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What...Pinball?!

Yes, that's right! My newest hobby is one of my earliest hobbies - I've take up collecting pinball machines. Not just any machines, though. I have started a collection of pinball machines that I have enjoyed playing since I was a teenager. It may seem like a strange interest to some, but if you read further, I think you'll understand...

Why Pinball...

First and foremost, playing pinball helps me to clear my mind. While others might find reading a book, working out, or other activities relaxing, there are really few activities that allow me to really get out of my head, and focus on something else for a while. Pinball, more than just about anything, helps me do that.

The Teen Center

My first exposure to pins came in 1977, at a youth center in East Brunswick, New Jersey. The "Teen Center" was created to keep troubled youths off the streets, and to give kids a place to go where they could go and spend time with other kids, and with counselors who could serve as positive role models. Steve and I were far from "troubled", so the mission of the center was not really focused on good kids like us. I do recall a counselor there named Joseph, who was a really great guy. But most of all, I remember the bells of the machines - so many of them, ringing their way into my imagination...and ultimately becoming an obsession. I remember vividly the pinball games that were there - Big Brave, Magnotron, and others. I must have spent hundreds of dollars playing Big Brave, trying in vain to master the scheme of drop targets and rollovers that it took to win a free game.

My brother Steve and I spent countless hours at the Teen Center, experiences that I will always cherish and look back on fondly. We were both bitten by the pinball bug...and we were bitten BADLY.

A move across town took us away from the teen center, and Magnotron's awe inspiring bell pattern of da-da..DA DA DA!, but brought us to the next chapter in our Pinball Experience: 7-11!

7-11

The 7-11 that was located within a short walk of our new home provided Steve and I with ready access to at least two or three new machines every few months. This is where we were first introduced to my favorite machine of all time - Jacks Open. Jacks is all about drop targets and we absolutely loved it! I spent hours at 7-11 in '79 and '80 playing Jacks Open, and the other machines that the owner "Joe" would keep there for his profit and our amusement. One day, an old drunk guy walked in while I was playing, and was so impressed with my pinball skills that he got about five dollars worth of quarters and literally threw it on the machine so that I could play for the rest of the day! I was in heaven!

Down The Shore

For folks that grew up in New Jersey, one of the best things about living in the Garden State was proximity to the Jersey Shore, and the Boardwalks. Both Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights had incredible boardwalks where you could spend a day with your family swimming in the ocean, eating great food like pizza and sausage sandwiches, and PLAYING PINBALL!

Pinball at the shore was like nothing else in the world! There were parlors that would host literally hundreds of games - nearly every one you could imagine! We would beg our parents for ten bucks and spend nearly the entire day in the pinball parlors, looking through the vast catacombs for our favorite games, and discovering new ones. The bells would be ringing all around you, while your feet would leave sandy deposits around the best games in the place. The floors were dirty, the smell a mixture of pizza, sausage, sun tan lotion, and low tide stench, but the sounds were magical, and we loved every minute of our trips "down the shore".

I attended college at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey from '86-'89, and it was there that I rediscovered my love for pinball once again - in the middle of one of the most difficult times of my life...

PinBot

For me, attending college was a great experience. I ate up my studies, and genuinely enjoyed the rigors of philosophy. It just so happened that in the Douglass college student center sat a machine that I came to really enjoy playing: PinBot.

PinBot talks to you, and it says a lot. It is fast and it is furious. It is a delight to play. Generally, I would play a couple of bucks worth of quarters every time I was in the Center, and had a blast doing it. But when my father passed away in the Spring of 1987, the time I spent on the table was more of an obsession than anything else. In the throws of my grief, fear, and anxiety, I could do little else other than simple tasks. Voices screamed in my head, while I attempted to go about my normal daily routine. I found myself drifting away to other places. Not surprisingly, I found solace at the foot of that PinBot machine on campus that spring, as I lost myself, for a short hours every day, in the flashing lights and exciting sounds of that Williams machine.

PinBot was not therapy. It was a sling for my wounded heart, and fearful soul - a pleasant diversion from the reality of the horrible situation with which I was faced. In its small way, it gave me some peace. I now have a PinBot machine in my basement, and every time I see it, I think of my dad, college, and getting through one of the most difficult situations I will ever have to face.

Epilogue

Well, that was the past. Pinball has been with me throughout my life, and I expect that it will stay with me until I leave the playfield of life. Pinball has value, as a diversion, beyond the video games of today. - at least in my opinion. You're not vicariously killing people when you play them. They have a genuine physical presence, that other games do not have. You stand when you play. You're not staring at a video screen for hours. The bells of the older machines make you realize how much sound that we hear today is fake - synthetic. You're touching and hearing something real - so real, in fact, that when you move them, you break your back!

My ultimate goal is to have a game room that will provide hours of fun, excitement, and socializing with friends. I recently spent an entire evening with a group of friends laughing and cheering, playing a Magnotron machine that I recently purchased, but had no room to store in my small, cluttered basement. So, the machine sits at a friend's place, waiting for its final home. We had a blast, and if I ever needed one ounce of external validation that this was a worthwhile endeavor, I got it.

But I don't need that validation. I really don't.