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Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 - 2:21 p.m. A little of this and that, but nothing spectacular. Since it poured rain all day Friday, we just did the weekly shopping runs. Saturday? The wind was howling out of the west at a steady 25 mph, constantly gusting to over 40mph. So fishing was again out of the question. We did have two things we needed to do that day. Lease wanted to be at her sister Rubes house by 3 pm. There are only 2 weeks remaining to get everything whipped into shape for the Halloween wedding of her daughter (and our niece) Tara and Shawn. She is trying to get several major projects completed on time. Getting enough help to do this has been a problem. Hopefully, everything will fall into place by the 30th� The other task Saturday was the drive to Joe D. Mechanics house to pick up my new (old) toy:
Yes, a pinball machine. A 1979 Stern �Meteor� machine, to be precise. According to what I could find out on the Internet , there were just a little over 8000 of these single ball tables made in the 3 year production run. I dropped many quarters into one of these same Meteor games back in the early 1980�s. One of my first jobs out of high school was as a roller skating rink manager here in Mohall. The man I worker for had two rinks, and each had a small game room. And in one of the rinks, a Meteor machine was in the game room the entire time I worked for him. Back then, standup video games were just hitting the market. Since we didn�t have the �traffic� that a bowling alley or bar, we didn�t get many �Space Invaders� or �Pac-man� moneymakers from the coin-op company that provided us with the games. Instead, at any given time we had air hockey tables, 2 (if we were lucky) video games, and several pinball machines. Which was fine with me, because I loved to play pinball. Since the rink didn�t own the machines, we had to pay for any games that we played, just like the customers. But we also had two major things going our way, if we wanted to play pinball: 1. We had a set of keys for each machine (in case a ball became stuck, or we had to give somebody a refund) 2. The owner of the rink didn�t think much of the company providing our games, so he told us he didn�t mind if we gave ourselves a few �free� games by the same technique he used: put in a quarter, slide the glass back a bit, and using your finger, knock down enough targets to make the machine think you were beating the crap out of it. With just a few seconds of target tripping, you could have 4 or 5 replays built up. Once done, we simply slid the glass back in place, reset the door and locks, and played the game. Get down to just one credit? Repeat the process. We only played the games during the times that the rink wasn�t open to the public. But since someone had to be there all day to answer the phone, there was plenty of downtime to work on your game. After playing a machine enough times, you learned what needed to be done to win free games. Then, the challenge became �how long can I play on my one quarter WITHOUT needed to build up credits by sliding down the glass. Meteor was one machine that I never became proficient enough to beat consistently.>/P>
In other words- not a lot to hit, so hard to score enough for a replay. Since this machine is set up for free play (obviously, since it has been in a couple of basements for the past 15 years), the goal now is just to beat whomever you are playing against. The paint and artwork is in very good condition for a 25-year old machine. There is very little wear on the playfield, and even the back glass has most of the original paint still attached. I have seen much newer machines with heavier chipping than this one:
All in all- pretty cool. Joe shot me a very good price, and I added a full case of the best of my canned products (mostly salsas and pickles, because that is what he has told me his family liked this summer). I�m not saying how low the price was. I�ll just say if I bought one at that price from a dealer, it wouldn�t be in �running� shape� Sunday? Watched the Bears loose again. I probably only watched about half of the game, because they were playing so poorly. Gave me time to do a few jobs related to the garden that way, too. Today? Slept in. Since it was raining hard (again- both vacation days spent were washouts, weather-wise), we just ran a couple of errands. I picked up a new printyer for the computer (my old Epson died a painful death yesterday, after being on the decline for at least a year) Lease finally found a Halloween costume she is willing to wear to the wedding. She had to return costume #3 before she looked for #4. What is the outfit? Some kind of sexy witchy-thing. She added a black Betty Page wig (which we just cut to have a pointed front, instead of long bangs) and some other accessories to finish it out. She looks pretty hot in it. That�s all I�m going to say. And no, you can�t see right now. Gotta be some rule, like the groom not seeing the bride in her outfit before the wedding, doesn�t there? As much pain as she has gone through, trying to find a Halloween-themed outfit that she could live with, I am not about to jinx this one�.
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