Pinball Madness

Asheville, North Carolina.

Imagine walking around a downtown corner bumping into a Pinball Museum!

And it’s not your normal Touch-It-On-Pain-of-Death museum; here visitors are expressly invited to play its relics. [See image below.]

My reason for becoming animated by Asheville was that in the 1970’s I had one of these, an old wooden 1940’s model.

[The image above is just like it.]

It was on loan from a cousin.

Just outside Boston, in Brookline, it was a focal point in the third-floor walk-up Brownstone I rented with a roommate.

College fraternity brothers from the neighborhood were always playing as well.

The hours of pure fun we had flipping and banking steel balls from band to bumper were wonderful: each developed unique body English – and expletives – to get the most out of a ball.

TILT, anyone?

Into the wee hours of the morning the ping, ping, click, click wafted down Claflin Road. Our landlady Rosie – who had to have been the archetype for the Yiddish word yenta – didn’t share our youthful enthusiasm.

Hey, did she really expect us to keep the living room window on the street side closed in summer? We didn’t have any AC. And in winter she controlled the steam heat that turned our top-floor abode into a sauna. To lower the offending temperature all we could do was leave that window open. That presented a challenge to snowflakes: could one land on the rug before melting? No, but it was worth the try.

All of this zaniness resurrected itself in North Carolina as I paid my twelve bucks and entered the doorway to pinball heaven.

Dimly lit as in a nightclub, with a bar at the far end, there were thirty machines side-by-side.

Sticking to the vintage models I flipped them for an hour. Surprise! My unique contortion to nudge that ball returned. It was like riding a bicycle: you never forget.

What pure, uncomplicated enjoyment it was.

The owner said that youngsters aren’t interested in pinball: it isn’t challenging enough. This place accommodates them by having video games.

There is still something to be said, though, for having a few beers with good friends competing on a simple hands-on machine created lifetimes ago.

The proprietor even gave me a good lead on how I can buy one.

Hey Rosie, whaddya think about that!!