Maybe Bill Britz is on the far side of 80 and Darwin Waldsmith couldn't remember his birthday -- he turns 70 later this month -- but they can blast a pool ball into a corner pocket with the same burst of energy as the youngest guy in the room. That would be Carl Sanche, a baby at 52, who has played pool all around the world.

Photographer: McKibben Jackinsky, Homer News What began as Ninichik Senior Center's weekly night of tie-flying has morphed into two nights a week of pool playing, the perfect solution for community men avoiding the winter blues. From left: Richard Ziehmer, Geoff Olson, John Hylen, Robert Welch, Richard Pitta, Darwin Waldsmith, Bill Britz and Will Bauman.

"They've been doing this for a couple of years," Julie Welch, director of the center, said of the two-nights-a-week activity that began as an opportunity to tie flies. "They brought their gear to the senior center and then some decided to play pool. Then they decided to get the pool table recovered and fixed up. ... Now it's digressed more into pool playing and b.s."

Ninilchik's boys of winter

Richard Pitta, 74, Welch's husband, Robert, 56, and Waldsmith are credited with starting the men's nights. Each Tuesday and Thursday, at 6 p.m., pool partners are chosen through a marble-matching process and each player throws a dollar in a hat to go toward expenses.

"You don't know how hard it is to come up with that dollar sometimes," said Pitta, referring to permission he swears he gets from his wife in order to play. His comment drew agreement from others in the room.

A retired California cabinetmaker who moved to Ninilchik 12 years ago, Pitta said men's nights are a way to keep from "getting cabin-bound. It's good to have something to do in the winters."

With time to talk while others are taking their turns shooting pool, the evenings also are perfect for solving the world's problems.

"There's disagreements, but everybody honors everybody's opinion," Pitta said. "Nobody gets upset."

That's a good thing since, at their ages, some of the men deny any reason to withhold opinions.

"Religion and politics are two things you're not supposed to talk about, but I will get in the mix," said Richard Ziehmer, 60.

"Besides, it's all in good humor and kind of breaks up the long winter."

Still healing from recent shoulder surgery, Waldsmith may be forced to avoid pool, but not visits with his buddies.

"It kind of solves the winter doldrums when you get pretty bitchy about things," Waldsmith said. "Sometimes we get into heated discussions about politics, but it's not against each other. We're just venting."

Clearly, men's pool nights aren't really about playing pool.

"I think the common denominator is that they're all people that, if they didn't have something like this, they'd be sitting at home, maybe watching TV," Robert Welch said. "This keeps you brighter and cheerier overall."

With more than 30 years separating the pool players' ages, the evenings also offer time to learn from each other.

"These aren't your nine-to-five, cubicle guys you're used to in the Lower 48," said Sanche, formerly of Oregon. "These are guys that have staked out and made their own kind of life. They have stories. They have experiences. They're part of the generation that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps."

Among the storytellers Sanche enjoys is Texas-born Britz, who came to Alaska 59 years ago.

At the age of 85, Britz still enjoys annual moose and caribou hunts. He first picked up a cue stick in his teens, but it had been nearly a half century between his last game and the first night he joined the men at the senior center.

"A couple of those younger guys are better pool players than we are, but they still have some bad nights," Britz said of some friendly rivalry between the generations.

At 52, Geoff Olson ties with Sanche for being youngest of the group. As a full-time scrimshander who spends most of his days working at home, a night out is highly prized.

"I don't really have that great a pool-playing ability. ... I just like to get out in the evening once in awhile instead of staying in the house all the time," he said.

At the end of the evening, sometime after 9 p.m., theguys turn the lights out and head home.

"It's a good group," Sanche said. "They don't get vulgar. They don't get angry. They do it right by my book. If that's the type of people in Alaska, in Ninilchik, then I found a home."

When it comes to talking "out of school," giving details about games won and lost, stories shared and lessons learned, the men are as protective as young boys nailing a "no girls allowed" sign on a scrap-lumber clubhouse wall.

"It's like they say about Vegas," said Will Bauman, 75. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

End of story.

McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibben.jackinsky@homernews.com.