What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Today I have a special treat. The preeminent bingo repair guru, Jeffrey Lawton, who is also the man who wrote the books on Bally Bingoes and United Bingoes. He joins me here this morning, as well as Steve Smith, from here in town, and we discuss a variety of bingo topics. I apologize in advance for the sound quality. This was my first attempt at using Skype, and it did not, in fact, record. Jeffrey signed the conversation. Now, thankfully, instead of using headphones, I just have it blasting through a speaker, and whatever incidental stuff it picks up on the microphone usually would work out from a recording standpoint. But in this case, that was all I had to go on. So I've ended up amplifying those sections as best I can. And what we're left with is pretty good, but not quite as good as if I had had the actual source recording. So, Jeffrey, if you're listening, I'm sorry that your side got all mangled. And you'll certainly hear Steve and I shuffling around and making noise and so forth, just as people do while we're listening to Jeffrey's responses. So without further ado, here you go. Hello. Good morning, Jeffrey. How are you? I'm fine. Is this the party panel I'm speaking? This is Mick and Steve here in Richmond. Hey, old friend. How you doing, man? What's up? Sorry for the group text stuff the other day. I was just bragging for being at the ball game, you know. That's okay. I didn't realize you were sending it through group ID because I'm getting all kinds of responses from all these people I don't know. And then I finally figured it out. Yeah, I was bragging because it was a beautiful day at the ballpark. And anyway, how are you doing? Good, real good, real good. So what are we going to talk about? I was thinking some bingo stuff. I got some bingo news. I don't know. Have you heard from Dennis Dodell? No. He sent me an email. Dennis Dodell sent me an email. When did he send it? Yesterday or day before yesterday. And here, I'm going to read it to you. let me put my glasses on no first thing it was this hi Steve sorry I have not viewed your video yet that's that one of you and you and I um oh you know that's a great I still watch that every so often that's a great video I know Nick is Nick's got it he hasn't watched this thing I don't know what he's waiting for God it's just well you kind of had to be there I guess but But then I had somebody looked at, watched it with me, and he said, man, this is like bingo pinball porn. It's got so much stuff in it. It's all 100% bingo. Anyway, he says, hi, Steve. Sorry I have not viewed your video yet. I have had a lot of personal problems, gangs up on me a short period, but things are getting back to normal, somewhat to normal. I've been trying to get into the storage building of a retired bingo operator for many years, and he finally agreed to let me sell almost everything. Wow. I am not making any money on this deal, just taking some games and parts in exchange. Steve, there is so much stuff, it's hard to comprehend. They saved everything, capital letters. luckily 90% of it is in storage bins labeled very nicely in label very nicely there are quite a few new old stock parts I have put a few items on eBay including new old stock Golden Gate front rails how about that I know those reproductions I was making a few years ago I thought that was the only new stuff out there, unless that, you know, the NIB silver sails that was out there about five, six, eight years ago. There are many dozens of bat glasses still in wooden crates. Some are perfect, some not so perfect, NOS, used, nice, used, bad, to horrible reproductions. there are about a dozen new old stock playfields from what I think may be a foreign bingo I cannot find photos of this game online a photo of the play field is attached perhaps you have seen it I have and I'll send it to you so you can look at saying it kind of looks belly is to me it's It's probably an old six-card play field. Does it have what looks like dancing girls on it? Like girls that are in that, not dancing girls, but girls that are in that, like harem costumes? With no rollovers on it? Got no rollovers? It's got rollovers. Hold on a minute. Okay, well, it's not a six-card. Okay, got it. Yeah, it's a... It looks like a circus theme or carnival theme. Yeah, it's carnivally looking. I sent it to you. It's pretty nice. I might recognize it. It's got a tent in the background. It says carnival theme, I think. And it's got a couple of showgirls down along the 20 line. Yeah, yeah. And it's got the features stuff. So it could be a turning corner or I don't know. I'll send that out to you and others and see what we can find out about the thing. Okay. And then. I'm not saying I will know it, but I might. I might recognize it. And then you also, hold on, let me get back to this. Okay, it says, perhaps you've seen it, a few magic screen games. A few magic, wait a minute, how can I find a photo of this game? A photo of the play field is attached. Perhaps you've seen it. A few Magic Screen games have this play field installed. So it was reused apparently and plugged into other games. You seem to be in the bingo circle more than I am, and I was wondering if you could put the word out. I would love to see collectors get this stuff. There are about 150 bingos. Most are heavily routed with that crazy metal armor around the whole body of the game. About half of the games are in a basement that has flooded a few times. The games that are on the bottom stacks are probably not salvageable Shame too Almost all Magic screen games There are some nice games also So if you can, please get the word out I'm not kidding when I say there are millions of parts here I will not do any international shipping I've been burned too many times I believe there are a few guys who regularly ship internationally to help other fellow collectors out but I do not know that yeah thanks and be sure to let me know if you need any parts I'm 99% sure I have it Dennis Doedell and his email for those listening is pin base PINBASE at symbol charter C H A R T E R dotnet Dennis Doedell and if folks don't know Dennis Doedale. Well, you tell them about him, Jeff. Great guy. He's been around. He's using collaborative stuff with Russ. He's been around for lifetimes. Well, everybody's been around for lifetimes. He long precedes me in the hot water. Yeah, he was a pinball trader or something that he started. Wasn't that him? Yeah, and he and Russ Jensen collaborated on that a Repair book back in the 80s So anyway cool guy I talked him a few times email a lot and I Remember when I was looking for a Sun Valley several years ago and posted on Rec Games Pinball. He answered me, and I was like checking on him. So I asked you about him, and your response was, he should have wrote the book before I just got to it first. You know, he had far, far, far more knowledge than I had. I don't know that he has the stories that I had from my youth about my experiences. I don't know that he had that. But he certainly had different stories. And what he offered was actually a knowledge so vast that he, in all honesty, has forgotten more than I probably know even now. And I don't sell myself short by any means, but it is what it is. the man is clearly strong. I'm not saying that had he written the book, it would have been better or worse than what I did, but it certainly would have been different, and it certainly would have been as good for sure. But he could have done as good a job with his knowledge and it would have been fine. But I'm very happy with the way Michael's turned out and I'm very happy with the way it's been accepted. How many copies? People have raved about how much they enjoy the stories. Most people enjoy the stories more than the knowledge and part of the Batingo references. Well, that's that kind of human nature storytelling. Everybody gets stories told to them. Tell me a story, Daddy. So you grow up wanting to hear stories. Some people are good at it and some aren't quite as good. But that said, Dennis has got his hands in a lot of stuff. He's sent me a few things. He's asked for me not to mention or show anybody on some of his bingo research. so So, I'm keeping my word. I won't share it. And now, if you told me not to share this, please forgive me, Dennis. I knew that he and Phil Hooper were collaborating on a bingo emulator where it had a processor in it. and basically you get a bingo play field, a real one, and then you have an LED back glass or a TV screen back glass, and then you program in what bingo pinball you want to play. And then it's like your generic, what are these, what do they call these new pins on a... Video pins. Video pin with a screen on the play field and a screen on the back, on the head. Yeah, I know. Yeah, the computer eyes look better. Yeah, but this was an actual pinball. You know, it's a real play field. I thought this was freaking cool. Now, that said, I don't know what kind of market for it. There's a guy running around the shows now who's doing that. He's got a pinball. it's got a pinball play field and a backflash, but the whole thing is video. It's a pinball? No, it's a flipper. It's a pinball cabinet, but when you look at the play field, it's video. And you're playing the ball in a pinball cabinet, and the head is video. It's really kind of a neat concept. I mean, it doesn't work for me. Right. I don't have anything against the video representative of pinball, but there's nothing like the real thing. Exactly. Yeah. But it all contributes to the overall health of the hobby here. Oh, absolutely. So, Jeffrey, how has the book been accepted? Are you still moving copies? Yes. it's not selling it's not selling as much as it used to it's been out since 1999 it's sold into the thousands of copies excellent I'm still getting a worldly check every quarter not a big worldly check but it's you know every little bit helps what thrills me is it's still well received which is what's important Well, it's a great reference. Both of your books are. And, you know, I still refer to them quite frequently, especially since I started doing this podcast. I have to, you know, be more on my game about knowing stuff. So it's a wonderful reference and great pictures. And I would encourage everyone to pick up a copy. Do you still have some that you take to the shows that you attend? Yes, yes. I always take a case of these books to the York show and I sell them to anybody who wants them. And I still sell a fair number at the show. The last show I didn't sell a whole lot. I think I sold about four. but the previous show, the one that I sold, the 2013 show, the one I sold to Malibu Beach, I sold a whole case of books. That show, that was really a good show. Wow, that was the one I missed. So you sold that Malibu Beach. That's a good playing game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, it's a sad