Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations

Scoop, Red, Moon, and Shorty: The Oak Tree Social Club

Scoop, Red, Moon, and Shorty THE OAK TREE SOCIAL CLUB Mobile I n the cool shade next to a sweltering parking lot, the members of the Oak Tree Social Club lean over a small table as Sylvester “Scoop” Brown shuffles the domino tiles and parcels them out to the others. “Dominoes’ more fun than cards,” says Scoop, 68, who picks up seven tiles for himself, cups them in his hands to study them and figures out his strategy. “We play cutthroat,” he says. “Every man for himself.” Scoop, who has a gray walrus mustache and wears several gold finger rings, is president of the club, a group of men, mostly retired, who started playing dominoes twenty years ago. After meeting up originally at a barbershop, they moved to their beloved tree on Montgomery Street near South Broad, on the south edge of Mobile’s Oakleigh neighborhood, about a block from the Magnolia Cemetery. “This is the headquarters,” says Scoop, who collects the $2 monthly fee, which is put toward snacks, cold drinks, and cookouts. “If somebody’s sick, we buy them a card,” says Willie “Red” Washington, 83, who, along with Scoop, is one of the original members. The men also take up collections, Red says, for friends in the hospital. There’s plenty of conversation—one man is nicknamed CNN, “because he likes to tell the news,” says Scoop, and another is called WGOK, the call letters of a Mobile radio station, “because he likes to talk.” 198 DOWN BACK ROADS But the four men who are at the table at any given time are expected to refrain from chit-chat, and play. After Scoop lays down the double-six tile in the middle of the table, the others build on, matching the numbers of their tiles—they call them bones— going clockwise around the table. While Scoop and Red move quickly, holding their bones in the air with great flourish before thumping them down, Harold G. “Good Looking” Beck, 84, is gentler with his touch. Good Looking studies his tiles hard. The challenge, he explains, is mathematical —determining which bone to play based on the calculation of what’s on the table and what’s being held. “But you ain’t going to have no strategy unless you got the right bone,” he says. “We got the best domino players in the world right here,” says Scoop. There are some younger men among the old lions, including Donald “Duck” Seltzer, 47, who works at the Mobile Water Board and visits the game on his A group of men play dominoes under the shade of an oak tree in the parking lot of the Greer’s Food Tiger on South Broad Street in Mobile, Alabama. Photo by Bill Starling, courtesy of the Mobile Press-Register. SCOOP, RED, MOON, AND SHORTY 199 off-time. He is concentrating on the table hard, looking at his tiles, making his moves. But Red “dominoes,” putting down his last tile. The others count up the tiles they’re holding. The high man will be out. Duck is the high man. “I can’t believe I let these old guys beat me,” he says, shaking his head. “Give me another child, another child,” calls out Red, using the expression for a newcomer to the table. Duck stands up to let Leonard “Moon” Johnson take his place, and Red shuffles the bones. $ All year long, every day of the week but Sunday, the dominos game goes on. There is a rhythm to the day—at eight every morning, Moon sets up the chairs and table—and soon afterward, the men arrive from all over town. As the day unfolds, and the tree’s shade moves like a sundial, as many as forty men may be sitting on the chairs or on the overturned cabinets. About half of those are dues-paying, domino-playing members. The wooden sign nailed to the tree reads: “Oak Tree Social Club. Spirits. Sports. Fun. News.” “People get stressed and don’t know they got stressed,” says Scoop. “Things get balled up in your mind. This will let go of your mind.” Scoop worked as a laborer for the city of Mobile, and used to play dominoes during his dinner break. As president of the club, he has a calm but forceful manner, keeping a watchful eye out over the parking lot of Greer’s Food Tiger and the Family...