher said. “I might be up in Preble County and they’ll call me and say, ‘Nick, we got a screamer.’” 

A screamer was a customer that was particularly upset on the phone over their service outage. Asher was trusted with the worst cases.

Asher said he worked 50 hours over 6 days a week and didn’t have much time for pool until he retired. 

“We hardly ever win because we don’t have the good players,” Asher said. “We win every once in a while but not very often.”

Though, that doesn’t keep him from coming back.

“In golf, you may be shooting real bad all day but on the last hole you have a couple real good shots,” Asher said. “It makes you come back. And pool is sorta the same way. You will have this urge: ‘I’m gonna quit this game.’ And then you go back for one more play and then you’ll play good and say ‘I’m getting better.’”

Ben Gung, 70, is a recent addition to the Hamilton team and professor of chemistry at Miami University. He picked up pool in preparation for his upcoming retirement in May. He’s worked at Miami for 34 years.

Gung walks around the pool table. His eyes follow invisible lines on the green surface – looking for a good shot.

“He’s got so many good shots he doesn’t know which to take,” Ostendorf said.

Gung hadn’t played pool before coming to the senior center just short of 2 months ago. The pool teams have been helping him learn.

“He’s the most improved player,” Asher said about his teammate. “When he came in, he didn’t know how to hold a stick. He’s picked some up from us. And he likes the game. That’s what’s important.”

Gung recently bought a pool table to practice at home. 

“Good shot, Ben,” Asher says. 

Gung caught up. He’s just a couple shots away from beating Asher.

“Thank you,” Gung says. 

“If you make that Ben, you’ve got it,” Asher says.

“If you make that Ben, you’ve got it made,” Ostendorf says. “Just don’t bring that stick up.”

“Okay, I’ll stay down,” Gung says.

He lowers the back end of his cue stick. The seniors have helped correct his form. 

Gung misses the last solid ball. With all of the stripes gone, Asher makes the eight ball for the win. 

“You made a good comeback, Ben,” says Asher.

Tom Wagner, 73, plays for the Oxford team. He thinks the players at the senior center are better than they say.

“The guys who play here have been playing for quite a while and if you weren’t good, you wouldn’t show up,” Wagner said. “Some of these guys are quite accomplished players.”

Wagner also plays in a local league that wagers money in local bars where they evaluate players skill as a ranking out of eight. Wagner is ranked an 8 – the highest skill ranking.

“He don’t miss too often,” Ostendorf said of Wagner – just as Wagner took a shot.

“I didn’t miss,” Wagner said, as he mistakenly sunk the cue ball.