story. Well, it could have been a sad story. the fellow who bought it lives in Manahawken, New Jersey and he gave me a deposit at the show and then I stayed over my son lives in Hikey Town, New Jersey so I stayed over and my son and I delivered the machine to his home the owner's home the Monday after the show and we chatted off and talked bingos and the man's a retired welder and we talked about his application and came back home, and he didn't actually set the game up. He had a storage building. He set up a storage building until he got his placement finished. Well, along comes Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New Jersey Coast, as you well know. And I'm thinking, God, this guy's in Manamalkin, which is a suburb of Seaside Heights. Well, you know what happened to Seaside Heights. Yeah. and I'm thinking this poor man probably lost everything and here he has you know he has this finger that he's been wanting all this time and he's probably lost everything and then that comes Christmas time 2014 and I get a Christmas card from him and he says he says I haven't written but I wanted to let you know that we made it through the hurricane without a problem it only skirted us we lost a few trees but they were out in the park reaches of my property so there's no damage to my home. The games are fine, everything's fine, and I just wanted to let you know that. And I was tickled to death that he thought to write me and tell me that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So, now, do you do repair work for folks still? Do you take on jobs? Yes. Is there a, well, I guess I should, you know, talk a little bit about you. I was going to record a little bumper beforehand, but how long have you been repairing bingos? I've been repairing bingos since I was 15 years old, which would be 54 years. Wow. And he's 340. Yep, yep. Methuselah and I in church. That's the last whole thing that I've been playing. So, do you ever work on United Games or do you stick with Valley? I worked on anything electromechanical. I don't limit myself to bingo. Okay. Flipper pinball machines, gummies, Williams, Valley flippers, Genco flippers, Cheney flippers, anything that's electromechanical. Bowling games. You do bowling games. Bowling games. Yes, Chicago Point Bowlers, United Bowlers. I'm one of the few insane people that are left to work on a bowler because nobody wants to work on bowlers today because they're so difficult. You had one given to you that you had sold or something. Tell that story. Well, the lady gave me the bowler. She had it at her son's house. They asked me to come out and give them an estimate. Well, I came out and as soon as I saw the boulder, I said, you know, I've seen this boulder before. I gave your mother an estimate probably six or seven years ago. He said, yeah, he says, I know. He says, what my mother said was, if he even comes out to look at it, just give it to him. So I told the lady, excuse me, I told the young man, I really can't just take it for nothing. I said, let me give you at least $100. He says, okay, I'll take $100. So he gave me $100 and I go to the boulder. And my plan was to set it up on my back porch because that was the only room I had that was long enough to set it up. Well, I never got around to it. And I encountered a young fireman who I had done work for before in northern Kentucky. And as I was working on his game, he was mentioning that he was going to build a pinball machine from scratch to teach his son how to work on electromechanical stuff. and units and relays and teach him how all this stuff works. And I said, you know, I said, if you want a project, I've got the perfect project for you. And I said, I'm going to be honest with you. I want a couple of my money. I want $200 for it, and you've got to come and get it. He says, what is it? And I told him it was a bullet. I told him about the bullet. He said, I'll follow you home. He followed me home, loaded it into his truck, gave me my $200, and off he went. And to my knowledge, he and his son went and they got the thing going. I haven't heard anything back from them, so I'm assuming they must have got it going. Cool. Cool. So that's a good fun story that happened. So are you contacted just out of the blue with people looking for bingos or anything of that nature? Or do people just come to you when they need help repairing? I get all sorts of requests. I get people who want to know where to find bingos. I get people who want to know how to fix bingos. How do I get started with parenting? How do I do things? I get all kinds of inquiries. I get people who tell me, you know, I got this game, I just got it, I've been trying to get it since I was a young man, and I can't get it working. And the first thing I say is, you know, are you handy? And if they say they're not handy, then I say, well, I know. What you need to do, where do you live, and if they live prohibitively far away, I say what you really need to do is you need to load the game into your, you need to either rent a truck or load it into your pickup truck and drive it up here and drop it off. And I'll work on it and I'll call you when it's done and you can back up or pick it up. And I've got two customers that have been doing that, the one on a fairly regular basis. One man from Louisville, Kentucky brought a Seattle up and I repaired it for him while he waited. And another man in Gadsden, Indiana, which is north of Indianapolis, has brought me probably four games to go through. And they're older games. He brought me a Palm Beach. Now, the only Palm Beach I had ever seen before I worked on this one was the one that I had pictured in my book that came from a Peter Herbert game in San Diego. and this was an actual Palm Beach and it used to belong to Butch Glada, the guy, my good friend in Pasco. You've probably heard me speak of Butch Glada. And I knew it was Butch Glada's game because I have a video of Butch Glada's collection and this game was in that video. But he sold it off to somebody who sold it off to this guy. And I got that game working. and that was a learning experience for me. You never stop learning. I had always said that the first game that had what's called pick and play was World of Derby, which is where you have the red, the green, and the blue buttons. Well, I was wrong. Palm Beach is the first game that has pick and play because Palm Beach has a button for features only and for scores only that you can play. I did not know that until I worked on this game. And I have since found out that there's another one. I think it's either Ice Follocks or Ice to Page, one of the two, that also has that same feature. Well, you're talking about Palm Beach. That reminds me of the Lone Williams game, Long Beach. Have you ever come across one of these? I've seen pictures of Long Beach. So I've never actually seen one. It's a six-card game. In fact, the pictures of Long Beach that I got, I got from Dennis O'Dell, who I believe had one. And they still have one. How about that? I don't have to ask him about it. How about... How about other oddballs? The only other one I can think of is that Universal 5-Star. Now, that game is unique. I've seen a back glance at York several years ago in the flea market, but the whole game was not there. Now, 5-Star by Universal, it was early 50s. I think it came. I can't remember everything. I think it was dubbed the first in-line scoring game. Now, it had very small cards on it. It was like three by three cards. I can't remember. It was five. I believe that that game is, if you were to look at the play field of that game, It's not like a true bingo, like a specific bingo. It's got holes in it, but it's also got some flipper-style plate on the face of it. I don't know. It does. It's got big, wide bands. But the unique feature is it's got a real wide saucer to guide the ball in the hole. But these are gobble holes. And the ball falls through. So, though, you look up at the glass and you say, oh, well, look at that. This would be easy to hit. I think he's even got some star numbers. But you can make the same number over and over. And what good is that going to do? And so it's not as easy as it looks. Interesting game. I've only seen a back glass, but I've never seen the game itself. And so I was just wondering about those couple oddball ones, if you've run across those since you've been doing it so long. I bet you Dennis has. Anyway. Have you ever seen any of the Gottlieb oddballs, like their horse racing game? Not the Gottlieb. I've seen a lot of the one-ball racing games that are Valley. I'm familiar with Valley Futurity. I'm familiar with Valley Church King. I'm familiar with Valley Special Entry. I have a friend and customer who has a Special Entry that I work on occasionally. I worked on a victory derby I think it was called for a fellow up in Dayton, Ohio that was interesting to work on. Beautiful graphics, just beautiful graphics. And the game is kind of fun to play once you get the idea of what you're supposed to do. to do because you need to keep the one ball moving so that you can just pass the first couple of rows and get into where you're either in a place or win grouping of holes. Right. And then if you're lucky, if you're lucky, you can actually make a winner once in a while. So for the most part you pretty much part of the fact that you shoot the ball and you don shoot it late It gone in a day of holes before you realize it Because those games are set up just like everything else There certain holes that are designed to be very easy to go into and that hole almost never spots at the payoff horse. It's like they were engineered to make money. Well, yeah. They do have a thing where occasionally if you're betting, the way these things work is when you bring your ball up, you put a nickel in and you get a horse selection, you get a ball. So if you bring the ball up and set it with a plunger, you can put another nickel in and you can increase your odds, but it will also change your horse selection. And occasionally what will happen is all the horses will like it. Now what that means is that you can't lose That means you've been playing really badly up to that point, huh? Well, I'm not necessarily You've got to remember you only get one ball So, you know, if you're hitting a good score Every 20 nickels You're doing okay If you're hitting a winning score every 10 nickels You're on fire and if you're hitting the winning score every five nickels, well, you've achieved dodge status. These things are difficult to play because they don't nudge well. No, they don't nudge well. There's no legs on them. They are literally floor-to-top caps. It's like playing a dresser drawer. I really like the coin entry on a lot of those where it's just like the slot machine hopper that you just throw money into. A little scoop. