Bookends

A story then. 

In November of 2016, I received a call from my brother Kevin. Donald Trump had recently won the election; we (the two open liberals in the family) were both a bit shell-shocked. Mom (in the process of dying, she left us at the end of December) was kind of a Trump fan, mostly because she gambled in his casinos - she and her pal June would plan trips to Atlantic City to "see the Donald". It was easy not to blame her for what had happened in November. 

My brother Tom on the other hand, was the worst kind of Trumper - sharing overtly racist memes about Obama, sexist memes about Clinton, ranting about the libtards and how we were all gonna get ours now, and sharing all the horseshit that we've come to find out was Russian agitprop. It was pretty damned easy to pin what had happened in November onto Tom and his tribe. Ironically, a quick web search reveals that Tom had not voted in decades. 

Kevin called, maybe a day or two after the election, to commiserate a little. And to share some news: Tom (who had a problem with alcohol and been forced into early retirement due to his drinking and resultant health issues) was drinking again. Kevin had been in a package store buying beer, noticed Tom come in, and hung back, out of sight while Tom bought his booze. Filled with anger about the whole political scene, my first thought, probably voiced to Kevin, was "I hope the asshole drinks himself to death". Which is exactly what happened, in June 2019. 

Kevin confronted Tom afterwards (as I remember) and Tom denied it all (he was allegedly buying soda and lottery tickets). Kevin ended up taking the brunt of Tom's illness/addiction - cleaning up bloody messes, tossing dozens of empty vodka bottles, being the one nearby to take the call when medical attention was needed. This after a lifetime of bullying at the hands of a sibling one year older and cut from wholly different cloth than the rest of us. It was a lot. 

Mom had started to slide a year earlier, and we had come together to support her as she transitioned into assisted living, put her affairs in order, and slipped in and out of a confused haze due to COPD and CO2/O2 issues. All but Tom, who was vehemently in denial that this was happening, accused us of "pushing mom into her grave" and wanted nothing to do with it all. 

No idea when Tom started drinking, probably before Mom's slide began, but let's say it did not help. He drank openly at her interment trip to PA, we asked, and were told to butt out.

Somewhere in the ensuing years, Tom (a long time gun owner) started collecting weapons and ammunition. When he started his own precipitous two month slide in April of 2019, we found our way into his filthy, cluttered, two room apartment for the first time in many years to find over $50,000 worth of guns and ammo, piled up in his bedroom and scattered throughout the place. He was terrified that the police / EMS would need to come in and see the guns and confiscate them / arrest him for improper storage. We ended up getting them transferred to his gun dealer (who presumably took a cut on both ends of the transaction). As we helped our brother as best we could, and said our goodbyes, the knowledge that perhaps death was the best possible outcome - that Tom could have gone on a shooting spree, taken out family, strangers, himself. That shit happens, and we feel like we literally and figuratively dodged a bullet. Thankful that his health failed before something snapped. 

So now to 2020. COVID-19 has traumatized our country, the economy, our planet. It's hard not to place the blame squarely on the incompetence and malfeasance of the present administration - I bounce back and forth between blaming Donald J Trump and blaming every stupid mother-fucker that voted for him. As recently as two days ago, I drafted (but did not post) something for social media along the lines of "I'm planning for a COVID-19 death toll of 62,984,828 (Trump's popular votes in 2016) and I'm hoping it's the right 62,984,828 people who get taken down". Yeah, that rage, that anger, so very real. In some ways my pandemic trauma has been tempered by the knowledge that maybe 50% of it's victims had it coming to them. 

Last night the news - Trump confidant Hope Hicks tested positive. And this morning, Trump and his wife Melania as well. No idea how this will go from here, but give Trump's age and general health, a poor outcome is likely. And whatever happens, the United States will be throw into chaos socially, politically, economically. 

You get to a certain age and you can start to see the broader sweep of time, live long enough to see good behavior rewarded, and bad behavior punished. 

Personally, this morning feels like a bit of a bookend, on four years that began with that phone call from Kevin. Maybe this long national nightmare will all be over soon.... or maybe it's just beginning.

