Father and Son team, Steve and Chris Szuter may have a residential address in McDonaldsville, OH, but these days their home away from home is Fiddlestix Billiard Café, their dream business.
Steve, a native of Lakewood, OH, began experimented with pool playing while in the Army where he became quite a proficient player. After returning from the service he took a job in Mansfield, OH working for the Dictaphone Corporation, as a sales/service representative. He and his wife Karen, who is originally from East Germany, then moved to Canton after Steve was abruptly transferred from Mansfield. Steve recalls, "I was in Mansfield for about a year with them and doing very well down there… the day before I was to get married, they transferred me to Canton and said I had to report the following Monday. So we got married on Saturday, moved to Canton over the weekend and reported [to work] on Monday." After a month in Canton, Steve quit his job with Dictaphone to embark on a new career as an apprentice auto mechanic working for Bender’s Automotive in downtown McDonaldsville. There he remained for 2½ years until he set up his own shop, Stable’s Foreign Car Repair Service.
After having become an accomplished player, Steve had to lay down his cue to focus on his new business, which proved to be quite time consuming. Operating his car repair service for 12½ years, he concentrated more on metal car bumpers than on rubber pool bumpers. "Then I started to slowly get back into it and Chris got big enough to hit the balls when he was about 8 years old. So I started teaching him the basics on it which I had picked up on by then," Steve stated laughingly.
His all-time favorite billiard memory came when he was playing in Portsmouth, OH. He recalls, "I was in a Billiard Congress of America (BCA) 8-Ball tournament on 9' tables and put together ten racks… ending up second,… the best I’ve ever performed in a national tournament." His worst billiard memory was in going off several times, "but looking back on it, it was still fun," Steve said.
Having become a proficient player, he longed to open his own pool hall but couldn’t afford it, so when the opportunity presented itself, he opened the Last Resort Lounge at the corner of Wales and Portage Roads. The Resort was the premiere pool bar in the area. Widely known among the pool community, it was a frequent stop for road players looking for a game. The bar had quite a colorful past. Before the Resort it was called the Castaways, a biker’s bar of notoriety. Prior to the Castaways, it was the Stagecoach. Before the Stagecoach, it received it’s start in the mid 1940’s, when Mimi Lee, a reputed madam, set up shop shortly after being ousted from Canton. It was quite notable as many of Canton’s "Bigwigs" visited the private room set up in the basement, where services were rendered.
Steve operated the Last Resort for 14½ years before losing his lease. Today all that remains are cherished memories since Marathon Oil sold the property to a Medical Center who razed the building to erect their own facility five years ago. Just to mention the name of a regular patron or even the Last Resort tee-shirt logo "No Guts No Glory" will bring a smile to the face of anyone who had ever frequented the place.
During his tenure at the Resort Steve taught quite a number of local players the basics, including local professionals, Troy Frank as well as his own son Chris. One of his more notable concepts for teaching male players not to jump while executing a shot was to have them imagine they had one end of a guitar string tied around their neck and the other around certain body parts. He "guaranteed that they would only jump up one more time and then never again." It was quite a common site to see Steve or one of his many prodigies realize they had jumped up during their shot, bend over to request and receive a swift kick in the rear for the blunder.
When asked who his favorite pro player is Steve quickly quips "Chris, then states that there are a lot of them. Ray Martin for his ability and good personality. Earl Strickland in his earlier years, when he wasn’t so cocky."
Steve’s preference for playing equipment initially included an old Willie Hoppe cue until he discovered a Joss cue and ordered one custom made to his specifications. Unfortunately, the Joss accidentally broke and was eventually replaced with a Schon with which Steve has played for nearly fifteen years. One could say that he had the best of both cues because Schon accepted his old Joss shafts. Currently Steve enjoys playing on the 7' Valley tables but recalls one of his favorite tables was an 8' Wilhelm Schmidt, he used to have in his basement. Now "as far as tournament tables the Brunswick and Diamond are the
top of the line and best to play on."
When asked what he has been doing since the Resort closed five years ago, Steve laughs and says he spent the next three years relaxing, "recuperating from the last 27 years of being self-employed." Over the next two years his life circled around planning, organizing, and executing his business plan for his dream hall. Thus working together, father and son succeeded in bringing to fruition all of the aspects necessary to realize their vision of opening a premiere billiard establishment, Fiddlestix Billiard Café.
The name Fiddlestix came from brain-storming with Karen his wife and Chris, his partner and the Manager of Fiddlestix. Steve came up with the name, Fiddlesticks, which means "nonsense," then Karen and Chris enhanced the spelling to it’s final version, Fiddlestix.
Their room is well-appointed with comfortable seating for 160 and ample room between the 20 tables. These include twelve 7' Valley tables and eight 9' Diamond tables. Amenities include nine different beers on tap, forty different types of bottled beer, deli style sandwiches, burgers, cappuccino and bottled tea, a well-equipped game room and great company. It’s not an uncommon site to see Steve and Chris mingling with the customers and making them feel comfortable.
Regarding the large number of 7' tables, Steve says, "There are a lot of players around here that like playing on the 7' tables. It was one of the hardest things to come up with the mix between 7-footers and 9- footers. I’ve got enough room around most of the 7-footers that if I decided to change over to 9-footers on some of those I could. It would just be a matter of making some more pool table lights and hanging them."
The bar is unusual in and of itself not only because of it’s 100' length but also because of it’s copper top and diamond plate steel front – this one was Karen’s dream! – and oak trim. The bar lends itself a smooth transition to the accompanying bar back and islands as they too are constructed from oak. Even more interesting is the fact that Chris and Steve handcrafted each and every one of the oak table lights to match the 9' Diamond oak tables. Their workmanship is impressive.
Aisle ways are spacious and there is little chance of getting in someone’s way who is shooting when milling around the bar area. "This place is put together from many. many other locations Chris and I have been out to look at including the layout of the Last Resort. He [Chris] was out on the road for four years, [and] we went around to places in PA, IN and there were road trips I had down to the Carolinas with Glen Knowles and Barry Hixon and them guys." The design of Fiddlestix is a culmination of the best of everything they found desirable in other locations. "The layout is my design and the color scheme is Chris’s," said Steve. "My layout is more mechanical and its not only how you tend bar behind this thing, but control your entire room at the same time, what you see when you walk in the front door." Functionality and aesthetics were the guiding factors for the design.
Fiddlestix has an ample schedule for the amateur as well as avid player. Sunday is an 8- Ball tournament at 3:00pm. Monday is the In-house 9-Ball and Straight Pool League at 7:00pm. Tuesday at 7:00pm is the travelling BCA League. Wednesday and Thursday at 7:00pm is for the travelling Valley League. Starting off the weekend is a Friday night 8- Ball Tournament at 7:00pm and open play on Saturday. As if this were not enough, they plan to add to their arsenal of events a new Individual In-house 8-Ball League. Even more, Fiddlestix will play host to the first ever Billiard Congress of America Tri-State Tournament for OH, PA and WV.
Weekends usually produce a waiting list. To streamline this process Fiddlestix employs the use of pagers. "People on a waiting list are given a pager and when their names come up [we] hit the button and the pager buzzes them rather than trying to find them out in the crowd."
Fiddlestix is filled with an ambiance of class and refinement. Billiard memorabilia adorn the walls, fascinating non-players as well as the savvy cueist. Quite understandable and amusing are those two words often muttered by those informed of their double digit placement on the waiting list
…Oh….Fiddlestix…