Basura: Adventures playing Libra vs. Dutch in Bonaire

Bonaire, one of the ABC islands – Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao — is a former Dutch colony. After some years the Bonaireans elected to reconnect with Holland — now Bonaire is part of the Netherlands.

The official currency remains the U.S. dollar. English, Spanish, Dutch and the local Papiamento are spoken. Almost every Dutch person speaks and understands English. This, they say, is because of Dutch broadcasting U.S. television and movies in English, with subtitles. In neighboring countries in Europe, the speech is dubbed into the predominant language.

My wife, Mary Ellen, noticed what appeared to be a pool table in an ad for “Burgers & Beers.” I enjoy playing pool, and recently joined Cue Sports International in order to participate in a pool league in Grand Rapids.

Laura, the owner of Burgers and Beers, is from the Netherlands, but makes Bonaire her home now. The Laura Burger has olives, sautéed onions, and melted brie cheese. The Blue Burger has bacon, and, at least one night, an amazingly generous amount of blue cheese.

The establishment is patronized almost exclusively by Dutch people.

When we arrived at the bar, we found they didn’t have a pool table. It was a billiard table. My initial reaction was disappointment, but the place was friendly, and the burgers were very fine.

I watched a few guys playing billiards. There are no pockets on a billiards table, and the game is played with only three balls – red, yellow, and white. In the game called Libra, each player has a cue ball, either the yellow or the white. Each player has a cue ball, white or yellow, which becomes an object ball for the opponent when he comes to the table. The goal is to use your cue ball to carom off one of the other two balls into the third ball. Accomplishing this scores a point, and the player shoots again.

When the guys that were playing sat down, the table was open. For the sake of accurate reporting, I note that there were no coin slots, nor any fee collected for playing. I knocked a few balls around for a while, and then a fellow named Timon introduced himself, and challenged me to a game.

Timon was a retired farmer from the Friesland part of northern Holland. He appeared to be in his sixties. Timon was average in height, above average in weight, and had short hair, dark brown and gray. He’d done well farming, he said, and used to do a lot of business with the coffee shops in Amsterdam. He had a tattoo of a marijuana plant.

But mostly we talked about billiards. He explained the basic concepts, and suggested we play to 15. I had no great expectations, but it sounded like a chance to learn a thing or two about a game with which I was unfamiliar.

Timon knew what he was trying to do, but he was rusty. I was without much of a clue, but had a relatively smooth stroke, from playing pool. You can’t play pool on a billiards table, and you can’t play billiards on a pool table. He reminded me several times as I set up for a shot that my cue ball was the yellow (I found myself naturally thinking of the white as the cueball, as it always in in pool).

As we got closer to the 15 for a win, I ran four, my best run by far. This brought the score to 11-11. He made a shot, going ahead 12-11. His next shot was long, and he had to stretch out for it.

Before he took the shot, a pained look came over his face. He returned to a normal standing stance, and leaned his cue against the rail. He looked down a moment or two, appearing to put most of his weight on one uninjured leg. He was grimacing. Then he tried to put more weight on the other leg. The look of pain intensified.

After a few more moments I asked if he was OK. “Yah,” he said, “I think so. I went on a very long walk today. Now my leg is very painful.” I suggested a couple of stretches, mentioned the possibility of leg cramps from overexertion and dehydration, and recommended drinking water instead of Amstel or Heineken’s.

I said during my racquet sports days I found that tonic water (flavored with quinine) often helped alleviate leg cramps. He stretched a little, then said, “It’s not good.” I conceded the game, even though he was the one that couldn’t continue, and bought a beer for him.

He’d been generous enough to teach a new game to a foreigner rookie. He wasn’t interested in the water/tonic water idea. He sat down for long enough to drink the beer, and then went home. We left soon thereafter.

We went back to the bar a couple of times. The first time I was disappointed to find the one billiard table in use. There was a guy there named Erik, who was quite a good player. Eric was tall and thin, fortyish, and very animated. He would sometimes sing along with the Sirius Radio music a bit, perhaps dancing a step or two, maybe using his cue as a prop as if a microphone.

His opponent was better. Nico looked similar enough to Erik to make me wonder if they were related. We watched them play for a while. Nico did not appear introverted, but wasn’t as exuberant as Erik.

We’d gotten to understand enough to know the difference, usually, between a fine shot and a lucky roll. We’d clap for good shots, remain quietly attentive at other times, as we sipped our beverages (Sauvignon Blanc for her, Dutch or Venezuelan beers for me).

Nico won, seemingly to no one’s surprise. I complimented him on his game. “Yah,” he said, “I was once very good, and played competitively, but now I just play for fun. Erik is a strong player, so it is good.”

I questioned him a little about his game, and he responded to my questioning by admitting to having been the past Dutch champion for some years, and the European champion one year. He and Erik had been playing three-cushion billiards, or, as they called it, three wall. His game, he said, was Libra, the carom game I’d played with Timon. He said, again, when asked, that his high run was 478. That suggested my high run of four was nothing to brag too much about.

At this point the table was open and Nico fooled around for a couple of minutes playing Libra (carom). I saw how it was meant to be played, with small, gentle strokes intended to provide good opportunities for the next shot. He took two turns, and probably had runs of 20 to 30 balls each turn. Then he got a beer and sat down.

I went to the empty table and hit a few myself, trying, without much success, to put into practice what I’d been seeing Nico do. He brought his beer over to the table, and gave me what amounted to a private lesson on the game. He left. Erik was already gone. We went back to the den Lamen condos for the night.

It was probably about a week later when we found ourselves back there again. Mary Ellen loved the burgers, as I did, and the billiard table was another draw. She mentioned to me that Timon had come in and taken a spot behind me. The table was open. Timon thought we should play again.

This time his approach was more focused. He did not want to lose to an American pool player who was a beginner at billiards. He didn’t. The final score was 15-6, and his leg held up just fine. I noticed he used the term effect to describe striking the cue ball off center to create draw, follow, or what we call left or right English.

Four players began a billiards doubles match. They didn’t appear all that proficient, at least not after watching Nico and Erik. We saw a couple of little girls playing sjoelen (to me it sounds like shoo lin). It might be termed Dutch shuffleboard.

Mary Ellen asked the girls to demonstrate the game. The parents smiled, perhaps pleased the girls could practice their English on couple of old ones, like Oma and Opa. We played a while, and found it to be a fun game.

The Dutch we met were friendly, fun, and very open to interacting. We met them at the bar described, and at Der Freiweiler bike shop, at the Dutch owned condos, and on the snorkeling boat that went to Klein Bonaire. Everyone we talked with – Dutch, Bonairean, English, Belgian, Canadian, seemed interested, informed and perplexed about American politics.