Pandemic

And suddenly, the world has turned upside down.

The waves of the present situation began lapping at the shores in late February / early March. We started to think about physical contact and viral spreading at the yoga studio; over time we promoted hand washing and sanitizing, worked to launder / clean props more regularly, went to a rental plan (with all props washed between use), forbid teachers to touch students, reduced room heat....

We kept it going as long as we could, but on March 13th, West Hartford Yoga closed it's doors for in-studio operation.

It did not take me long to shift into crisis mode. After a weekend of stunned silence and regrouping we started to live stream yoga classes the following Monday, and have continued to stream 1, sometimes 2 classes per day via Facebook ever since. We archived the classes on Facebook as well as YouTube - pulling all but the most recent back on June 1, reserved for Supporting and Sustaining Members, vital revenue to help the studio ride through this crisis.

Coincident with that, we started to hold a limited schedule of live interactive classes using the Zoom platform. Numbers have been limited (15 is a big class) but these are folks paying for yoga, and at this time and place, that's a big deal. We're also contemplating opening up (June 17th we're permitted with fairly stringent requirements for social distancing, although we're not planning to open until later). We're also looking into outdoor classes this summer.

But Jude (you say) what about you personally?

We'll, truth be told, I was kinda of built for pandemic. I live alone, and I'm used to spending a lot of time alone. From a social perspective, I barely notice the change. If anything, being so active up at the studio has meant MORE social interaction (albeit socially distanced) than pre-pandemic. And so many of the things that have been cancelled are things I've been somewhat burned out on anyway - teaching yoga, making music, Falcon Ridge. All in all it's been a nice break.

A more cynical perspective - it's my personal hell. Now everyone is living in it. Misery loves company.

And in a lot of ways, I'm thriving. Keeping the yoga studio alive has become my mission, playing to my strengths (tech, A/V geekery, organization, willingness to do stupidly daunting tasks) and keeping me engaged.

• Emptied out a 10'x10' Storage Locker the studio filled up during the move from Jansen Court to Brook Street (nearly a decade ago)
• Cleaned out the storage shed behind the building which had become the place to put things instead of actually dealing with them
• Sorted through 60 boxes full of papers, records, ephemera, resulting in 22 full banker's boxes for the mobile shredder. 
• Free-cycled a ton of stuff - fans, fixtures, mannequins, etc.
• Set up a special cart (complete with flat screen video) to enable zoom yoga classes
• Set up a completely new product line (virtual / online classes)

Financially, not doing too badly either. While my checkered past with the IRS precludes me from any sort of stimulus and I've not bothered to file for unemployment* (figuring that would open some cans of worms best left unopened), the studio applied for and received a Payroll Protection Plan load / grant so I've gotten paid through this mess. I was sitting on a pile of cash from Tom's estate when all this started, and the last check came through a few weeks back. And while my engineering work hit the skids, the last month pre-pandemic was pretty solid and things are starting to revive there as well. And, let's face it, I live pretty close to the bone.

Black Lives Matter

Allow me a little bit of navel gazing as the winds of change and protest swirl around this country, triggered by the murder (the correct term, I assure you) of Mr. Floyd George by Minneapolis police officers, and fueled by decades of police violence and abuse against persons of color, specific acts of racism and exclusion, and an overall culture / climate of racism in which we all play a part.

First, most assuredly, Black Lives Matter. No IFs, ANDs, or BUTs. No "All Lives Matter" bullshit. I do not have any qualms about that.

Where I struggle is in the where and how that I, living intersectionally as both a privileged white person and as a less privileged trans person, should step into this particular struggle. So much of that I am seeing online and in person right now feels a little like jumping on the bandwagon. White people do so like to talk, do so like to take up space, do so like to suck all the oxygen from the room. And I'm seeing a lot of space being taken up by white people this week as they try to outdo themselves personally, individually, through organizations and businesses, to demonstrate just how much Black Lives Matter.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated
  
While I'm not particularly christian these days, the christian texts do contain wisdom, and I am reminded of this, courtesy of Matthew 23:

² The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law are experts in the Law of Moses. ³ So obey everything they teach you, but don’t do as they do. After all, they say one thing and do something else.
⁴ They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help. ⁵ Everything they do is just to show off in front of others. They even make a big show of wearing Scripture verses on their foreheads and arms, and they wear big tassels^[a] for everyone to see. ⁶ They love the best seats at banquets and the front seats in the meeting places. ⁷ And when they are in the market, they like to have people greet them as their teachers.