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. What are you talking about, the payout mechanism? No, the intake, where you put your nickel then. The coin slot. Yeah. Speaking of coins. Most of these games either had a triangle of coin slots like a backward teapot, Or you had a slide, like the Victory Derby that I worked on actually had a slide. You'd push the slide in, and it would recycle the features in the back. But the other ones, they had a huge nickel coin mechanism. those are more neat than the conventional ones now you were talking about coin slots, weren't you writing for coin slot magazine at some point now I wrote the first magazine I wrote for was pin game journal which was Jim Shelburne's magazine which is still being published by the way he just sent the latest issue I saw written the last pinball expo Yeah, we just got that one. Yeah, I don't think he set an issue up because he set the calendar out and then that was the first issue he set up with the calendar. And also, I got an email from somebody. I haven't received any follow-up on it. But somebody has, I guess, bought the rights to Game Room Magazine from Kevin Steele and it looks like they're going to try to start publishing Game Room Magazine because he was looking for subscription purchases. And I sent him an email back asking for more information on who he was, where he fits into the hobby, and told him that I had supported both Tim Ferrante and Kevin Steele in those magazines when they were being published by Those Two Gentlemen or Second Weeks. Now, didn't you write a few articles for Gameran? I didn't hear you. Didn't you write a few articles for Game Room magazine? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought so. I'm confused. The only time I hooked up with Tim Perotti in Game Room magazine, I called Ping Game Journal for something. And, no, I called Tim Perotti to renew my prescriptions, and I got him on the phone. And I told him who I was, and he said, he said, I know you. he says I've edited some of your stories for Jim Shelburne and that was how I started writing for him he said do you have anything that you can let me have that would not be in conflict with what you do for Jim Shelburne so that I could publish so many works because I really like your writing style and so the agreement that I had with him was that Shelburne would get all my pinball stuff and Ferranchi would get everything else forwards trade stimulators slot machines anything that was non pinball he got it and so yes I wrote for both of them and I wrote extensive articles I wrote many many articles for both of them and you write well I agree well I thank you I try the trouble is with my style of writing, I tend to be too detailed. And I'm writing on a subject that a whole lot of people aren't interested in today because nobody's taking the time to understand electromechanical technology. And that's kind of a shame. But it's clearly a dead art. It's literally a dead art. I have customers that are graduate electrical engineers that have electromechanical machines And they called me. This reminds me of when you sold the bingos to the rocket scientist. That's right. That Acapulco that was written up on Hugh Cohn's site. And he bought that Acapulco. He delivered it to him. The rocket scientist with a bingo pinball hobby. Man, that's killer. Could he work on it? I'm still in contact with him. He still has the game. And it's still working. I've been to his home twice since he had the game and spent time with me and his family and shared a couple of meals together and caught a pinball. He has a phenomenal history of the Valley Corporation and people in Valley. he knew everybody in the Valley who was anybody other than Don Hooker he knew Tony Boccato he knew I mentioned Tony Boccato because I knew Tony Boccato and that was an Englishman but he talks he talks extensively about a man from Valley and I can't think of his name right now but he just recently passed away and he still keeps in contact with his family but at one time he had he had the blueprint schematic diagrams for all of the mixer wiring, mixer 1, 2, 3, and 4 for all of the games. He had all of those archived. Wow. I had never even seen those. I didn't even know they existed, but he had them. And Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged Mississippi, he lost everything. Oh, man. He lost everything. And it was a good, it was a cute story. he contacted me he lived in I want to say long I see the long branch or long beach I suggest the exact name of it but he he called me after Katrina money going he was when he was in the process of almost completing rebuilding his life and he was looked at how he came to buy the Africa open up in the bounty but he was telling me of all this stuff he had all of this written memorabilia that was literally lost. I mean, literally shut the fuck out of the Gulf of Mexico. He wasn't even able to shout at any of us. And the other thing he lost was he lost the copy of the book I had that I had sold him. And shut the fuck out of the book and I didn't think anything about it. And my wife, Carol, was still alive then and I said, you know, I said, I'm going to send Gary a new copy of the book. And the other thing that he said that he lost was he used to save my Christmas cards. A lot of people save my Christmas cards from year to year. And he had saved my Christmas card from the year he bought the book. Well, I went back into my computer and I found that Christmas card. Now, I've since lost it because that computer, the hard drive crashed. That's another story. But anyway, I found that Christmas card. I reprinted it. And I got a copy of the book out. And I wrote in the book, I said, you know, to Gary Marshall, my pinball friend in Mississippi, you may have lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, this is something you didn't lose please take this as my compliments, I might sign it and date it, send it off well, three maybe three and a half months ago, I don't hear anything, I don't hear a word I don't get a phone call, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know gee, maybe he didn't get the book so I called on the phone social life agency's phone and I said, hi, I'm Jeffrey Lawton from Cincinnati, he said, oh, you're the one I said yeah I guess I am is there something wrong no she said when that book arrived she said now he broke down and cried he said he just couldn't believe somebody would do something like that and he said he's been wanting to call you but he didn't know what to say and he didn't and but he was just so thrilled that you thought enough to do that that meant so much to him. And I thought that was nice. So I told him what I said. Well, you know, please tell him to call me when he gets a chance. I said, I'd love to talk about changing or not. And that is what led us to culminating the deal where he bought the balcony and he bought the actual house. Cool. But he's a neat guy. He's literally brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Didn't he give you a tour of the, whether making a rebuilding or whatever, the rocket? He works for the Stannis Space Center in Belport, Mississippi. You can't even, the place, if you try to go and look at Mississippi on Google Maps, you can't even see this place. But it's huge. and like I normally carry a pocket knife when I go to shows and all that and he said I'm going to give you a choice do you have a weapon? I said well yeah I normally carry a pocket knife put it in your glove box you can't have it on your purse because you're not allowed to have any weapons at all they might not search you but there's metal detectors everywhere you go and you will set them off and you won't even know that they're there. So, of course, I left my pocket knife in the car, like you said, and we went off, and, like, you could go into an area, and there would be, like, you could go into an area, but I had to stay. And then the guard would come along, and the guard would check me out, ask me a couple of questions, and then he'd say, okay, you can take me to the phone center or something, and he'd look at my identification, and he'd say, okay, fine, you can do it. But yeah, they had, the time that I went, they had one of the engines from the Challenger, one of the Challenger space crits, I don't know if it was the Landis or Challenger, but I don't remember the name of it, but it was one of the engines from the actual space crits. And they had it there, and they had it in a big, basically a motor mount, if you will. And what they were doing was they were testing it. and he was saying that when they fire that engine, they've got to, because of the sound, they've got to actually literally almost close off the whole area and it's like if you want to watch this test, you've got to be like three or four hundred yards away, otherwise the sound is deafening, even with ear protection, the sound is deafening. And I actually saw this engine, didn't see it fire, much I would have to do, but I actually saw it was a main. Wow. They've got to cool those engines with some kind of chemical like liquid nitrogen or something. I think it is liquid nitrogen. He talked about that and he said testing it, testing the engine on the ground where the air is so dense it takes about 50 times the amount of liquid nitrogen to keep that engine cool as it does in space where there's no atmosphere. Wow. That's a big cookout. Yeah. And he said the pumps themselves that keep the liquid nitrogen flowing while they're testing that engine are an engineering marvel in themselves besides the engine and everything else that's going on. Well, all that said... I'm a very smart guy. I've got I don't know nothing well could he could he fix his bingo he could do he could do something he could do units he could do relays he could do adjustments he was able to change he was able to change motors and change parts and what not he could align the magic screen a lot of people can't do that but he could align the magic screen he was handy Yeah, troubleshoot. Yeah. You would hope so, at least get something out of a rocket scientist. But so many times rocket scientists are, you know, they're, intelligence-wise, they're so good, but as far as, you know, adaptability, being able to, being able to, dexterity with their hands, do what their minds are capable of doing, their ears, their fingers won't do the work. