How my addiction began

My Name is Kirk and I am a Pin addict! They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I don't really think of it as a problem, rather an escape.

It all started a couple years ago. A fellow co-worker approached me and asked if I would be interested in fixing a friend of his's pinball. Me being a nice guy from Arkansas transplanted to the midwest, I said sure. I knew nothing about pinball let alone repairing them. Let me rewind the clock about 20 years. As I said, I was from Arkansas, which is where I spent my childhood. Where I grew up, pinball was just as mythical as Ice Hockey. When I saw hockey on T.V. I thought of it the same way as Sally Struthers trying to feed hungry kids, it was in another far off land. Well, so was pinball. I never saw a pinball machine growing up, sure I'd heard of it but knew nothing about it. It was in Milwaukee that I remember seeing a machine as a teen, but still I don't recall what machine it was. Well to finsih this part of the story, I spent my teen years in Milwaukee fixing whatever I could, from an old console tv, to a reel to reel audio player. I began getting good at fixing things.

So back to my story, I picked up my friend of a friend's pinball. It was a Bally Trio from 1965, that's right, EM!. From that pin I was introduced to rubber ring kits, flipper solenoids, GI lighting, bulb replacements and of course, Steve Young's pinball resource. I spent probably 8 months learning the ins and outs of that pin, and I fell in love with not only playing them, but also fixing them.

I became so addicted to fixing that pin that I even sacrificed our family's dinning table. I had the entire contact/solenoid bank from the bottom of the cabinet on my dinning room table. If it wasn't for my wife's non-enabling threats that I would sleep outdoors if I didn't get it out of her dinning room, it would likely be there today. To my defense, I thought the kids enjoyed eating dinner in front of the TV in the living room. Well I finally fixed it, I even hand painted the scores on the pop bumper caps.

I finished repairing that around March 2009. The owner lived in Brookfield WI, just blocks away from the Sheraton in Brookfield. That's right, the Midwest Gaming classic (MGC) is held there. So my genius kicked in, I decided to coordinate my efforts and deliver the Pin on the same weekend as the MGC. Typical behavior of an addict, mislead those that care in order to get what we want. So I delivered the pin and went to the MGC with my Family. I fell in love. I met alot of cool people and bought my first machine from the show's founder. It was Mata Hari, and it was a project. It took me 2 years, interrupted by a deployment to Iraq, to get her up and running again. I brought her back to the MGC in 2012 for show. Sadly I parted with her in late 2012. No worries though, while I was deployed, my lovely bride batted her eyelashes at a local store and picked up Evel Knievel, who now sadly sits in my basement dismantled waiting on a new playfield.

My wife and I now have an agreement. For every pin I buy, she gets a new purse. By my count, I should have about 15 more pins than I do, but who's counting. She has grown supportive, now when I want to watch "Special when Lit" for the umteenth time, she only grunts.

I don't think there is a cure for this addiction, but the "fix" for me is playing, buying, and talking about pinball. I even started an on the side small business fixing pinballs, jukeboxes, and arcades. So until I have a frontal labotomy to remove this addiction, I will do everything I can to stay connected to this new found addiction.

Happy Gaming!!