And well, the outpouring of Black Lives Matter in the media right now feels a little like an obligation, a desire to get something out there for the optics of it all. There's a piece circulating about how Blackout Tuesday and use of the Black Lives Matter hashtag (which I am purposely not using here) effectively "blacked out" the actual movement and silenced POC for a few days, as (mostly) white people took over the BLM hashtags and once more sucked all the air out of the room.

So yeah, that kind of stuff. I personally tend to avoid all social media movements (mass shootings, hate crimes, terrorist attacks, etc. and I'll touch on Trans Lives Matter in a bit) - finding them to be lip service, intent on making the writer feel better, soon and easily forgotten as the next thing comes along. So jumping in on this cause would feel a bit, I dunno, problematically exceptional. If my overall philosophy is "I don't do that stuff" and I step in here, it's weirdly racist in a different way.

So yeah, Trans Lives Matter. Hate it. It often is rooted in causes and legislation that (mostly) benefits the more privileged members of identity trans, and it mostly uses the images and deaths of the less privileged transfolk (mostly POC transwomen who make up the majority of the annual "Remembering our Dead" lists). And oh, by the way "Trans Lives Better" is derivative of and colonizing "Black Lives Matter". Just saying.

When cisgender acquaintances are all flying the trans flag in social media, those are the folks I stay the fuck away from. Because (in my experience) those are the folks who will out me, use my name and identity to score progressive identity points (referring to "my trans friend Jude" or "my trans yoga teacher Jude"), draw me into their social circles because they kinda need a trans friend to round out the diversity set. My story. My choice to disclose or not. So yeah, my opinions regarding "Trans Lives Matter" definitely impact my choices surrounding Black Lives Matter.

And, to be honest, one of my go to insights regarding trans positive legislation and civil rights has been "black folk have had those protections for 50 years....how's that working out?" Not sure that passing a law is always the pathway to equality and justice. 

But enough about me, enough about trans.

Yes, as a white person, raised in a very exclusive (by which I mean to say, cloistered rather than economically privileged) world, I've got race issues. We had exactly two black kids in our school - Luke died in primary school of leukemia, and Keith, who was the star of the Catholic grade school basketball team. Keith had come to a grade school birthday party; I had kept his card for many years. Protestants and Jews were also "other" in my childhood world, exotic and rare, and Muslims, Asians, Hispanics were completely off the map.

On the plus side, as an economically embattled person who has lived completely within city limits for the past 30+ years (Danbury, Waterbury, Hartford, New Britain), I've lived in more diverse neighborhood than most of my peers. As I make my way up and down the street picking up litter, I am smiling and saying hello to people of many races, many origins, many creeds. And....with each piece of little I pick up I am confronted with my own stereotypes and assumptions surrounding the type of trash, the persons who put it there, etc. It's part of my internal work to notice, to process, to deal with that.

So yeah, I'm not one to fly the flag - black, rainbow, national, etc. But please know that I am trying to do the work. I care deeply. Just find social media to be a tricky place for this sort of thing. 

And, a coda to this piece. I few years back, Netflix released a documentary called Hip Hop Evolution about the development of rap and hip-hop music. Somehow or the other I stumbled in to watch. I was contemporary with the start of this music, which kind of grew up in parallel to the New Wave / Punk music I engaged with. So even as I was peripherally aware of the genre, I knew very little about it.

Wanna know something - I love this series, have found an appreciation for this art form that I could never have imagined. It's become one of my go-to media binges, worthy of rewatching, dispelling so many musical and racial stereotypes, learning about DJs, emcees, producers who were innovators, creators, users of technology (turntables, samplers, drum machines). It is most wonderful that the filmmaker has been able to hunt down these artists, now in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s - mellowed, insightful, wistful as they remember the good old days. 