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a pretty cool story. Oh, yeah. I was going to talk about when I talked Nick into going to a York show for the first time. And he got up there late. He couldn't come up the first day or whatever it was. He finally arrived that evening. And you and I and your son and daughter-in-law. I can't remember if your daughter was at that one or not. and Nick hunts us down and we're having dinner at Ruby Tuesdays or something and that was the first time you guys met believe it or not if you can recall that it was in a restaurant and then I think it was probably the day before the show it was that Thursday night it was Thursday night so you did get to both and then like in the morning I traded and got traded a machine and set up my hotel room and as usual we're back together again at the end of when it shows over in the evening that I'd set that pinball up in my hotel room and I got the newest guy I know in pinball and one of the oldest guys I know in pinball both in there was working on my game and I just thought that was the coolest saying. Meanwhile, you're sitting back and drinking beer. Having a beer. We all hurry up and fix my game. I want to play. I got pictures of three of us together. I have to send that out. I thought that was pretty. I got a kick out of that. And you know, I had told, I don't know if you listened to a podcast that Nick did with me. It was rambling on and on. But I had told Nick after he got bit I said we need somebody to carry this on and so he's doing it in new ways you know from the old he's got you on some kind of Skype thing now we could be seeing your ugly mug if you were set up on the other end but this this is the new the new age you know we'll go from electronic mail, you know, from mechanical mail of the old days, which is still, I don't think will ever go away, but this is what we're passing stuff on to. Maybe we can get Nick involved in that bingo emulator thing. Who knows? It's just some random thoughts that are applicable to this topic, I thought. Yeah. It's pretty great. the reaction that I've seen so far, there have been quite a few people who've come out and said that this has ignited their interest in getting a bingo and wanting to play. There's a lot of folks my age and younger that have, well, I had never heard of a bingo until I met Steve. It's pretty interesting, the trajectory. It's only been a few years and now I've got three in my house. he's got ticker tape there's a lot of stories that I have about bingos and people not being used to bingos I'm at the pinball expo this is in 1999 and this fellow comes by he's a a flipper pinball guy there's a lot of guys in there that are celebrities and I don't know that this guy was one of the celebrities but he acted the part if he wasn't he certainly acted the part But the humor of it is, I'm playing a game, which is a single deck scoring game. I need the 22 for a 72 game four in a row. And he walks by and he says, well, he says, you know, that's not pinball. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, that's not pinball. I said, well, why do you say that? Well, he says, all you do is shoot the ball and watch it roll. And then when it falls into a hole, you make what you make. I said, well, okay. I said, I can see why you would say that, but let me ask you a question. I said, when you're playing your fancy-schmancy flipper game, what do you do when the ball's not rolling right? What do you do? I mean, you just flip the ball and go blinded where it wants to go until it falls into the out-hole and you're done? I said, that's no more pinball than what you think this is. No, no. He said, oh, it's much more complicated than that. He said, you've got to chop the machine. you've got to hit the football with certain intensity so you either hit it real hard or real soft or you've got to feather it sometimes you've got to hit the ball before it gets to the football so it goes to right ankle I said oh okay I said well that makes sense I said now I want you to see something I said I need to make this 22 I want you to watch me play it and then see if you change your mind I shot the ball out and the ball comes around well it's coming down the left side which of course is not good for the 22 so as the ball comes around I forget the exact thing, but I hit the ball when it got out of the center of the game. And the show starts bouncing around. And I didn't touch it again for the rest of the play of the ball. It bounced around and the ball was right in the 22. And he says, see, you just stood there and watched. I said, you just stood there and let the ball roll. I said, you weren't watching. I said, when I first shot the ball, I wanted to shoot it left to right. I shot it right to left. I was on the wrong side. I had to hit the ball when I was up above the number one to change the roll. I said I only had to hit it once once I did that the ball was sent on the property and luckily it went down and made it 22 I said I can't guarantee that I would have made it but had I not hit it there was no chance for me to make it and he said I've got to give this some thought he walked away scratching his head I've got to give this some thought and I put the well did he come back? no oh well well that's one of the great things at York you're always pretty handy to explain the features to new players that are coming up and it's always good to see the folks that come up and give it a whirl I get three types of players at York I get the old I get old experienced bingo players like Steve and like I and many others who know bingos I've grown up with them, and they love the memorabilia of seeing games again. And then I get youngsters that have never seen a bingo, and I'll say to them, would you like to learn how to play this? And sometimes, yeah, they like to. Other times they're saying, no, go away. It's too complicated. I don't want to be bothered. But the third kind of player I get is the individual who walks up and they look at the game, and they look at it, and they put their hands on it, but they don't actually play it. I remember this one young girl was up there, and I had the game I had there at that time, the surf club. I had a surf club in one of my others, and she's going up to this surf club, and she's kind of feeling the wood and all, and I said, would you like to play this game? No, no, no, no. She said, when I was a little girl, my father had one of these in his store, and I'd never seen one until now. and she said, I'm just trying to remember, is this even the same game? Huh. And I said, look, push the button, try it. So she pushed the button. And as she played, she just pushed one game, I said, you know, she's playing this great game, so I should not shoot the ball in the seat. And as she played the game, it all came back to her. Wow. And she said, yeah, she said, I remember this. And for the rest of the show, I mean, she played maybe one or two games, And then she was gone. And then in the course of the afternoon, I would see her. She'd come back to the game, and she'd play three, four, five games and walk away. Come back, play three, four, five games and walk away. And at the end of the show, I think it was this Saturday. In those days, they used to have this show. They used to run the show Sunday. They used to run the show Sunday afternoon. So this was on a Saturday. And she came back at the end of the Saturday before she went to Sydney. And she said, I'm so glad. I'm so glad that I stopped and looked at this game. She said it meant so much to me. Once I understood what I was looking at, and she said, I can't thank you enough for coming over and making me play it and making me remember. I was wondering, how did I get to get out of that? Yeah, that's pretty... But I get a lot of people like that. They capture their youth. Mm-hmm. so let me ask you do you have plans for this year's York do you know what you might bring yeah I'm going to come I don't know what I'm going to bring yet I'm going to bring if the Sun Valley that I had left because of so I'm going to bring that back the main reason I even have that game is to take it to the show if it does show I'll probably bring I'll probably bring Nightclub and, of course, the roller derby's gone and none of the beach is gone. So I'll probably bring Sea Island and Nightclub or Sea Island and Sun Valley. I may bring Lido again. I mean, I like bringing Lido. I actually probably should bring Lido because Lido, it's just like Steve's bikini. You know, it's not as cosmetically nice, but it's a good player, and people like that security game feature. And Lido is your favorite game, correct? Lido is my favorite game, yes. I thought that guy, there was some guy from Chesterfield down here near Richmond that bought that Lido at York a couple of years ago. Whatever year it was, I bought my Golden Gate. Um, maybe he didn't follow through. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah, I had a feeling it could be something. I didn't, I read him properly, I thought. Anyway. Well, you know, he offered me, he offered me $200 less than what I was asking for the game. Now, in all fairness, I should have took that. But I wasn't that crazy about selling the game because it's such a good player. that's the problem the game is such a good player that I'm just going to hold my price and if it doesn't sell I'm off job so I'll just bring it back you have done a little bit of cosmetics but you don't care for doing cosmetic work on bingo I don't for the quality of cosmetic work that you do when you do a game it's beautiful your cosmetic your cosmetic work on games is I would say it's one of the three best that I've ever seen. Without a doubt, the best is John Maynbeck out of Maryland. Really? Now, let me ask you this. You and Hugh had tied for second best. Well, did John make new foot rails? No. Steve's fishing for compliments. No, no. I've been with you and seen his stuff. I say he didn't make any footwear. He may have made new footwear when he had to. I don't know. But he did the same thing as you guys. He would change every leather clutch in the game. That's what all brand new leather clutches are. And, you know, that said, it ain't perfect. I don't do that. That's a little extreme for me. Here's what it is. You know, it's a pretty looking game. And the freaking thing is going to mess up on the inside at some point anyway. You know, that's just part of owning any electromechanical game. You know. My Vito, when I did my Vito, I do what I call feather painting. I feather in the colors that are originally there. and I match as close as I can, but then I feather it in so it doesn't look like it's been painted. It looks like it's all original. Yeah, it looks, yeah, it's kind of... I mean it looks worn but not it worn but not ruined Correct It not crisp clean paint and then it beat up on the other part You do a beat repair It looks good. It looks good. You can't tell if it's a color. I like a game with personality. I like a game that has personality. That's the only way you can have a game that's going to have personality. I'm with you, man. I get it. Let me see. Something else I see. about weird games. You did, how about, we touched on horse racing games. Do you do many of those? No, I, I don't do many and I get calls. I get people that want me to work on games like Turf King and Futurity and I usually turn them down. How about them? I turn them down only because this, it's not fair for me to take the kind of money it's going to take to