Hi All You All,
I am just getting into the hobby of pinball. Although I am just starting this as a hobby my love of pinball started a few years ago.
I grew up in a small Indiana town. When I was in Junior High (now called middle school), after school, my friend and I would stop by the post office (my dad was the post master) and he would give each one a quarter. Now this is going to show my age but, at the time you could get a snack like Hostess Cupcakes and have money left over to play a couple of games of pinball. No video games then. Nintendo and X-Box would have been something from a grade B sci-fi movie. A pinball machine with it’s bright colors and flashing lights was the highest tech thing we had ever seen. Color oh the colors, quite the attraction. Hell, most of my friends and I still had black and white TVs and all of three channels. If you had a good antenna on a good day you might get a fourth channel. The pinball machine's bright color lights, sounds combined with that you got to interact with it, nirvana! What was not to like, well perhaps the old man that ran the shop but, that is another story. I have loved playing pinball ever since.
School, marriage and kids were understandably a priority. Being responible isn’t always a party but does have it’s rewards. Therefore, playing pinball was limited to a game at a birthday party, at a skating ring, bowling alley, a quick one after a kid movie, and occasionally at a mall arcade while waiting on the wife. As you can see pinball was never in the dark regions of my consciousness but, could never stay in the light for long. Kids got to eat.
Well, last year while spending the Thanksgiving holiday at the Outer Banks, the house we rented had a pinball machine in the rec-room. Having the pin to play in the evenings was like finding the fountain of youth. It was like it was 196… , lets say it was an revitalizing experience and keep time out of this. It was such a hit even for the wife that I got the green light to purchase one. The spending as begun and I couldn’t be happier!