So yeah. Listening. Learning. Trying to beat down my own internal racism. Trying to leave open space for black faces to be seen, black voices to be heard.

Black Lives Matter. 

Snuggling in with Grief

April 15: I put this together over a month ago and the world turned topsy-turvy since then. Gonna finish up thoughts and post, before moving on to more recent pressing issues.

It's been a quiet, grey winter - a time of isolation as I work my way through the pile of grief that I've been accumulating.

I'm no stranger to death, to loss. Dad died in 1979, when I was just 18, in the spring of my senior year in high school. In some ways that inoculated me - I had that big freaking death long before many of my peers. But in other ways, it barely registered, for a bunch of reasons:

• I was 18, an age when a kid is naturally drifting towards autonomy -  pulling away from family, parent, home
• Dad was a bit of a cypher - a little lost boy in a man's body. He liked college hoops, playing bridge. We'd share a chess game now and then. But there was no sign of a serious hobby or passion - fishing or golf or woodworking or lawn care or cars or any of the dozens of things men of that era might have gotten wrapped up in. In some ways he seemed to be playing the part of husband and father, and died long before he could figure out who he really was or wanted to be. 
• Dad had been sick for a few years - on a bit of a roller coaster of heart attack, hospital, home, back to work - rinse and repeat. My sister and I would visit him in the hospital after school (blocks away). But he was practically a ghost years before he actually died. 
• I spent a busy "last summer" with high school and work friends, and then headed off to college. I never really lived in the house without dad - and did not have to deal with his absence in the same way that mom, my sister, or my brothers did. 
• I was on my way to following in dad's footsteps at the time - locking up my essence underneath a socially and culturally sanctioned shell. I insisted on stepping into the hospital room to see his lifeless body. There was a somewhat perverse pride at how armored, how immune to emotion I was. 

All that being said, I did end up dealing with the grief down the road - in dreams, where he'd be alive and I'd awake to feel his death and loss, in life when I'd encounter men of his build and balding comb-over from behind and feel his loss. In therapy and group work.

Then many years without death. Grandparents we rarely saw or spent time with (distance). My godfather, after a long and debilitating illness that lent many years to get used to the idea. A few pets - our family dog Kyla, my beloved springer spaniel Nipsy.  But mostly, death and grief remained a memory or a distant concept.

That ended when Mom died at the tail end of 2016. It was not quite so traumatic - she had lived a reasonably long life (80); I was somehow comforted to hear that Mary Tyler Moore, with her wealth and access to care died at the same age as mom. Mom had been dealing with vascular and pulmonary issues for many years, but remained independent pretty much up to her final year, and she gracefully divested herself of home and belongings, took up in an assisted living facility, and we each spent a lot of time with her in her final year - up to and including a Christmas meal at the facility and a family holiday dinner outside the facility just a week or so before she passed.

We each mourned, but none more than our (adopted) brother Tom, for whom the loss of mom was devastating. He'd already had one brush with mortality (alcohol related health issues, in 2011-12, that pushed him to early / medical retirement). Mom cared for him after he was discharged; he lived with her for a time as she cooked and mothered him and no doubt kept him sober even as she was in denial as to his addiction. No idea when he restarted on the booze, but he was certainly checked out during mom's final year, choosing not to participate in family decisions, and letting us know that he thought we were pushing her to the graveyard. Without a doubt, the world without his mother was more than he could stand.

When Tom's health started to fail in April of 2019, we switched into crisis mode, and for two solid months we got on the treadmill of hospital, home care, cleaning up his place, shuttling him to dialysis, etc. He would have best found convalescent care but he would have none of that - so back and forth to a cluttered, dirty, yet familiar home a few times before a final trip to hospice. Another few months of taking care of his affairs (mostly sorting through decades worth of treasures) before we could catch our breaths. 

