TITANIC Thompson

A few weeks ago I wrote a story on the Titanic. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, I would like to shamelessly plug the Brewer’s website where you can go to our Blog and check the archives. It’s FreshFromTheBrewer.com. Today’s cup from this highly caffeinated Christian is about an all-together different Titanic. This Titanic wasn’t a boat but a person.

Odds are you never have heard of Titanic Thompson, who sailed through life as the greatest poker playing, golf gambling, horseshoe hustling, skeet shooting, womanizing, rake-hell, con man of all time. That doesn’t mean he didn’t leave his mark.

Titanic Thompson was America's most famous gambler, card cheat, and sharp dressed man for decades. His celebrity status was so great Houdini himself followed him trying to find his secrets to swindling people. Thompson was actually the model for Damon Runyon's character Sky Masterson in the Broadway play Guys and Dolls. Marlon Brando played his part in the movie.

It was only at Titanic’s insistence that the writer called his gambling lead man by another name. Titanic was already more famous than he wanted to be. So Runyon christened his romantic lead, "Sky Masterson," for the ‘master’ Titanic, whose ‘sky's the limit’ response was a sure thing whenever a bet was on the table.

His skills got him personally invited to a party by Al Capone and he had the guts to cheat Capone in a bet, which he did, and got away with it. He often played pool with Minnesota Fats. He was a professional golfer and actually good enough to shoot a 29 on the back nine at Fort Worth's Ridglea Country Club where he beat Byron Nelson by one stroke.

Always An Angle
He was the Arizona State trapshooting champion four consecutive years. He was a quick draw pistolear and somehow got away with at least five shootings and some say six in which all men were killed. It was said that he could throw a baseball from dead center field 400 feet to home plate without the aid of a bounce and he would challenge professional base ball player in throwing matches. One time, he challenged the horseshoe throwing world champion to a high stakes game and beat him out of $2000.

Titanic, who was naturally left-handed, played Golf just as well right-handed, and he would often hustle golfers by challenging them to a game where he would switch hands. But being good at golf was all about getting him into country clubs from coast to coast. Once inside, Titanic could always find rich men and take them for all they had in much more lucrative poker games. It paid a lot better than those tiny golf purses. This was way before Tiger Woods.

In 1972, Titanic as an old man, agreed to do a rare interview with Sports Illustrated. They offered to pay him a much-needed $5000 for the story. In the two weeks Bud Shrake spent with him putting it together, Titanic made a huge impression. Shrake wrote, "Ti's mind was so sharp that I am convinced if he was born in Princeton, N.J. instead of Nowhere, Ark. and went to an Ivy League college, he'd have spent his life giving advice to world leaders”.

As a ladies man, he could just as easily talk a woman into loving him as he could talk a man into a bet. There was something about him people thought they could tame. He counted on that underestimation and used it frequently. Titanic married 5 times and all of them teenagers. When he died at the age of 81, his last wife of 19 years was 37. This guy was something else.

One of his abandoned offspring, Tommy Thomas, caught up with him in San Antonio at the age of nineteen. 1964 was a good year for Tommy and he rolled up into the driveway in a shiny jaguar. Always hoping to someday impress his dad, he himself was quite an accomplished card shark.

Over the next several years they paired up and racked in millions from unsuspecting wannabes. I know all this not just because of the books I’ve read on Titanic Thompson but because Tommy Thomas, Titanic’s son, [SA1] is a friend of mine.

Today, Tommy is a Preacher and has a TV show called How to Beat the Odds. I’ve been on his show a couple times and know for a fact it airs all over the world. One time, my wife and I were visiting our orphanage in Uganda and Tommy’s show was airing and it just happened to be the show that I was on. It was a hoot to bring in the staff at the little hotel and all of us watched it together.

The one thing Tommy will tell you that he really wanted out of his dad was to hear the words, “I love you” In all those years, Titanic’s pride wouldn’t allow him to bless his boy with the affirmation he desperately needed. Finally, and literally the day before he died of a stroke, Ti Thompson put his arms around Tommy and said the magic words he had wanted to hear.

Unsinkable
What it always comes down to is whom you love and who loves you. For those of us that cling to Christianity, we know this to be true. Whatever exploits you’ve lived, good or bad, mean nothing the last few days in the old folks home. The only real legacy any of us have is a testimony of whom we have loved and who loved us.

