The Spectator

It was a long walk, just over an hour, from school to home. Normally I would just ride the bus, but there were days I either couldn’t get my act together in time or more likely I had to stay late for detention. I wasn’t a particularly social person anyways so walking home was a welcome escape.  The route home was a bit shorter if I cut through the local mall. Conveniently there was an arcade near the entrance closest to the school. I always wondered if someone had planned it that way. 

I loved checking out the latest machines. On the cusp of the newer electronic arcade machines, it was enthralling.  I didn’t have the money burn on games so I would casually move around the machines looking for the odd leftover credit or that rogue quarter to call my own. When I did get to play my skills were seriously lacking so actual play time was embarrassingly short regardless of the game.  For most of the time I was a designated spectator, occasionally being told by someone not to touch the machine during their play or to stop crowding them.

What little money I did have went towards my car. This may seem like a contradiction but from a very young age I had weird priorities. I got a car years before I was legally allowed to drive.  I also started working very young, but anything I made went towards fixing up the car which previously had an engine fire.  When I finally turned 16 it meant I could be a legit driver, get a license, and get a real job.  With that came a new found love of driving, the arcades would be pushed to the past.  The freedom, solitude, and excitement of discovering new places meant that every penny went towards gas.  At 4 MPG (maybe 6 on the highway), even the cheap gas of the era didn’t go that far.

I’ll digress for a moment because some of you might be asking yourself what kind of car got such miserable gas mileage. In the U.S. there was a television show called Dukes of Hazzard which featured a 1969 Dodge Charger they called the “General Lee”.   Nope, my car was not that one – I wished. But if you look past that car to the one driven by Bo and Luke’s cousin Daisy, a yellow Plymouth Road Runner with the black stripe, that was mine.  I made a lot of memories with that car and spent a lot of hours working on it.  I sold it for something more practical when I left for college.  I heard through the grapevine that the car went up in flames a 2nd time and was totaled by that new owner. Sad to see it go.

Fast forward nearly half my lifetime to when my soon to be wife introduces me to her parents. I was nervous but they were so friendly and accepting I couldn’t help but love them.  During one of those early visits, we walked downstairs into my mother-in-law’s basement. Past the Wellie boots at the bottom of the steps for when the basement flooded was a pool table, dartboard, and a beautiful 1974 Bally Bow and Arrow pinball machine. I still vividly remember my mother-in-law poking a finger through the missing key lock, pulling the door open, and gently pressing the coin switch to add credits.  The playfield was well worn but it was thrilling to see those spinners rack up bonus points.  And although the games were free, I still was a crappy player and I was content to be the designated spectator as I watched my future wife and mother-in-law playing.  After a few years, we no longer made the trek into the basement and I have vague memories of being told the machine wasn’t working.

So many years have since gone by. My mother-in-law passed away last spring, and the family has been struggling to come to terms with her loss.  We’ve been slowly helping my father-in-law clean up and sort through what to keep and what to donate. There in the basement, covered by boxes and used as a place to keep things off the damp floor, the Bow and Arrow has sat quietly unused for the last 25+ years.  I credit my brother-in-law with having the courage to clean it off and try turning it on after so many years.  I had never seen the inside of a pinball machine before. I didn’t even know how to open the machine up and we weren’t sure what we would find living in there.

 It was dingey, covered in dust, and …. Just beautiful.

In hind sight, it was probably foolish to just plug it in and throw the switch.  But I’ve worked on a few electronic things before and figured we could handle the worst.  To our surprise, there was no smoke, sparks or flames. Only a few lights indicating a shred of life.  Looking more closely at the inner workings, I was confident this was something I could bring back to life.  I thrive on solving problems and to me, this was one of the more logic driven problems there could be.  A couple internet searches later I had the schematics and a copy of the original service manual – a gold mine of information.  In the back of my head, there was a voice telling me this is a connection to my mother-in-law I could forever keep alive.  I want to fix this machine.  I NEED to fix this machine. For me, for the family, for Mom.

I had that extended weekend to work through the problems. The melted plastic holding a 6V fuse was an obvious issue for the lighting, more lights working - yay.  I tried the touching the coin switch like Mom had done years before with nothing more than a bit of relay chatter.  Digging through the information I had, I came to the Game Over Interlock Relay.  It clearly was not working properly and on closer inspection I could see one of the relays was not assembled correctly – See pic.

I’m not sure how it got that way but I had to disassemble / reassemble the relay to get the parts to fit together. 

With that fixed, the old B&A started groaning back to life.  There was a lot more work to do.  Score reels wouldn’t advance, same with player, ball, and bonus units.  The likely culprit, a can of 3-in-1 oil still sitting prominently on the shelf next to the machine.  I spent the rest of that weekend cleaning congealed oil off key components. By the time we had to leave I had a list of parts to order and most importantly – an almost playable machine.  It was rough, pieces of the flipper were breaking off with each hit, and the playfield was getting littered with little pieces of the bumpers each time the ball bounced off – this was the one time in my life where I was truly shredding a pin.

The next trip back was for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a to be our first family function since Mom’s passing, a complex mix of emotions as the reality of her absence set in.  My wife and I arrived a few days early to help get the house and food prepped. I made some time to slip down to the basement now and then to replace the parts I bought after our last trip - new rubber rings, fuse blocks, bumper skirts, and a lot of bulbs. By the time the grandkids and rest of the family arrived I had a working B&A for one player.  It was a joy to see kids recording their high scores on the chalkboard next to the dartboard. A high point during a difficult time.

Christmas was harder.  I found myself fixing the pinball machine as an escape from the reality that Mom wasn’t there.  By the time the family arrived for Christmas I had the machine playing amazingly well for all 4 players. Watching the family play made it easier to cope.  I was also coming to terms with the fact that I really enjoy working on EM pinball machines and yet I keep asking myself why I didn’t do this earlier?  Why didn’t I do this when Mom could enjoy it? I have so many regrets.

Life goes on, though.  Through this process I’ve discovered a new joy and new opportunities meet people. In January, I gave in to the gravitational pull of that little metal sphere and bought a Williams Big Deal in need of a lot of TLC. It now sits in our basement and is getting new life.  I’m hooked now and learning just how much practice it takes to get good. I’m no longer a spectator.