get that game working when you can't sell it. You literally can't sell it. There's actually no market for those games. There isn't. They're beautiful games, though. They're beautiful games, but you have to find... The only way you're going to sell that game is if you find a person who wants it. Yeah. I'll give you a perfect example. I've got a guy in Texas. He's madly in love with the Tahiti, the Valley Tahiti with their 20-hole banger. Yep. Oh, God. Mystic Life. He can get a new-in-the-box one if he wants. He had a... And he could find one. But here's the deal. He was the one that told you the story that he flew me down to Dallas for work, put me up in a hotel to repair his Tahiti. And it cost him three times what the game was worth to have me come down there and do that. He didn't care. He wanted that game worth it. So we got it worth it. Now he gets a flood. And this happened within the last three months. he gets a quarter and his Tahiti's ruined oh my god he wants another he wants another Tahiti so his fellow down there Bob Herbison who was a very well known very well highly respected man in the pinball hobby in the Texas area calls me and wants to know if I know where there's a Tahiti well I did know one So I called my customer who bought a Tahiti from me, told him that I had a chance to get a good sale for him on a Tahiti if he wanted to sell it. So he turns around and I said, can I give Bob Herbison your number? So I did. Bob Herbison sent me an email back and he said, I made contact with this guy. His friend was talking to me. He did most like $3,700 for this Tahiti. It was outrageous. And I wrote back to him. I said, it is outrageous. And I said, you don't walk away from that. I said, it's a nice name, but it's not worth it. Walk away from that. So I called Hugh. I said, have you got it to he? Yeah, he said, I've got one in my personal collection. I said, oh, you don't want to sell it? Well, he said, I might sell it. I said, well, he's a steward. So I explained to him who this guy is. And Hugh knows Bob Herbertson. He doesn't know him as well as I do, but he knows him. And I said, you know, Bob's working for this guy. I'm trying to help him out. and he said, you tell Bob to call me and we'll make a deal. So Bob wrote me back and he said, I talked to Hugh, he said how much he wants for his game, what do you think? And when I saw the price, I said, buy this game before he wakes up. I said, he's doing you a big favor probably because he knows you and he knows that I know you and we're all friends. And he's basically doing, your customer is reaping the benefit of our mutual friendship. And it's one of Hugh's personal games to boot, you know. That said, I haven't heard much love for that game. There were five of them. I think Keith Nicola had five new-in-the-box ones. This was six or seven, eight, I don't remember how long ago. And was having a hard time selling. Well, they're not a real desirable game. They're a 40-coin game, okay? They're 20 holes. So right off the bat, 20 holes, with the star numbers, they're a sucker game because you can't make five in a row unless you get... the star and the star but if you get the number and the star first it deletes the number and then she gives it all to the other and she couldn't know it's the balls you can't find it's the balls so you're playing five balls and that's it yeah I hadn't heard much love for it it's a big game but he liked it now some people like him and you know something this guy in the sky he's a multi-man and he loves his game He doesn't care, he wants it. But it's humorous because my customer, who was the first person I called, he mentioned that he would really like to sell that Tahiti. And I said, well, you know, I said, God damn it, did you have your chance? I said, did you have your chance to get a sale? I said, you blew it. He said, what do you mean? what do you mean? I said, well, you asked a price that was, I mean, you basically, I mean, I told you the guy had money, but I also told you he wasn't stupid, and you knew what the price was. And I said, you blew it. And I said, I've got to tell you, in my lifetime, I've only seen two people who really wanted this to be, this guy in Texas and you. I'm like you're going to that game for being your station for heaven's sake Jeff Jeff how many bingo's you got now I got probably 20 total I got 17 or 18 set up and running and I got another I got another three in the garage I got I've got Sea Island in the garage, which is running, but it's damp, but it's broken down. I've got Snags in the garage, which is running, but it's broken down. And I've got a county fair in the garage, which I have not restored yet, which I've had for 30 years and I haven't touched it. You still got your original first bingo yacht club, wasn't it? Yes, sir. I still have that. Yep. Yep. It's right in the same spot that it was when I took the picture in the book back in the 80s. look I've been talking about doing this for a while and I want to set it up I want to come out do video cheer police spend a night if you don't have bedbugs we'll get drunk to tell story and once you go get a ticket I've got I now run I'm running five five to six pinball nights a month. I have two fellows that come out every week on Wednesday night and play pinball. Nice. And then I have one fellow who comes out once a month and plays pinball. And we do exactly what you're saying. We, you know, we play pinball, we drink beer, we smoke cigars, we, you know, we tell stories, and yeah, it's a good project. I've got a big project after I should finish that in the middle of July. and I would like to see if I can time that so I can come out for one of those sessions I'll bring a video cam like we did down in Hucon but I also want to time it so we can go to a baseball game one of those nights Yeah, if I can get registered, we can go. Okay. All right. All right. I'm thinking mid-July. Just a side note. You want to go, Nick? I'd love to if my work will let me. Well, my boss said I can do it. I work for myself. Okay, cool. So, Jeffrey, do you have flipper games in your collection as well? Yes, I do. I have a Dudley contest, which is a 1957 four-player. I have a Sally Captain Fantastic, which is the 1956 Elton John pinball. And I have a, I don't know the year, but the first high speed, the first Williams high speed, the first System 11, where it was the first game that had letters on the digital scoreboard. Yeah. I have one of those. In fact, I just bought that back. That's another funny story. I sold that to a fellow 20 years ago. 20 years ago. Because I had a problem where the game, I'd be playing the game and it would just lock up. You know how digital means, I would just lock up, turn it off, turn it back on, it would come back into play, and we'd lock up. Well I'm good friends with Joshua Clay Harrell out in Detroit, I don't know if you know Joshua Clay Harrell or not, he's, as far as pinball technicians go, he's the best I've ever seen. Remind me to tell you about me meeting him. Okay, so now, I go to Joshua Clay now and I tell him I'm having this problem. Now this time he was still associated with Marburg Museum, so he had all this technical data on Marburg Museum's website. He says go up on this website, go to this section, print this by 40 pages, but it talks about everything on Wayne System 11 that can go off. Okay. Long story short, it turns out what it was was the diodes on the coils, because the game was getting old, and was starting to come loose and was starting to come on solder. So as I read through this, I went and I restarted every single dial, every single dial and every single port. And the game was playing fine. But from the time I restarted that, every time I played the game, I had that anxiety. When are they going to stop? It drove me nuts. It drove me nuts. I've been working on a System 11 myself, a police force. And it had caught on fire at some point in its life. Yeah, so I've been rebuilding everything, and I've got that same anxiety every time I fire up. This reminds me of back in the old vinyl record days when if you had a record, you know, and it had a skip on it. And you get used to hearing that song with a skip, and then you hear it on the radio, and it gets to that point where your skip wasn't and it doesn't happen. And it's like anticipation up to nothing. That's what that reminded me of. Yeah, I met Joshua Clay Harrell at Pinball Expo, 25th Pinball Expo. And that's back when he was doing this old pinball DVDs. Oh, with Norman Chagy. He was doing the Norman Chagy DVDs. Yeah, I don't know if he was still doing them or he was doing the podcast. He was like the first guy to do podcasts. And he was interviewing all the designers and stuff. And I got to meet a bunch of designers at that show too. I come across Joshua Clay. At some point, he had his head in the back of a single player EM up along the wall. And I had this idea for what Nick is doing now. And hell, what we're doing right now was interviewing bingo people. and he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, no, I don't like bingo pinballs. Bingos aren't pinballs. It's just like, it's like, you know, I offered him a fork full of manure or something. That guy's checking me in experts. He'll change it. Not really pinball. I don't know. Go ahead. And so he was a bit coarse about it. That said, later on, I was in the elevator with Steve Kordak and some other gal, and Joshua Clay got in the elevator, and I was talking with Steve, because I Steve Kordak I've seen him and we did had dinner with him one night and so like we were coming plus you know he wouldn't let me call him mr. Kordak and so Steve is Steve and I Joshua Clay came in something I was talking with with Steve Kordak about bingo and you know if he had anything to do with that Long Beach stuff and he didn't. And Joshua Clay got in and I said, yeah, we're talking about bingo, there's something you don't want. He said, not that bad. So he's like trying to redeem himself in front of you know, one of the kings of pinball. But I don't think he you know, there's a lot of guys that like for electromechanical games a single player is just so much less to fool with and I get it I understand understand it and I guess that's his perspective and and why but we're in another world man I mentioned I mentioned Bob Herbison earlier if you know anything about Bob Herbison he's very heavily involved in in the Fort Worth Pinball Show. They just had it, I think, back in February or March down in Texas. And he's very deeply involved in that. And he has a marvelous collection of old, gut-leaf flipper games. They're just amazing. What I'm getting at is he is not averse to new things. and he contacted me. He recently purchased Alito. And he was looking, he wanted to know things to look for. And so I gave him certain things to be cautious about and whatnot. And the guy wanted what I thought was a lot of