Let it be said of the Brewer, that I loved God and God really loved this ol’ knucklehead. If that’s true (and I know it is) the love of God will outlast all of my history, no matter how titanic my sin may have been.

"And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Matthew 3:17

Contact The Brewer @ www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

TITANIC Dramatic

Futurama
Since I’m a Christian, I believe in the prophetic, which means I think God lets us know some things before they actually happen. Now just the mere mention of the word Prophet conjures images of mystic sages, supernatural thunder and Charlton Heston with a long grey beard.

That’s not really what I’m talking about. I think some of the most powerful ways the supernatural side of God is seen is so natural and casual that we tend to miss it altogether. I think God is naturally supernatural.

For instance did you know that there was a prophetic word that went out through a novel in the late 1800’s? I don’t know if the guy who wrote it knew it was but if you’ve got an eye to see, its all right there in bold print.

Morgan Robertson had penned a novel called “Futility” about the largest and grandest ocean liner of its time. It was considered to be unsinkable because she had multiple watertight compartments that could be sealed in case of an emergency. In his fictitious story the grandest ocean liner in the world sank after striking an iceberg and most passengers lost their lives because the liner did not carry enough lifeboats. The name of the ship was called “The Titan”

Fourteen years later on April 14^th, 1912 an ocean liner called the TITANIC struck an iceberg and sank to more than 13,000 feet. The huge majority of the passengers on this ship died in the icy waters without a lifeboat to accommodate them. This wasn’t a fictitious story but a real life sinking that took a lot of people down with it.

The publishing house of the book wanted to cash in on the amazing coincidence and republished the title as The Wreck of the Titan. Thousands bought that book thinking it was a true account of what had just happened but a closer examination would show it was actually a novel and was first published in 1898.

As my late grandfather would say, “How about them apples?”

Retro Reel
If you have heard that, you might not have heard this. A much lesser known but still incredible coincidence is that at the very moment the Titanic struck an iceberg, the film The Poseidon Adventure was being shown aboard the ship.

Now it’s a little hard to wrap your head around what a big deal this is but let me fill you in on how people thought about movies back then.

In 1912 movies were still brand new. You couldn’t download “Jumper” to your iphone like my bass man did last week. Movies were usually seen through crank devices called Kinescopes. Cutting edge technology was just allowing images to be projected onto a silver screen and the White Star ocean liner would debut this technology onto the Titanic.

Sparing no expense for luxury Titanic carried its own projector and rented several movies from a U.S. movie distributor. Now a problem they didn’t anticipate was that movies were mostly seen in Nicolodeans and was considered something akin to a bowling alley by the high class of the day.

To avoid offending the First Class passengers, movies were screened only in the Second Class dining saloon and not until after 11:00 P.M. By then, the orchestra would be finished with its evening concert for the First Class passengers and was free to provide music for the otherwise silent movie.

This movie, The Poseidon Adventure was an amazing 53 minutes long in a time when most movies were ten minutes. It was about a group of six passengers and crew members who struggle to stay alive after the ocean liner they were on was capsized by a tidal wave.

It’s the same movie that would be remade in 1972 and in 2005

This movie was actually being shown at 11:40 when Titanic hit the iceberg and the people in the theater were so into the movie they didn’t feel anything. After the viewing it was such a big hit that The Poseidon Adventure was immediately shown for a second time just after midnight.

By the time the second screening was finished after 1:00 A.M. a few hundred Second Class passengers filtered back out on deck and finally learned the Titanic was going down. Most of the lifeboats had already been sent off and nearly 170 2^nd class passengers were left behind to freeze to death in the cold Atlantic.

Here and Now

Do you get it? There were people so caught up in the drama of something that wasn’t real they actually failed to take action for what really was real. I have never been on the Titanic but I have been in that same boat.

May God help us to not get caught up in what’s not real so that we have enough strength to fight battles that are. If my ship is going down I want to know it. But it’s hard to be aware of what really does matter when you are so caught up into what doesn’t matter at all.

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light." Ephesians 5:8

Contact the Brewer @ www.freshfromthebrewer.com