Family
The Pinball Wizard
Skill at pinball may not indicate a dissipated youth, after all.
KA-CHINK! DON'T BOTHER THE MAN. Ka-chunk! Ka-chunk! He wouldn't notice you anyway. He's a serious pinball player, deep in a solitary world, perfectly protected from outside influences. Lost.
He is one of the thousands who have succumbed in the last 35 years to the lure of the magic flippers. His index fingers are among the strongest on earth. Other than that, pinball is nothing special to him. Like wine to an Italian, or dreams to an opium eater, it's simply part of his life.
I could tell that he was that kind of player .His machine, next to mine, was alive. Lights blazed, bells clanged, and steel balls were happening all over the board. He was playing his first ball and already he had enough points for a free game. I looked at my score. I could learn something from this guy.
"I'm practicing for the pinball Olympics, could you give me some advice?"
"Well, there aren't any yet, but when they do come about, I intend to win the Kewpie doll," said Roger. He stepped back; that settled it-he wasn't a functional part of the machine.
Roger agreed to help me. We moved directly to "Spanish Eyes," his favorite machine, and waited while someone finished swearing and kicking at it. Roger took his place and dropped a quarter in the slot.
"Now that guy is just plain stupid. The machine doesn't care about him one way or the other, and it doesn't do to chance angering the pinball gods.
"It's a glass covered little world. That guy came here to beat the machine. The machine can't be beat, all you can do is cooperate with it. The guy who just left here hopes he never sees this machine again. But it doesn't make any difference, the machine is still here and will be whenever he comes back.
"Over in Louisiana they just had another of those periodic pinball purges, busting up machines and what not. Makes a great picture, a bureaucrat bringing the sledgehammer blow of virtue down onto a poor machine. But that doesn't make any difference, either. There's too many of them now. You can't inquisition them out of existence and even if you could there'll always be some wild-eyed fanatic who's building himself one in his garage from scratch.
"Pinball is bigger than man now. It's here to stay. I just figure I've been permitted by some divine act of kindness to observe this little thing and I damn well better show the proper reverence-just in case, you know."
We watched the steel ball for a silent moment. "Like take that shiny ball, there," Roger said. "I envision it as some sort of transcendental eyeball that is always focused on me, watching what I'm doing up here, how I'm playing. And if I do something wrong—thlunk—it disappears..."
I learned a lot that evening, both about pinball and about Roger. By day, his hair tucked up under a wig, Roger is a probation officer for Travis County. Off duty, he is a pinball freak. And he knows how to win.
It takes practice, hard work. He wouldn't enjoy it if it were too easy, if just anyone could walk in and be a master of the little steel balls. He's been playing for the last seven years. At first, he played with friends for a coke or a pack of cigarettes. Then he got so good no one would compete with him. He learned the joys of competing against the machine. Soon, that too became a controllable factor. He knew the personality of the machines so well he could almost outguess them.
"A machine has a bad day sometimes. If those pinball gods aren't with you it doesn't matter what you do." Lest the skeptic start to smile like I did, remember that a machine is made out of wood and rubber and no matter how treated, varnished, or painted, on humid Texas days wood and rubber retain water and, ...Well, I didn't believe that one either so Roger, a patient soul, tried this: "See, the flippers and thumper-bumpers work on solenoids which after a time start to fray in their circuits so the flippers get a bit sluggish." He can go on like that for some time, but if he shows symptoms of pinball on the brain, then how come he plays all night on a quarter and I have to go to the bank first if I want to play all night?
Obviously there's a difference between us other than his capacity to bull and my capacity to believe him. Years ago Roger passed the final hump-his flipper shots became predictable. He could call 'em and then put 'em right there. He's good, one of the best. He now competes against himself.
But then why does he play? We were at a club in Austin. It was midnight, sort of quiet, some good rock on the radio and Roger's well-muscled arms were doing their familiar work. "I like this place because of the carpets on the floor .That way I can lock my feet in a good stance in front of the machine. You can't get set good when there's beer on the floor."
It's not the money. "I don't like to hustle. In fact, it's more fun to keep the maximum free games on a machine and then when I get tired walk away and bequeath them to someone who's been watching me faithfully." It's not the time he spends. "Keeps me off the streets, sure. My girlfriend is the long-suffering type and it doesn't do much for my chess game, but I haven't been bored in years."
He refuses, except in jest, to get metaphysical about it, "Hell, it's a game, for children. Anyone who had enough patience and skill to fingerpaint when they were a kid can play pinball." Nor does he get moral. "It's just something I do." But why?
"It's that good 'clkk' sound of a free game." I insisted there must be something more to it.
"Well, it's like this. I never look at the score. That's not the point. The score is what happens when you're done.
"But let's say I discover a new machine. I figure it takes me ten, twenty dollars to learn it. That sounds like a lot, but it lasts a long time, like a tootsie roll.
"On a new machine, though, just by chance, I do a tricky shot. It snuck up on me but it was so beautiful I can't forget it. It haunts me at night. Not consciously, it's not like I think 37° angle six inches to a 23 ° angle. Can you imagine what it's like to wake in the morning with your ears ringing from the bells you've been hearing all night?"
I couldn't. "Well, once that pattern has happened it won't leave me. All I know is that the machine can do it and if it's done it once it can do it again. So I go back to that machine, every day. Then the pattern reappears. Soon it's coming every once in a while and I begin to see what happens before the pattern starts. Then one day I plan it, I set up the shot, it starts, forms up, I hold my breath and then--ah, it comes. Just like I saw it all those lonely nights.
"It's like the golfer who lives for the perfect drive, the sound of the club on the ball and he knows it's good. The pleasure then is in watching it go. Or the chess player who sets up a mate 13 moves ahead and it works, just like he planned it."
What about the rest of us, though? The weekend players, the social players, or the ego guys who want to beat their friends? Roger does have some pointers.
Roger kept on playing "Spanish Eyes" while he was talking. "There's nothing artsy-craftsy about pinball. Not like with pool where you can impress your date with a 17-rail shot you learned at the Dairy Queen in Waxahatchie. But there is stuff you gotta know to playa good game.
"The first thing most people do wrong is let the tilt scare them." I agreed. We've all been punished by that fearsome tilt for kicking, throwing about, or generally getting rough with an uncooperative machine. Then comes the mocking silence when all the lights go out and the flippers won't work and you can just feel your friends' grins.
Our whiz kid explains that the machines have three kinds of tilt devices. Owners have to keep them in good repair because players complain if they're too sensitive and games last too long if they aren't sensitive enough. The tilt mechanisms and the level of the table are, according to the manufacturers' promo-hype, the only adjustable parts of a machine.
Lifting the lower end of the machine more than the few inches allowed by the adjustable legs rolls a ball down a track in the lower left hand corner in- side the machine, completes a circuit, and turns the machine off.
At three places inside the machine, a simple flexible strip will stop the machine if it receives hard knocks at those points. If you must get tough, use your right hand because that corner of the machine is the most free of tilt devices.
The real culprit, a metal plumb hung from a string and dangling in a circle, prevents jiggling from side to side.
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