Shooting pool

When I was maybe 6 or 7, my family acquired a pool table that got set up in the basement. It was an old, full-sized table, and I remember it having collapsible legs - basically, it was the pool table surface on top of two narrow, full-width-of-the-table rectangle "legs." I also remember being warned of, or being scared of (or both) it collapsing suddenly, so we were not supposed to go under it.

It converted into a ping-pong table, too. After a couple years, the basement was remodeled, and the pool table, sadly, was scrapped.

Outside of the home set-up, my first memory of pool tables was when I was maybe 8 or 9. My family was visiting my aunt and uncle in northern Wisconsin, and we went out to dinner at a bar / restaurant in a little settlement called Cayuga, along Highway 13. It was a local hangout, and there were pool tables, so we started playing. I was given the chance to break the rack to start the game, and I promptly launched the cue ball up and off the table, and it made (in my recollection) a huge crack as it smacked the floor.

I remember lots of people looking to see what was going on. I remember being kind of mortified. I don't remember much else.