MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – The Mississippi crept toward the highest level ever in the river city, flooding pockets of low-lying neighborhoods and forcing hundreds from their homes, though the water was not threatening the music heartland’s most recognizable landmarks, from Graceland to Beale Street.

As residents waited for the river to reach its peak as early as Monday night – several inches short of the record mark set in 1937 – those downstream in Mississippi and Louisiana evacuated prisoners and diverted water from the river in an attempt to stave off catastrophic flooding in a region prone to such disasters.

In Memphis, emergency officials warned the river was still dangerous and unpredictable, but they were confident the levees would hold and there were no plans for more evacuations. Sandbags were put up in front of the 32-story tall Pyramid Arena, but the former home of college and professional basketball teams was believed to be safe. Also out of the way were Stax Records, which launched the careers of Otis Redding and the Staple Singers, and Sun Studio, which helped make Elvis the king of rock ’n’ roll.

Sun Studio still does some recording, but Stax is now a museum and tourist attraction. Graceland, which is several miles south of downtown, was also spared.

“I want to say this: Graceland is safe. And we would charge hell with a water pistol to keep it that way and I’d be willing to lead the charge,” said Bob Nations Jr., director of the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency.

Authorities spent the weekend knocking on doors to tell a couple hundred more people that they should abandon their homes before they are swamped by waters. More than 300 people were staying in shelters, and officials said they had stepped up patrols in evacuated areas to prevent looting.

Aurelio Flores, 36, his pregnant wife and their three children have been living at a shelter for 11 days. His mobile home had about four feet of water when he last visited the trailer park Wednesday.

“I imagine that my trailer, if it’s not covered, it’s close,” said Flores, an out-of-work construction worker. “If I think about it too much, and get angry about it, it will mean the end of me.”

He was one of 175 people staying in a gymnasium at the Hope Presbyterian Church in east Shelby County. He said morale was good at the shelter, mostly because there were friends and neighbors staying there, too.

“The main thing is that all left that trailer park with our lives,” Flores said. “God will help us find a new place to live.”

Forecasters said it looks like the river was starting to level out and could crest at or near 48 feet, just shy of the 48.7-foot mark set in 1937. Forecasters had previously predicted the crest would come as late as Wednesday. On the horizon, however, rain was forecast for later in the week, which could bring the danger of flash flooding.

Kevin Kane, president and chief executive of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he believed the media had overblown the flooding.

“The country thinks were in lifeboats and we are underwater,” Kane said. “For visitors, its business as usual.”

While some evacuated, others came as spectators. At Beale Street, the famous thoroughfare known for blues music, people gawked and snapped photos as water pooled at the end of the road. Floodwaters were about a half-mile from the Beale Street’s world-famous nightspots, which are on higher ground.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-09-11 2117GMT

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PHILADELPHIA — When illness forced billiards great Willie Mosconi into a nursing home toward the end of his life, his equipment sponsor donated a pool table to the Cherry Hill, N.J., facility.

Mosconi refused to play the game he had dominated for much of the 20th century. Finally, he agreed to play just once to quiet his grandchildren.

“He hadn’t played in years. He ran 15 balls in. He said, ‘That’s it,'” son Bill Mosconi recalled of his father, who died in 1993 at age 80.

With the death last year of Mosconi’s widow, the family is selling his beloved pool cue, a personal pool table and other memorabilia at a weekend auction in Chicago.

The auction house handling the sale believes Mosconi’s famed “Balabushka” cue could bring $100,000. The stick, with mother-of-pearl inlays, gets its name from the Russian-born craftsman George Balabushka, considered by some the Stradivarius of cuemakers.

Mosconi used several Balabushkas during a career capped by 15 straight world championships from 1941 to 1957 and his record 526 straight shots at a two-day exhibition in Ohio in 1954. Several will remain with the family. But the one being sold was a favorite, as evidenced by the blue chalk residue and light scuff marks.

Mosconi grew up in a large family in South Philadelphia, where his father, a boxer, ran a first-floor pool hall that doubled as a hangout for boxers. Mosconi’s father hoped his son would someday join a cousin’s vaudeville act. Instead, the pint-sized pool prodigy was competing against the sport’s heavyweights by age 6.

While still a youngster in the early 1920s, he was being paid $75 or $100 for appearances around town.

“The City of Philadelphia stepped in and said, ‘You can’t do this. You’re not even allowed in a pool room,” the son said.

Mosconi went on to spend his lifetime in pool halls, criss-crossing the country much of the year for exhibits and matches. A devoted family man, he hated both the pool-hall lifestyle and the constant travel. But his drive to win – and to support his family – kept him out there.

“I think it was a very lonely life, even though he was a tough character. He was devoted to his wife, and certainly to his kids. I think that’s why he did it,” Bill Mosconi said. “(He would say), the only way you could make a living is if you’re a champion. You can’t lose.”

Mosconi earned $10,000 to $15,000 a year in the 1930s, and 10 times that by the 1960s.

And by the late 1970s and 1980s, television had come calling. He appeared in televised grudge matches against his rival, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone Jr. Brash ABC sports anchor Howard Cosell announced some of the showdowns between the tuxedoed men.

Bill Mosconi, 69, of Philadelphia, attributes his father’s success to his fierce competitiveness, stellar vision and soft stroke.

“He could make the cue ball stop on a dime,” the younger Mosconi said Monday, standing beside a mural of his dapper father on a somewhat neglected stretch of South Street in Philadelphia. The mural shows Mosconi playing with the black pool player Edward “Chick” Davis.

Mosconi, at the height of his power, at least once refused to play unless black players could compete beside him, his son said. Though he concedes that he heard that story – and many others – second-hand. His father did not spend much time talking about himself.

“I never heard him brag. But he was so unbelievably competitive, that if somebody said he could beat him, he had to beat him. He couldn’t let that go by,” the son said.

Mosconi, who also had two daughters, ran a pool hall in North Philadelphia, but raised his children in the New Jersey suburbs and stressed education at home. His son became an accountant and his grandson a doctor.

After suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Mosconi died at home in Haddon Heights, N.J. His wife, Flora, died in March 2010.

The family is keeping several of his pool cues and tables, but no longer has room for all of them.

Proceeds from the cue and pool table being sold will go to the individual descendants who own them. But the son hopes to make enough from the other items – from event posters to portraits to billiards paraphernalia – to fund something in his father’s name in Philadelphia, perhaps linked to education.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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