And then, this past fall, I let go of my little guy Elo - who had gone from being a handful in his youth to being a very wonderful little dog. When I bought my condo in 2008, Elo stayed with my ex for a time, thinking the dogs (we had two at the time) would be better off together and condo living would not be best for either of them. Elo ended up moving in a few months later, and he was a perfect fit. Heartbreaking to let him go but also very sweet - he lived a good long doggie life (16) and when the time came, it felt right, without a lot of second guessing or life extending measures.

So, as I wrote this back in early March it felt like I was moving to a place of stillness, a place of taking a dive into grief. The universe clearly had other plans.

Super Tuesday

Not being able to vote in the primaries until April 28, when it will pretty much be over, I've not been that engaged with the process to date. Too much noise, not enough signal, and tired of getting invested in a candidate who will not on the ballot when it's my turn to vote. And truth be told I would be happy to cast my vote in November for any of the Democratic candidates.

That being said, I caught Bernie Sander's speech last night, on MSNBC as I worked, and well, it was just plain ugly. His speech had the same sort of dog-whistle prompts that 45 uses, but directed at Biden (not at Trump) and his rabid (no better word, and appropo to the dog whistle analogy) audience responded with strenuous Boos each time. None of the Dems are the enemy here but Sanders is acting like anyone who has ever worked (or seeks to work) within the system is of a kind.

In fact, Sanders speech made me think he's more akin to Donald J Trump - a blustering, bullying, iconoclast - than any of the Dems he's competing against. No wonder Putin is helping his campaign - both Trump and Sanders are intent on shredding the fabric of the government, and far left or far right, it's all the same to Russia.

You can shove me just a little to the center - I've gone from "I can live with Bernie" in my book to "Not my guy". If she's still on the ballot come April 28th I'm leaning towards Elizabeth Warren (who I've liked all along) but Biden is a fine choice....we need to get this country centered and stable before we make any changes.

Or...maybe Covid-19 will take us all down. There's a little part of me that thinks Homo Sapiens needs a little thinning of the herd in terms of climate change, resources, planetary survival.

Your First Pinball Machine

As the now proud owner of two pinball machines, who has been catching up on the hobby these past few months, I suppose I have some insights into purchasing your first machine, with my recent memory of "beginner's mind" that I will perhaps lose touch with as time passes.

Domino (Gottlieb, 1968) at left and Duotron (Gottlieb, 1974) at right.

1. Find Your Sweet Spot (era)
   When I went to purchase my first game, I was looking at a later model, a 1979 Gottlieb Genie with digital displays and sounds and a wide-body featuring 5(!) flippers. I figured that a more modern unit might be more reliable, easier to fix. I had memories of playing this specific game as a young adult.
   
   At the shop, the proprietor asked if I was interested in older games (he had a few) and it did not take me long to realize that the warm fuzzies of owning and playing a pinball game were related to the lights, sounds, and feel of an older type machine (specifically an EM, or Electro-Mechanical, device). He had two, and I chose one at random (seemed in better shape, better art, newer) and I lucked into a machine that was right at my own sweet spot. I was 13 when Duotron was new; I don't recall encountering it, but I certainly could have.
2. Find Your Sweet Spot (manufacturer)
   For the EM games I am interested in, there were three primary manufacturers: Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb. In the months since I've purchased my first game, I've had the opportunity to play several examples of Bally and Williams games in the wild. Know what? They do not do it for me, quite as much as the Gottlieb games. It's little stuff - design, art, flippers, chimes / bells, targets, rollovers, bumpers - each brand has a slightly different way of doing things.
   
   So if you get the chance to play some older games, note the age, the manufacturer, and figure out what you really like.
   
   
3. Find Your Sweet Spot (popularity)Pinball was a consumer driven market for many years - with the number of games ordered related to how well received the game was in the field. Domino and Duotron were not all that popular (about 2500 games made, each). Bally's 1977 Eight Ball had a production run of 20,000.
   
   The production run factors in multiple ways. There may be a lot out there, but they may have been played hard, worn out, and there aren't too many left. Lower production runs of popular games might mean they are more collectible and worth more. Games with higher production runs might make it easier to find parts (used or reproduction), schematics,  and vendors who provide parts and services.
   
