I was born in New Jersey, but my family liked to move, so we soon became Midwesterners, with stops in Indiana and Illinois. My earliest pinball memory was mom’s summer bowling league in the early 60’s, when I was in third or fourth grade. The bowling alley had a great big amusement area inside- even a miniature golf course! But I was driven to get the most fun out of the few dimes I had available to spend. I guess I was unconsciously analyzing what games gave me the best return on my money-electromechanical wonders like gun games, bowlers and driving games were good, but there was only one game that promised the possibility of unlimited fun- no timers or fixed number of shots-if you were good enough! The pinball machines…insert one dime and your skill determined how long your fun would continue. I can’t remember which games they were, but I am fairly sure I was dropping coins into some of Gottlieb’s finest wedgeheads. That feeling and those memories would then submerge for about two decades.
After high school in Northern Illinois, I headed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for college at Marquette University, grinding through the engineering school with eventual success. In the basement of my beer-can shaped dormitory was another pinball memory- this time definitely a wedgehead, but again the name escapes me. I remember pirates!
For six years after graduation I worked at Square D Company in Milwaukee, designing the big magnets used in scrap yards and steel mills. My job moved to Columbia, South Carolina, but I realized that I was now a thoroughly Midwestern boy! After nine weeks of unemployment I found a job in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at Snap-on Tools.
My first day at Snap-on I realized that I would have a difficult time concentrating in my beige cubicle with the barrage of sounds coming from the engineer a few desks down. I could hear this guy operating, manipulating, cajoling and connecting nearly every minute of the day. Later he appeared in my cubicle, grabbed my hand and said: “HeybuddyI’mMarkwannaworkonacoolprojectwithme?” I didn’t know when I agreed that I was signing up to work on a major sinkhole of time and dollars that had already sent two experienced engineers running with their tails between their legs.
That’s how I met Mark Bakula. And after he and I visited the game room of Snap-on’s head of Electrical Engineering, Mark and I found out we both had pinball seeds planted in our brains. Mark took his typically direct approach- he called every amusement operator in the yellow pages. Soon we organized our first warehouse raid, long before we even knew such things were done. It was a great way to suck a few more people into pinball and spread out the labor!
So there I was, bachelor engineer in a one-bedroom Milwaukee apartment with a non-functioning Williams Aztec and a handful of other games stowed in friend’s basements. I set up the game and looked inside. Kind of intimidating, kind of smelly and dirty, but definitely fun. By two weeks later I had had my first conversation with Steve Young, signed up for a subscription to Pinball Trader (later Pingame Journal) and I’m playing my shining Aztec...and wondering how many games I can cram in a small apartment.
Time flies on and a nice young lady named Liz consents to let me be her boyfriend. She plays a mean game of pinball, too. More games come and the “small-apartment-plus-friend’s-basement” plan is no longer workable. So after a yearlong search I find a nice house in the city- it takes a long time to find a 1900’s house with a pinball-friendly basement. A couple of years later Liz and I get married in the front room of the house, and less than a minute after the fateful words are uttered I hear my nephew has fired up Aztec in the TV room. Naturally, Aztec now has a bunch of cousins in the basement keeping the wedding guest entertained.
I’m still at Snap-on (I have to pay for the pinballs) and the project that Mark dragged me into was one of the company’s biggest successes. Liz and I settle into a happy routine: Liz says something like: “we need a Dr. Who” or “we need a South Park” and I call Mark and the rest of the gang of pinheads and the hunt begins. Games come in and head out, but more stay than leave. I constantly learn more about fixing games and develop my own restoration techniques. The basement becomes more arcade than storage area. I’ve met lots of pinball friends across the world, entered some tournaments and participated in a local league. I have to rent storage space for the games that won’t fit in the house.
Mark and I start staying longer and longer at the Chicago Pinball Expos, finally starting to give our own talks; getting to know more and more people. We each write chapters for Marco Rossignoli’s “Pinball Memories” and Mark convinces me that we ought to write a book. So that brings us up to now, with a website and lots of work left to interview pinball people and write a book. And I finally understand what people mean when they say that pinball visits as a hobby, then moves in and takes up residence as an obsession!
Don |
