It all started when I was a young kid, camping at the beach in my dads truck slide-in camper. My parents would hang around the campsite and consent to let me cruise the park pavilion. The smell of the beach, the juke box playing 45s, the pitch and bat machines whirling players around the bases, the dings of the pinball machines. I was always chasing the extra ball, the high score, that hard to achieve extra game. Oh, the lure of the steel ball caught me young. One day I said to myself, I would have my own pin.

Fast forward 35 years, and I'm a middle aged man, children in their teens, playstations and xbox games are their favorite pasttime. My wife asks me to build a game room so we would have a home for a recently purchased fooseball table. I do so and also build it so we can house a pooltable and eventually the love of my childhood, a pinball machine. Two years later, the only addition left to add is the right pin. After searching and searching for the past two years for that perfect pin, one that would meet my budget and also make me come back for game after game, I randomly find what I've been looking for all along. The holy grail is within my reach, not just a fading memory of what times were. The purchase is made, the pin secured and transported safely to my Man room.

I play my first game and  quickly my son drops the xbox controller to come have a look. A smile comes over me, I remember how I felt watching that silver ball bounce around the bumpers while someone played. I could tell....just like me ...he was hooked. Whats that smell...almost like sea foam on a breezy summer day.