   I've been able to pick up schematics for both my games, as well as kits to replace rings / rubbers. On the other hand, a set of mylar replacement target faces for Domino (mine were worn off / poorly repainted) required sending off to Australia. ($23 including shipping, deal!)


4. Game Popularity vs. Playability
   When I purchased Duotron, my first game, I was a total newb. Once it was in house, I started looking around, and found ratings / review like these:
   
   "Very blah playing game. Ball always seems to hit posts and not targets. NO flow at all.""Big disappointment. There is so little to do on the playfield except to knock the trapped center ball back and forth which racks up an inordinate amount of points compared to the other elements. I have 6 pins and this one gets played the least by far."
   I can't really argue. It's not the best designed game out there, by far. However, that also means that it will tend to be more available (collectors will not so quickly snap it up), more affordable (collectors pay a premium for more desirable games), and be in better relative shape (less popular games have accrued fewer playing hours over a 40-50 year old lifetime).
   
   A great place to do some research is pinside.com - they have a machine database that lists all sorts of stats for individual games, forums to ask questions, map to locate folks who own (or are selling, or want to buy) specific machines or where machines are available for public play.
   
   
5. Condition - What's Important?
   Assuming you have a bit of electro-mechanical aptitude (you'll need it for one of these older games) then a fully operating game is perhaps the least important aspect of condition. All that stuff can be fixed.
   
   What can't be easily fixed are condition issues, specifically:
   
   Backglass: Is it intact (not broken or cracked)? Is it worn (the heat from incandescent bulbs tended to burn away the paint so older backglass will have bare spots, pinholes, etc.
   
   My backglasses are in pretty decent shape - Duotron has a few thinning spots, Domino has some touch-up work that is not great (our lady has a bit of mottle flesh tones). Neither are deal-breakers for me.
   
   There's a market for replacement backglasses (not cheap) and for some very popular games, reproduction glass or lighter translite replacements are available. But a lousy backglass ratchets down the visual appeal of any game.
   
   

   

   Domino backglass available on ebay for $130 - note the significant artwork damage, peeling, etc.

   Playfield: The playing surface of the pinball machine is also somewhat critical. There are two issues: the artwork (which can be worn down to bare wood fairly easily, with many plays, but does not generally affect the play) and actual damage (gouges, dents, pits. grooves). Some things can be repaired, some things touched up, but starting with a playfield in good condition is a real plus.
   
   Plastics: The little translucent covers for various playfield mechanics, often damaged by heat (incandescent lamps) or by errant pinballs. Replacing these can be difficult / impossible. I can get a set of plastics for my games for about $100 / set (again, from Australia) - quite a commitment for a machine that I pick up for a few hundred bucks. So it's better if the plastics are intact when you buy. Same thing goes for things like targets, drop targets, lane covers, pop bumper plastics, etc. Some of this stuff is fairly generic and can be easily replaced but if it's in any way unique to the game or the theme, it might be hard to find.
   
   Cabinet: Most of the game cabinets had some great art, often related to or resonant with the game. The cabinets can be faded, vandalized (some folks like the high scores and initials in pen or carved into the wood), repainted, recovered. They can also be physically damaged.
   
   Both of my games have original cabinet paint. Neither is in super great quality, but it works for me.
   
   There's an industry out there of folks who create stencils for those restoring / repainting cabinets.
   
6. Purchasing Your Game
   I found both of my games on Craigslist; which seems to be a pretty solid way to find something local. In both cases I watched the item go unsold for a while, and enventually decided to make contact. Facebook Marketplace also seems to be a pretty good place to look right now.
   
   For a first game, local seems best - you can go look at / play the game, no need to ship (many sellers are unwilling to ship, local only) and perhaps there are multiple games available to look at.
   
   Other channels are ebay (less easy to find something local, often a competitive bid situation) and online auctions (often sold as-is with no opportunity to play or see in person)
   
    

Two Ghosts

I needed my sister's email address this morning (I noticed that my emergency contact at the yoga studio was still mom, who left us in December 2016) and so I pulled up AOL on my phone to find her email address. Apparently I stopped using my AOL address for family stuff a while back, because the most recent email I discovered was August 2012.