money at the time. And Bob ended up buying the game for like half what the guy said he wanted. But there was a few problems in the game. and one of the problems turned out to be that the magic screen was out of alignment. And he said, I can't get the magic screen to center. He says, when the play field goes back, it turns, it goes so far, and it's just cycling back and forth, and it won't stop. I said, all right, you know, it's out of time. So I explained to him how to do it. So he said, well, you have to pull the chain on. No, no, no. So I explained to him how to do it. and maybe three or four days he says you know he says listening to you tell me how that worked it's almost like you were inside that game looking at it well I said you know Bob I've done it so many times it's kind of like what it is as I'm explaining it to you I'm seeing it in my mind I'm doing it right along with you well this is part of storytelling you know you're a good storyteller you're a good writer you convey and project images verbally it's good but the point is here's a guy who's a flipper guy no question he's a flipper guy and very well known in the hobby but he understands bingos and he likes the style of bingo because it's a different kind of play different kind of play and it's the same thing you know Josh Kaplan the thingy that goes to all the shows and takes the pictures and what not he'll see me playing a flipper game every once in a while and he'll say oh he's just playing a flipper game and I'll say to him Josh I'm not one dimensional I can do other things My mama taught me how to read. I can do other things. For heaven's sake. He's just, the Allentown show adjourned yesterday. I don't think it's going on today. He posted up a couple of his normal videos of a tour of the place, and they showed a scooter line with a different back glass on it. That's all I know about that. I knew that that game was there. Fella wrote me about that. He was thinking about buying it. But tell me more. Tell me more about it. Well, I just saw it. It had a unique back glass, although the name was the same, 28-holer. Well, is this the one that had single coin on the back glass? Maybe that's what it said. From what I saw, it was a conversion of Shoot Align. But it had the replay register. So apparently single coin was kind of a generic one that they used on those Ohio Dime games where they'd have the lighted scoring. Do you know what the score is behind that? I've read the book. Do you know where that came from? Go for it. It's not in my book. Oh, okay. I learned this from a fellow in Paris, Pennsylvania. Okay. The story, and I had it confirmed by Bush Blatter. Okay. The story behind the single coin backlist is that some operator or some group of operators got together and they produced a huge number of these single coin backlists. and there's six card games with the, you know, either the Lot of Fun motif with the points going across the top or the Funway where the little barrels go down the side or the Barrel of Fun which looks like a barrel where the thousands go or of course the hundreds go in a circle around the barrel. The point I'm making is all of these single coins were created with one thing in mind, to make it appear that the game would only take a single coin to operate. And they modified all of these games, that they put these single coin back dashes on, they modified all of these games so that when you put a quarter in, it automatically puts all six cards up. Okay. Now, Bush Goddard told me that he said in Pennsylvania, you can't have a multi-coin game where it takes you to play. Okay. But he says you can play multiple credits because you treat the credits like earned points. Right. So even though it says it's replay, you're not really doing replay, so to speak. Gotcha. But I said, well, what about the Ohio Dying Game? Does that qualify? He says, no, because he said, if you don't have any points on there, then you've got to put six coins in to get the six cards. I said, ah, you're right. Huh, okay. So I thought to myself, well, what happens, you're playing a six-card game with single points. You drop your coin in, you get all six cards. You make three in a row. Right. You get four credits with one of them. So you push the red button four times, and you got four cards. now what if you want to get cards 5 and 6 well you've got to put a coin in yeah that's you have to put a coin in if you had no credits so basically you won nothing oh that's interesting so it wouldn't treat them as a full reset where it would give you all 6 for each red button press no that's not for a credit that's for me putting credits in that's crazy So this one was really neat. It had a dollar bill validator on the front. It took one in five dollar bills. I'm wondering how in the world that that was wired in. Actually, that's not as difficult as you might think. I know it sounds crazy, but that's not as difficult as you might think because, see, those dollar bill acceptors, they work where what the dollar bill acceptor does is a digital device. Right. but what it does is it puts out a pulse. It's the equivalent of a contact closure, not a pulse, but the equivalent of a contact closure, and you can put those two leads, and of course where you would normally put a glade switch. Okay. And it actually puts, like if you put a quarter in there, it puts five, you call them pulses, but they're actually contact closures. And they will energize as if it was a relay, You can use that to throw five games on a meter or 100 games on a meter. Now, it's a little tricky. Your game's got to be set for a quarter of a play to make that work. Okay. Yeah. I could see that. Okay. So you wouldn't get 20 plays for a dollar if it was set to nickel play. You'd get four plays. Right, right. You'd get four plays. Okay. Okay. And you get 20 plays for $5. Gotcha. Huh. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. So you do have to rectify, though. You've got to have DC at the... Oh, yeah. You've got to have the DC train for me. You've got to have... Yeah. You've got to have plus or minus 12 volts, plus or minus 5 volts, and you've got to have the step down to make the build out get it working. and then you can also use they have these electronic coin rejectors, I don't know if you've seen them you put a coin in those will also work out of bingo because what you can do is you can put the 48 volts AC into that if you know what the 2 leads are that normally operates the coin lockout and as long as that coin lockout is energized it turns that acceptor on and it'll take money and as soon as the coin lockout releases it won't take money anymore that's pretty fascinating Your electronic adjusters, if you could, I've got one, but I've never taken the time to figure out which wires are where I put the 48 volts. Yeah, well, that's funny. I was speculating on that on last night's show about how that bill validator would have to be wired up, so it sounds like I was right. That's always good to hear. Yeah, you're right. At the Allentown show, there was supposed to be a couple other bingo. Vic Camp was taking up a nightclub giveaway. I hope that went well to a good home. Yeah. And there was a bikini, which is one that doesn't go up for sale too often, up there in the flea market. I wonder if that went to a good home, too. I haven't heard anything yet, but I'll let everybody know once I hear something. Yeah, let's find out. Well, now, today's the last day for Allentown. Are they closed at noontime today? I don't know. I didn't know they were open at all on Sunday. I stayed up the first time I went to Allentown. I was there for Sunday, and it was like... Ghost town? Yeah. I'm staying for this. Okay. Friday, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Thursday. And all these shows, I think the set-up night is the funnest because it's like a private, you know. and uh well you know you heard that uh you heard that um uh bruce moyer had a hernia operation and now he can't lift yeah i know i called i called him thursday and he's got like super security on his phones you can't his home phone his cell phone i couldn't get through the whole time And so normally he calls me. He called me from Allentown last year. I think it was last year. Because Bruce is, that's somebody we've got to get on. You've got to get on, man. He's an EM guy like crazy. But apparently the Allentown pinball show picked Kentucky Derby Day to be on there. And Bruce is a horse racing guy, man. He knows that stuff. I don't think he's doing it anymore, but he called me up. He called me up during the last, not this show, last one. I don't even think we talked about pinball. We were talking about the derby the whole time. He's a good storyteller. He pauses more than I do, though, but that's okay. Good guy. Well, we joke about Bruce, you know. We joke about Bruce. He's a great guy. He's a great guy to talk to because you won't have to worry about getting hoarse for talking too much. And, you know, you better have time and you better have some earplugs because he will talk your ear off if you're not careful. What you call, you know, I love it. He's good, but he knows these games. Yeah. He knows all kinds of trivia about them, and you can just – it sounds like he's struggling to tell stuff, but when it comes out, it's jewels, man. It's just all these caveats of each game that's built in there, and he operated these things for I don't know how long, you know. And I don't think – Me, Bruce Moyer, Bob Herbison in Texas, Jack Cook in Loveland, Ohio, They're all flipper guys that were in flippers when it was fun to be in flippers. And, you know, bingo guys. One guy, Neil, I can't think of his name. Bob Nelson, who's dead now. Phil Hooper Alan Marich Dennis Bedell Bush Glada Dick Gerlich out Seattle Washington um Paul Coyne down in Louisiana who dead now um, myself, um, you know, Bobby Borden in Marshall, Pennsylvania. These are all guys that, that, that knew bingos, um, back in the day. Now, Alan, Alan, was he an operator? Alan Marais, Was he an operator? That's what I thought. He was an operator of a technician, but he's a neat guy. He's a really neat guy. And he sold, he had a bunch of games. He sold a container or two to, I think, Chris Howard over in Britain. