Mechanics Institute

It was started up mainly (for so they say) to give all those ex-Gold Rushers some sort of professional training, once their dreams of becoming the next Croesus had panned out.

By the time I got to the place though, all that was ancient history. My main concern when I was a teen was being able to get through the front door. ;)

First off, you had to make it past that guy at the lobby desk. The big, stern-looking dude in the uniform who generally sat up there on high, as though he'd been waiting to cut you off all day.

On (if you were lucky!) to the elevator. And yeah, in truth you probably could've walked up the stairs on your hands and beaten Mr Otis up there (I had a stop to make in that building when I worked as a messenger and I hated it!). But I usually took it up to the 4th floor anyway. And the main room.

Incidentally, the famous library itself was a pretty snazzy arrangement. I gained access to it after winning a prize at one of the Tuesday evening marathons many years later.

Not that you would want to be anywhere near it when the Big One struck... :D It definitely had its ramshackle aspects. Spread out over the 2nd and 3rd floors, it boasted the largest public (more or less) chess library west of the Mississippi (or so they said)...1500 tomes all lined up down one whole long wall. There were best games collections from everybody--people I didn't even know had best games! CHO'D Alexander, for example (okay, I knew he beat Botvinnik...but still, I figured the most interesting thing about him was likely his overabundance of initials).

There were chess books in Russian and chess books in German (including the one about Klaus Junge). I also checked out Tal's Complete Games Vol 1 (and managed to blitz my way through the whole schmear!--thankfully they did allow one renewal).

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Back to the main room...where the Spanish Pool guy held sway. He wore a poker visor and sat in one corner eternally letting out, as though it were some sort of incitement to battle: "Spanish pool--Spanish pool--" (Turned out to be a form of checkers.)

Then there were the two guys who used to sit there cussing each other out the whole time. Or actually, only one of them did--and only during games. Afterwards they would discuss the game they'd just played in quiet voices--then set em up for another. And Yosemite Sam would get back to muttering his curses--while the other guy remained steadfastly silent throughout.

And Bill Bills. Seriously--William A Bills. I encountered the guy one time in there...and then a while later I played him in the last round of a People's tourney (with 200 bucks on the line!). And yeah, I lost. Damn!

He'd actually played Fischer once too. In a simul. It's in one of those anthologies of Bobby's games that came out later, with all the miscellanea (just hope I put that right!--Latin can be hell).

They also had one of those ladder things in place on the wall. One of the rare times you would ever actually see such a skeletal graphlike gizmo hanging up in a club somewhere.

And of course heading up the whole operation was John Donaldson. An IM (who had 2 legs of the GM title as well!), Olympics team captain--and one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet. He took over running the club a long while back (from a guy named Max Wilkerson, if I'm remembering right)...and has helmed it ever since.

I guess my favorite memory of that club though was from those later years...

Walking to the place from work for another marathon tourney...coming up on 2nd Street and down that little hill into the lights and everything of the city at night. It was all so glitteringly lovely. :)