And, what an email thread it was. Apparently sent in the middle of one my late brother Tom's early hospitalizations (alcohol related pancreatitis and liver disease) - when HIPAA was keeping the family at bay and in the dark. We all knew (or thought we knew) what the score was but Tom was claiming a rare form of Hep he picked up in the prison, and mom was initially going along with it.

She finally unloaded on him at the hospital (telling him to get help / rehab / recovery), and reported back to us (ALL CAPS, her usual email style) - and we traded a few replies with her, commiserating with each other. When Tom was released from the hospital, he went to live with mom for a time, who nursed him back to health (and kept him sober) despite being just a few short years from her own health beginning to fail.

Kind of a sobering Tuesday morning, to have dug that up by accident. Mom started to go downhill at the end of 2015 and passed at the very end of 2016, yet here she was. No idea when Tom began hitting the booze hard again, probably when mom started to fail, maybe earlier. He hung on a few years (drinking steadily all the way down, controlled flight into terrain, we graphed his package store purchases out of curiosity after he passed), went acute in April of 2019, passed two months later in June of 2019.

So a visit from two ghosts this morning....leaving a bit of sadness in their wake.

11 Insights into EM Pinball Machines

After many years being a bit of a pinball nerd (never to the point of owning one, and not playing regularly for many years), here are 11 surprising, interesting, or amusing things I've enjoyed learning about or messing with on my new (recently acquired, far from new) pinball machine.

#1 - There's an On/Off Switch. Who knew? Not I, who was using the power cord (switched via a plug strip) for the first week or two that I owned the game. When I received the schematic, the switch was on there, and I went and found it (a push-button, under the table on the right front side). It does not really look like a switch from the top - a black, round cylinder that I assumed was a tilt mechanism or something. 

The inscrutable, stealthy On/Off Switch (left) and as a bonus, the "Knocker" which slaps the side of the cabinet when you win a free game

#2: The tilt mechanism. Really a fascinating bit of electro-mechanical tech, with a weighted pendulum suspended in a conductive ring. If it moves enough so that the conductive wire supporting the pendulum hits the ring - you tilt. And you can adjust the sensitivity by raising / lowering the pendulum.

For a few moments I thought the "anti-cheat sensor" was a spare ball or place to store the ball when removed from the game. It's there to prevent someone from lifting up the front of the game to move the ball around.

#3: The other tilt mechanism(s). This particular game also has several bounce switches and an anti-cheat switch. And I think there's a "Slam Switch" in the door to prevent folks from jarring the coin-up enough to register games.

Tilt / Bounce switch. There are several of these sprinkled throughout the cabinet / back-box in different orientations, they activate in response to sharp blows.

The various tilt mechanisms do different things - some end the ball (mild), some end the game (more serious), and some cut power to the machine and you need to power down to reset. A surprising number of ways to discourage table abuse!

#4: There's Only One Ball. I guess my experience with home / toy pinball games was that there was a reservoir of balls (3 or 5). But nope, just one. And it's considered good practice to replace it from time to time to preserve the wooden game surface. I bought a new ball for my game, right off the bat.

I had this battery powered Marx Oasis pinball game as a kid, which had five balls lined up. I guess I assumed all pinball machines worked that way.

#5: Three Ball vs. Five Ball. On this machine (anyway) there is a way to program the number of balls per game (also the number of games per quarter), using rather crude (at least from my engineering experience) "Jones Plugs". I've perhaps noticed the "number of balls" per game evolve over the years, but did not realize that games could be set up either/or, nor have ever noticed that a particular game was set for 3 balls in one place and 5 balls in another.

I've got mine set up for 3 balls - it's a pretty simple game to score on (just this morning, screwing around, I won 3 games on points in a single game), when I'm troubleshooting I'd just as soon not have to run through all five balls, and when playing friends, 3 balls is a nice contained game. 

Move the little plug strip to the left for 3-ball or the right for 5-ball. The rules and bonuses change slightly depending on number of balls.

