Players mourn loss of Alabama pool hall where everybody knew your name
A fire burned Poppa G's Billiards and all of its contents but the memories will live on among the regulars. (Meg McKinney / Alabama NewsCenter)
Poppa G’s Billiards in Pelham was a place where everybody knew your name, what you ordered last week and which pool table your team was playing on.
From the outside, Poppa G’s appeared to be an ordinary business in a commercial strip center. But it was so much more for the pool players who played there weekly, year-round, for years and even decades.
Poppa G’s is now a memory. Everything went up in flames July 18. The building and its contents appear to be a total loss.
“We do not know the cause of the fire yet,” said Chance Burnett, a co-owner of Poppa G’s. “We are waiting to hear from the Pelham fire marshal and the state fire marshal, and then the insurance report. This may take a couple of weeks.”
Frank Gattina, who owned Poppa G’s from 2001-18, called the fire “heartbreaking.” When Gattina bought the pool hall, he named it after his father, Joe L. Gattina, who had died about six months earlier.
“Thank God I’m 70. This will haunt me,” he said.
“Tammy cried for two days,” Gattina said of his wife. “We’ll always be a part of that place.”
Being a part of a place, feeling part of a community of friends, even family, is what made Poppa’s special and created loyal customers.
Nelson Deaver, who made the 72-mile roundtrip from Springville to Poppa G’s twice a week, began playing there in 1996.
“I always think of Poppa’s like ‘Cheers,’ where everybody knows your name,” said Deaver, one of many players who mentioned the classic television show. “I have fond memories and made great friendships. It was a great place to play pool.”
Zane and Heather Kirkpatrick held their wedding reception at Poppa’s in June 2014. What will he miss?
“Oh man. Just the vibe. It was more than a pool hall, it was like ‘Cheers’ with the camaraderie, the atmosphere,” he said.
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Kirkpatrick, who played pool at Poppa G’s for 20 years, described it as “a family place.”
His mother and father played pool at Poppa’s, as did his sister, a cousin and his wife, who also worked there.
“For my mother, after my dad passed, she was lost for a place,” he said, “and playing pool at Poppa’s helped.”
One of the many reasons pool players like Deaver remained loyal is that “Poppa’s was different than everywhere else. It was a billiard parlor, or a pool hall, that sold beer. Everywhere else was a bar that had pool tables.”
Poppa G’s not only sold beer, it sold food that drew raves from the regulars.
“The food at Poppa’s was better, and especially if you came straight from work,” Torsten Finner said.
Finner added that when he rode a motorcycle, he could park it “in a covered deck at the back of the pool hall, and tournaments were nicely run.”
The covered deck became an outdoor smoking lounge, complete with Adirondack-style chairs and benches, after Poppa G’s was the first pool hall in the area to become nonsmoking.
“Going nonsmoking saved my life,” Gattina said, “and probably saved other lives from secondhand smoke,” but the move seemed risky at the time. “At first, the smokers were devastated, told us we’d lose business, but I believed that smoking was over.”
Pool player Walt Stricklin said “a lot of pool halls followed suit” and didn’t lose business as feared, which is among the reasons he stayed loyal to Poppa G’s.
For Stricklin, Poppa G’s was a “collection of kindred spirits, down to earth, who may not agree on religion or politics, but did agree on a relaxing sport. It was a place where people felt comfortable.”
That comfort went beyond the camaraderie among competitors playing matches and tournaments and celebrating their wins. Poppa’s players and staff celebrated life events there: birthdays, holidays and marriages.
Finner met his future wife, Rachel, at Poppa G’s in November 2008. They fell in love and were married six months later.
“I found my puzzle piece,” Rachel said about meeting her husband, who became a teammate at Poppa G’s.
Even with busy careers, the couple went on to play pool three times a week – Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays – often being captains of their teams, including one, Sitting Ducks, they started in 2009 that competed for 10 years.
Poppa’s staff made sure to make a big deal out of birthdays, ready with a supply of candles, paper plates and utensils and sharing any leftover cake with customers.
“They went out of their way for birthdays, with decorations, and (they would) order a cake or let the teams bring one,” Torsten Finner said.
“I had my 40th birthday there,” Rachel Finner said. “My team, Sitting Ducks, had a banner over our table, a birthday cake, little rubber ducks and T-shirts. It was a lot of fun.
“(Bartender) Amber Glass would stop league play, announce that someone was having a birthday, and everybody would clap their hands. It was everybody’s birthday,” she said.
Poppa G’s staff also went out of their way for Christmas, opening the doors to families for an annual party, where Santa Claus paid a visit.
“It grew and grew, with free pool, half-price beer, and people brought lots and lots of food,” Gattina said. “It was very entertaining. The younger crowd came because of Santa,” and they brought their children.
“We had one guy who just walked in because he said it was the only time he’d seen a Christmas tree in a pool hall,” Gattina said. “Our kids and other people’s kids grew up there. We took care of those kids, too.”
He also introduced them to Frank Sinatra.
“I had Frank Sinatra on the jukebox, singing ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek,’ and pool players said, ‘How could I play that with the kids there?’” instead of rock and roll music, Gattina said. “Guess what? Two months later those kids were playing Frank Sinatra, and all his songs.”
For Gattina, his memories will have to take the place of the memorabilia he lost in the ashes of Poppa G’s. The fire consumed many plaques and framed photographs adorning the walls that featured pool teams and pool players past and present, representing years of winning tournaments and trips to international pool championships in Las Vegas.
“I don’t know how many pictures I lost,” Gattina sids, adding that “they belonged” at Poppa G’s.
Burnett, one of the two owners of Poppa G’s, offers hope there will be a new Poppa’s.
“I miss everything about Poppa’s, the people and the comfortable atmosphere, where everybody talks to everybody,” he said.
Burnett, 34, has been playing pool since his father started teaching him to play when the boy was 9. When Burnett started playing at Poppa’s in 2011, his family became connected to Poppa’s as well. His wife, Jessica Burnett, was a waitress and pool player; his brother, Casey Burnett, played pool there; and this summer, his mother, Tonya “Sugar” Burnett, started to play pool at Poppa G’s, too.
The desire to open another Poppa G’s Billiards is strong for Burnett. It may take a while to reopen, but plans are in the air.
“We plan to continue the comfortable atmosphere, have space for more tables and grow the kids team with the junior set,” Burnett said. He wants to keep Poppa’s in Pelham, “somewhere within 2-3 miles” of the destroyed location.
That would make Rachel Finner and the other regulars ecstatic.
“I hope they can be like a phoenix and rise from the ashes even stronger.”
Meg McKinney is a professional photographer, https://megmckinneyphotos.com and was a pool player at Poppa G’s Billiards, https://poppagsbilliards.com.
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