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. I saw pictures of some of the games that were created, and a huge number of really what I would call nice, high-end, magic screen games from you know from circus queen up on through silver sales he's so he sold a whole container for those fellas out there I was kind of sorry to see that but at the time he did it was out in the market here in the state swamps that's the problem well that's Dennis with his 150 games you know to move yeah yeah that's a lot of stuff that Joe drop out in Utah's got a bunch of games but he's part in that stuff I don't know I get call him and see if he wants to come on his show you ever talk with him Jeffrey he's real nice guy Joe Joe shot or shopping I can't remember anything out there with a guy named Ted Chalveson, and I think he's dead. He was out in South Dakota, not Utah. I'm sorry, he was in South Dakota. Seeing it, everybody's dying off, man. You've got to get this stuff out there and figure out how to archive it so we don't lose all this crap like we did on Old Dinger's Forum. And that said... I mentioned earlier in the call the son of Tony Boccato, who I knew. and when I was first starting out in this hobby back in 1977 and I had just gotten my first Lido and I was having a hell of a time getting a decent schematic for it because it wasn't back then, it wasn't like it is today where you could call somebody and there was always somebody after you to get stuff from. Right. So I called Valley on Belmont Avenue in Chicago. They were still in business then. and I told that lady what I wanted and she said, well, I don't know, we don't do those machines. I said, I know you don't, but I said, I was just hoping maybe there was somebody who could maybe go into your archive or something and maybe help me out. Well, she said, let me put you in touch with this guy. So this fellow, Tony Boccato, comes out of the club and we're talking. And he says, you know, who are you, where are you, what are you doing, what have you got? And so I saw what I had and the time I had is I had a show time, I had this Lido and I had my Yacht Club. And he said, you don't have a Cypress Gardens, do you? I said, no. I said, I don't, but I said, I know that game. I said, it's a great game. It's very similar to Showtime, but it's got some different features. He said, I was the lead designer on Showtime working directly for John Hooker. I was the lead designer. Hooker gave me the specs for what he was planning on doing, and I designed and created. He said, Cypress Gardens was my game. I said, wow, you know. So I'm thinking I'm talking to royalty. Yeah, yeah. So we get to talking. He says, well, what do you need? I said, I need a schematic and manual for a Leo. He says, I don't know if I've got one or not. But he says, I'll tell you what. He says, I'm the foreman here in the shop, and we don't do anything with bingos. But he says, I know I've got some boxes of stuff. And give me your address, and I'll send you what I can. Well, I said, what are these stuff? It's stuff that's just here. It'll get thrown away anyway. He says, I'll send it out to you. So he sent me blueprint copies of Lido's schematic, Key West's schematic, Terricke, other schematics, manuals, things down. I couldn't believe it. And I mention that because when I got to know Gary Marshall, the rocket scientist, I mentioned, I told him the same story. He says, I know Tony Picardo. He says, I know his wife. I know his kids. He's literally passed away. You know, I knew where he was from. He says, I actually went down and met him. I said, God damn, it's a small world. I love it. You know what I mean? Go ahead. I love it. You're talking about Key West. Didn't you tell me something about a box of Key West back glasses one time? Yes. What I told you was I hooked up with a guy in Athens, Georgia. He had very similar to what Dennis Rodell is talking about. He had boxes from WICO, W-I-C-O. They used to be real big in aftermarket and new old stock stuff back in the day. And he had Wicco produce new old stock back glasses for TOS and Cypress Garden that had never been on games. Wow. And he also said that he had games glasses for Bikini, Silver Seals, Golden Dink. So I told him, this was on a Monday, we were talking to him on a Monday night. I told him, I said, I want some of those glasses. I said, what will you sell me? Well, he said, I can sell you a Key West, and I can sell you a Cypress Store. I said, I'll take it. I said, I'll be down there tomorrow. Be down there tomorrow. This is not Tuesday. And I hung up the phone. I told Carol, I said, pack a bag. We're going to Georgia. It was 8 o'clock at night. It was 8 o'clock at night. We drove all night to get down there. I called my cousin. We went to my cousin's house, who lives in Buc-Dade. Carol and I, we got there about 11 or 12 o'clock in the morning, so we had some coffee. Carol went to bed. I drove down to Athens, Georgia, which was about 50 miles east of where my cousin lived. I met with this guy. I bought three Key West back glass and I bought one Cypress Garden back glass. And I sold the two Key West back glass and I kept one for myself and I kept the Cypress Garden for myself. because by this time I had a circus garden in my collection. And I went and called this guy back, and I said, what else have you got? He told me, I said, all right. So I said, I'm coming back. So two months later, I go back. I make a date with him. And he's telling me that I can buy silver sails, a golden gate, a bikini, a Lido, a can-can, some really nice stuff. I can buy all this stuff. I take $3,000 in cash I got in my pocket. and I'm going down to buy a backrest. And I get there and the guy's leading me, he's stringing me on, he's stringing me on because the first time I went, I went to his apartment and I got the glass, he had the glass in his apartment. So the next time he says, well, we've got to go down to the warehouse. So you knew I was coming, why don't you have the glass here at the house? Oh, I'm a bit busy, blah, blah, blah. So I get down there, so I'm sitting in this parking lot waiting for him to get there. So I'm thinking, no, I don't like to look at this. I've got a lot of money in my pocket. So I get my knife out and I've got it open. I've got it. I said, just in case somebody's strange, they'll get a taste of the door of the car and they'll get a taste of the end of my knife. I'm not going to take any chances. So he gets there and I said, okay, what have you got? All he had was one bikini glass that he had sunk. But he had a golden date glass there. I said, well, that's one of the ones you promised me. I'll take that. Now he says, I sold that to somebody else. I said, well, you promised it to me. Now he says, I had another one for you, but I can't find it. And then he goes and he finds this one crate that's water damaged. So there's a Lido and there's two or three can-cans. But there's newspapers in with the glass. And the newspapers fuse to the back side of the glass, not the front side. But with the black paint, so they're ruined. They're ruined. You can't. So I ended up taking one bikini back glass and that was it. That was really upsetting. I later found out that this guy had taken orders from people off the internet, off eBay or whatever. and then skipped town and took all their money. Ooh. So I was lucky that I got what I got. Yeah. Well, that wasn't the story I was talking about, but the other one I was talking about was somebody had a crate of, I thought it was. Oh, you're talking about with an ink plate on them? Yeah. Yes, sir. That was Dick Groves' story. He told, we were talking on the phone one day, again, this was a long time ago, And he says, you know, he says, I'm hard working. I said, I've got a whole creek of brand new Key West back there. Never been on game. We're from Ballard. I opened the creek. I took each of the back there and I looked. They looked dry. They looked fine. He says, I went down the next day and every strip of paint fell off the grave. He says, I couldn't believe it. He says, I had them in a dry room. I just took them out. as soon as we hear him, the pigs go right off him. I've never heard of that. I've never heard of that. Me either. That's terrible. Usually, you know, it's the... Sudden change in temperature. Yeah. So, how about that crab? You never know. Um, cool. What's, um, what's your favorite machine to work on? You know, just as far as flipper, bingo, what have you. Anything. I really like to work on all games. Gut leaves are the most difficult because the relays, as you know with gut leave electromechanicals, the relays are all what I call short strokes. Yes. They have little short switches, and they have a normal relay, a normal relay pull on the gut leaves is about, at the most, a quarter of an inch. And you've got single pull, double throw, and they do everything. You've got break before make, you've got make before break, and then you've got where the switch will be closed, and both switches are open, and then the next switch goes. I don't know what they actually call that, but it's very hard to adjust. I agree. When you get a stubble machine that hasn't been repaired, the one that's the worst is the AX relay, which is the reset relay. If you don't have that AX relay set perfectly, that game will not work. will not work. And the second worst is United ball bowlers or volleyballers because the score reels tend to get summed up. Back in the 50s, they all used 3-in-1 oil to lubricate those reels, and now that 3-in-1 oil has turned into putty. You use WD-40, and so many people don't like that. I don't use it. Be careful. Yeah. But it's not oil. It's water displacer. And so I don't know any more than that of it. Say it again. Here's the trick with WD-40. If you're going to use WD-40, and I'm not an advocate of WD-40, but I do use it. And let's say you're going to clean contacts. If you're going to use WD-40, you spray the WD-40 on your file and you wipe the file with your fingertips. Then you clean the contact. If you're going to use WD-40 to clean your school unit, you take your whatever grease, whatever grease, emery paper, wet dry emery paper you use, you spray the WD-40 on the emery paper. Then wipe the rivet points on the contact with the wet emery paper. Then take a paper towel and wipe it off. You don't have to get all the WD-40 off, but you wipe it off enough so that it's not running because WD-40 is conductive. Now that said, this sounds a lot like sharpening a knife with an oil stone. You use oil on the stone. This is to collect metal shavings when you sharpen a knife so they don't clog up the stone. Is this why you're doing that on the file? Yep. Okay. It's exactly the same. and the trick is you don't spray the WD-40 on the contact because it runs down and WD-40 is conductive and WD-40 does leave a residue so you've got to kind of wipe it off but if you spray it on the file you don't have to worry about it spray it on the file you don't have to worry about it well I use 3-in-1 oil on my games because that's what I've got a can of and I've had it forever but the better thing to use the better thing to use I'll be dead. I don't care. I know you'll be dead. I know you'll be dead. Damn it, you're talking about me again. They don't know what I went through to get it where I got it. Now, the better oil to use on all these steppers and that type of thing, I guess mostly the steppers with the spider, is gun oil. Gun oil is stickier. It doesn't run. Wouldn't that attract more dirt, though? I don't know. No more than any other oil, I