Route eventually put pinball on tilt

A confession: I nearly lost my job as a newspaper carrier.
That’s a pretty embarrassing prospect when your dad is the publisher and you have an Outstanding Carrier Award to your credit. Not to mention the fact that I’m publisher today.
My nemesis was a box made of plywood with a bunch of wires and lights and bells inside: The pinball machine.
There was a time, probably from age 15 to age 17, when pinball ruled my life.
Oh, sure, there was school. And I was a good student.
And there were girls, a topic I was studying as avidly as possible.
But, in the idle hours, pinball ruled.
There was something about the magic that happened when you put the quarter in the slot. A limited number of chances, a target goal, and the chance to win yet another game, it was an unbeatable combination.
Like The Who’s pinball wizard, if you hit the flippers quickly enough, nudged the machine enough without getting a Tilt message, and got lucky, you might just be able to play forever.
Most of my pinball action was at the bowling alley in Portland, now the Brown Bowl.
In my era, it had been repossessed by Brunswick and was run by a colorful character with infinite patience when it came to kids hanging around playing pinball and shooting pool.
The bowling alley had two machines, though sometimes a new model with flashier and more vulgar graphics and lights might appear.
Dick’s Pizza Palace, which introduced an entire generation of Jay County residents to the wonders of Italian cuisine, had another.
But one of my favorites was at a spot in the back room of a place called the Town House Café.
The Town House was located near the Portland Eagles Lodge and was the sort of place where truck drivers and downtown clerks would get a lunch of over-cooked roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy and heated-up canned green beans for lunch.
For a few of us, the food wasn’t the attraction.
The pinball machine was.
Maybe it was livelier than the others. Maybe you could nudge it harder without getting a Tilt message. Maybe the graphics were sexier.
I honestly don’t recall the nature of its appeal.
I just know that at some point I slipped into the not-very-healthy habit of stopping in at the Town House on my way home from high school. I’d scoot back to the back room, deserted at that time of day, plunk my quarter into the machine and see how long I could make 25 cents last. The more I won, the more I beat the machine, the longer I could play.
Unfortunately, that also translated into the longer I could play, the later my newspaper route would be delivered.
I never found out who complained. Someone probably noticed that the bundle of papers sat on the front porch longer than it should have.
But I still remember being asked if there was some reason I was getting a later start on my route.
I came up with some excuse. Not a very good one, as I recall. Certainly not as honest as it should have been.
But what I remember most is how the question broke the pinball machine’s hold on my attention. To answer completely and honestly would have been to have admitted to being foolish, to being a bit of a dope.
So the paper route won. That old pinball machine in the back room of the Town House Café had to wait for the next customer.
I was done.A confession: I nearly lost my job as a newspaper carrier.
That’s a pretty embarrassing prospect when your dad is the publisher and you have an Outstanding Carrier Award to your credit. Not to mention the fact that I’m publisher today.
My nemesis was a box made of plywood with a bunch of wires and lights and bells inside: The pinball machine.
There was a time, probably from age 15 to age 17, when pinball ruled my life.
Oh, sure, there was school. And I was a good student.
And there were girls, a topic I was studying as avidly as possible.
But, in the idle hours, pinball ruled.
There was something about the magic that happened when you put the quarter in the slot. A limited number of chances, a target goal, and the chance to win yet another game, it was an unbeatable combination.
Like The Who’s pinball wizard, if you hit the flippers quickly enough, nudged the machine enough without getting a Tilt message, and got lucky, you might just be able to play forever.
Most of my pinball action was at the bowling alley in Portland, now the Brown Bowl.
In my era, it had been repossessed by Brunswick and was run by a colorful character with infinite patience when it came to kids hanging around playing pinball and shooting pool.
The bowling alley had two machines, though sometimes a new model with flashier and more vulgar graphics and lights might appear.
Dick’s Pizza Palace, which introduced an entire generation of Jay County residents to the wonders of Italian cuisine, had another.
But one of my favorites was at a spot in the back room of a place called the Town House Café.
The Town House was located near the Portland Eagles Lodge and was the sort of place where truck drivers and downtown clerks would get a lunch of over-cooked roast beef, mashed potatoes with gravy and heated-up canned green beans for lunch.
For a few of us, the food wasn’t the attraction.
The pinball machine was.
Maybe it was livelier than the others. Maybe you could nudge it harder without getting a Tilt message. Maybe the graphics were sexier.
I honestly don’t recall the nature of its appeal.
I just know that at some point I slipped into the not-very-healthy habit of stopping in at the Town House on my way home from high school. I’d scoot back to the back room, deserted at that time of day, plunk my quarter into the machine and see how long I could make 25 cents last. The more I won, the more I beat the machine, the longer I could play.
Unfortunately, that also translated into the longer I could play, the later my newspaper route would be delivered.
I never found out who complained. Someone probably noticed that the bundle of papers sat on the front porch longer than it should have.
But I still remember being asked if there was some reason I was getting a later start on my route.
I came up with some excuse. Not a very good one, as I recall. Certainly not as honest as it should have been.
But what I remember most is how the question broke the pinball machine’s hold on my attention. To answer completely and honestly would have been to have admitted to being foolish, to being a bit of a dope.
So the paper route won. That old pinball machine in the back room of the Town House Café had to wait for the next customer.
I was done.