#6: Adjustable Bonus Awards. One of the first things I discovered / played with. To set the levels for free games, you insert a pin (representing 10,000s) into a receptacle (representing 1,000s). So for 43,000, you put the 40,000 pin into the 3,000 receptacle. 10 pins, 10 receptacles, which kind of forces odd-ball award numbers.

I was tickled by the process / tech and also by the holes drilled into the plywood panel to store the unused pins. And, also an interesting surprise, there is a website out there which collects and makes available (for free) very well done reproductions of the game instructions and award levels.

Another thing I probably intuited over the years without actually understanding the tech - I'd notice that certain games were easier to win on than others, see these ubiquitous replay award cards on every machine (that all seemed to look alike) but never really understood that it was all set up by the manufacturer. In fact, the download of the instructions and award levels cards includes a table of suggested award levels (liberal to conservative) with recommended baseline levels for 3-ball and 5-ball play. I'm working with the 3-ball recommended levels.

#7: Jones Plugs and Removable Heads. Speaking of Jones Plugs, the back-box of head of the pinball machine can be removed for transport / service, with the electronics disconnected using banks of these Jones plugs. Good place for bad connections, I'm guessing.

#8: The Scoring Motor. Kind of the beating heart of the these old EM (electro-mechanical games), it's kind of like a pulse generator, using a rotary device (motor), multiple cams, and multiple N/O and N/C switches to provide pulsing signals. Here it is in action (start-up).

#9: The Chimes. Also inside the box is a set of three chimes (effectively xylophone bars) with coils and free floating plungers inside - one for 10s, one for 100s, one for 1000s. So if you hit a 100 point target, the chime rings once - DING. If you hit a 500 point target you get five quick strikes - DING DING DING DING DING. And if you turn-over from 900 to 1000 (for instance) you get two chimes in pleasant harmony. A lot of the warm-fuzzies of the pinball machine for me are wrapped up in lights, sounds, and the physicality of the game (flippers, pop bumpers, clicks and clacks and thumps)

Mine are working pretty well (video at the bottom of this post), but that did not stop me from ordering a chime tune-up kit, including new rubber grommets and washers for the chime bars, sleeves for the plungers, and rubber padding for the top and underneath the plungers.

#10: Stepper Units. A lot of the logic / memory in the pinball game are recorded in rotary devices called Steppers. There are the scoring reels (I have 4 reels per player, 8 reels total) which keeps track of and displays the score, sends a carry digit signal (transitioning from 9 to 10) and provides output for the game in terms of zero (to reset), the 10s digit (for the end of game "match" function) and the 10,000s and 1,000s digits (for the high score award).

Stepper unit that tracks the player number (in my case, 1 or 2, although it's designed for up to 4) as well as the ball number (1 -3 or 1 - 5). This is in the back box, there is a similar unit under the table that tracks the bonus points accrued.

Credit Reel, which keeps track of number of games (mechanical reel visible on backglass). Mine goes up to 15; there are relays to track when it's at maximum and when it's fully decremented (no credits)

Scoring reel. This is the 100s reel (no circuit board output), the 10s reel has a board for the match function, the 1000s and 10000s reel has a board for the high score / free game award function

#11: The Backglass. Kind of the aesthetic focus of the game. A simple glass plate with artwork painted on it from behind. Mostly opaque, but some clear spaces (for scoring reels / credit reel), and some transparent (for indicators like Game Over, Tilt, Player Number, Ball Number, as well as a few cosmetic spots. My backglass is in pretty good shape; a few spots burned through (by way of hot incandescent lamps). I covered a few burn spots (black areas above the score reels) with tape; I replaced most of the hidden lamps with frosted, warm white LEDs (behind the glass and under the table). there are a few painted spots that could use a touch up if I get around to it; nothing critical.

Right now the Game Over lamp remains incandescent (a special blinking bulb, like those old xmas lights). Apparently, the original design of the game featured blinking lights behind the robot eyes and I might buy some of those.

And oh, even though the backglass is pretty important the table surface itself is the real star of the game, and mine is in great shape - looks original, with no touch-ups and very few scuffs or worn areas. I bought some wax to keep it that way.