wouldn't think. That said, I don't know about wax. Wax is a great lubricant for stuff like you've got a sticky window. You can't slide your window up and down. You put some wax on it. Hey, it's amazing. It works. I use this on tools in the cabinet shop and stuff, too. That will let it move, but it won't let it conduct. Correct. Yeah. That would be one of them. Yeah. But gun oil clings better. It doesn't run puddled like that. I use three-in-one myself, but I just use a drop or two. And my theory, and this is just a theory, is that, you know, if I play the games and keep those steppers moving, then it'll prevent that stuff from gumming up. That's true. And also... The reason the WD-40 gums up is because it's dis-idolized, ages, and then it's solid. Yeah, that's correct. And it's, you know, I fixed up a game from the 40s and they used Vaseline. Now that stuff hardens into rocks. Yeah. Petroleum. I've never seen that, but I'm not surprised. Yeah, it is. The other thing you don't ever want to use is just don't use steel wool to clean your unit. pulls all the contact off I use no the little fibers from the steel wool oh yeah between the ridder points and you can't you can't stand you can't get rid of them and it's impossible to get them out once they're in there yeah rare earth magnet I use a Dremel tool with a wire wheel attachment for cleaning even that's dangerous I use that too but even that's dangerous and those little things go all over the place yeah And I go through with the rear earth magnet. That is to use wet drop 600 or 400 grit every paper and a contact file. Now, the flexible file, the Steve Young shelf and his little kit, those are really good. But on certain contacts, they don't have enough abrasion to get the really bad carbon off, especially if you've got a contact that's big. Yeah, I've had a lot of trouble with those flex files not cleaning enough. They wear out immediately. Yeah, and they leave junk behind, a lot of junk. Well, it looks to me like it's just freaking sandpaper. Yeah. Garnet sandpaper. I'm a cabinet maker, for those that don't know. Garnet sandpaper is used for finishing wood. They use garnets. Garnets are used because they are very brittle, and the garnet will break off, leaving a sharp edge, again, so you get more life out of your sandpaper. And these flex stones, flexible files, look very much like that to me. That said, the silicone carbide, that could be the wrong word. Anyway, there's different sandpapers for different things. There's emery board, emery paper, like you mentioned, And then there's another one that I use in finishing. For finishing, it doesn't gunk up when you're sanding finish on wood. So that's it. I talk about any paper. I like the NBA. You can get any paper, both cloth back and paper back. I tend to prefer paper back. For some reason, the cloth back seems to leave a lot of residue behind, just like what you're talking about with your sandpaper. I don't know why. Yeah. And then there's the mesh back stuff that has a vacuum, so you can put on a vacuum type of that. That's a bunch of different stuff. But all that's just, you know, the idea is just get your pinball. If it's an electromechanical pinball machine, you can get it working, you can keep it working, but once in a while you've got to get in there and clean something and cool with it. And it's all that. How many times have you started working on an electromechanical pinball and there's about 15 things that don't work and you just basically run balls through the plant and all of a sudden there's only six or seven things that don't work? all of a sudden started working that's that's that's exactly what you're saying the game likes to be used I'm with you I wish I had more girlfriends like that um you know you can say that but the trouble is if you have girlfriends like that they get tired of you because they say this man can't keep up oh god it was funny back when after I got divorced um when I got divorced I was I was pretty much of a male slut. And I come out. You know what you think? I got a feeling this stuff will be edited out. Some of it. I was boinking three or four girls. Most of them worked at banks. Not that I had that much money. So you were in a deposit. No. I'll come after work one day. You're a good depositor. I like that. You have a friend in banking. Oh, shit. I came out to my car after work one afternoon, and there's a card, you know, like a Hallmark card, tucked underneath of my, uh, uh, when's your wiper? And I got in the car. I said, oh, man, I got a ticket. And I go out there and I open it up. And, you know, see, it's the Hallmark card. I open it up. And the front of the card says, I had it with you. And I'm like, oh, no, because one of these girls, I let them all know I was seeing somebody. So I didn't tell them I was boinking all of them, you know. And this card on the front of it, it says, I've had it with you. And you open it up. And it said, and I loved every minute of it. It wasn't signed. It wasn't signed. I don't know who sent it, man. And so it's like I see all these girls and I didn't know who to thank. I had to play that one. The answer is you just want to have your dick propped. That's all. And so I smoothed my way out of it. That worked pretty good. But that was so funny. I don't know what the hell reminded me of that story. well guys how do we know we're not wrapped up or was there some other questions we didn't get to that you wanted to ask or yeah really I just wanted to let people know how to get in touch with you if you're if you're taking on work how they can get in touch they can they can email me my email is my last name Walton underscore which is a shift slash My first name is Jeffrey at Yahoo.com. And that's Jeffrey, that's J-E-F-F-R-E-Y at Yahoo.com. And they can send me an email. The only thing I ask is if somebody does send me an email, I'm very particular. I make sure that they put in the subject matter of who they are and the fact that it's a pinball issue. Because every message that I get like that, the first thing I do is I move it to the spam folder before you open it up. and then if it's questionable, I won't reply. If I get a message and I don't know who the person is, I'll tell them who I am. Who are you? I won't say anything more about it other than that. But I do respond to emails, and I do work for people literally all over the country, and I try to help people whenever I can. I don't know everything there is to know, but in many cases I can at least get a person to where they can either solve their problem or get it to the point where they can get a local repayment along with my help and get the problem fixed. And so do you recommend that people call you first or email? If it's a blind call, somebody's going to talk to me before I prefer email. Okay. Fair enough. And as I get to know the person, then I can give them my phone number. I mean, my phone number is available. If you go up on any internet, any internet-like pages and look up Jeffrey Lawson, my address and phone number will come up. It's not secret. I don't, you know, I'm not hiding myself. I am easily available. And I do try to help anybody I can. Well, very good. And if a person bumps me the wrong way, which happens from time to time, they will know. some of these out of virtue of me fair enough and is there anything you'd like to leave listeners who might be thinking about making their first bingo purchase any words of wisdom have a game in mind that you knew in your youth that you really that you really want because that's the game you remember. And when you find the game, try to get one that's working as best as it can. You can find out when you talk to a person whether they're a serious seller or whether they're just unloading junkies. And most anybody can tell that. But if you find the game, buy the game, there is always somebody out there who can help you get it working. I think what Nick means is what would you, we're trying to get new blood in the hobby, like Nick is. And he's trying to inspire, you know, some other younger guys. So, any, yeah. So, if you're going to ask me what is it about the bingo that really puts my boat so steep? The answer is very simple. When you play a bingo game, no two games are the same. I'm not talking about different main games. I'm talking about when you walk up to a CR and you put a coin in that CR, you put a number of coins in that CR, and you build up a game that you're ready to play. And you play that. The next game you play will be totally different than the one you just played. And the next game you play will be totally different than the one. In other words, no two games are the same. And the second thing is you are not competing against a program format to make a winner. You are competing against that game. You either make the numbers or you don't. It's a simple event. So it's just like playing golf. If you're going to be a good bingo player, you know how to shoot the ball, you know how to bounce the ball, and you have some finesse in your play, which is the same thing a good flipper game player has. but you don't have the the the air the flexibility of having something to shoot the ball back up the play field you've got to you get one chance to make it and you either get it in the hole you want or you don't and 90% of bingo is playing defense you're not you're going to make the hole you make but you're you're trying to keep out of the holes you don't want right well thank you very much that's what I would that's what I would say about bingo every game is unique no two no two games on the same game is going to be the same. Agreed. Agreed. Well, thank you very much, Jeffrey, for your time, and I look forward to talking with you at some point here in the future, and I really hope to see you at York this year. It's on my 10-year anniversary, though. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it or not. Oh, man. I know. Yeah. That's my one in a year. Man, you won't see him. I enjoyed speaking with you both and of course there's going to be some stuff you have to edit out but that's fine it was a good fun morning and I enjoyed it, thank you thank you very much I'll talk with you soon ok bye bye Jeffrey's books are Valley Bingo Pinball Machines and Valley vs. United The Bingo Pinball Wars these books are available at Amazon or you can buy them direct from Jeffrey at the York Show I look forward to York every year and part of that's because of the interesting bingos that Jeffrey brings, he always brings two and they're always really fun players good show games, as he says Thank you again for listening My name again is Nicholas Baldridge You can reach me at ForAmusementOnlyPodcast at gmail.com You can find us online at ForAmusementOnly.libsyn.com And you can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Cast via RSS or on Facebook or on our website Thanks again for listening and I'll talk to you next time