Episode 152 - Interview with Charles Rowland 8-5-15

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 0m·analyzed·Aug 10, 2015

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

36-year Richmond operator shares deep technical expertise on bingos, EMs, and early arcade operations.

Summary

Charles Rowland, proprietor of Games People Play in Richmond, Virginia, discusses his 36+ years as an amusement operator starting in 1979, with deep expertise in bingo machines, electromechanical pinballs, and early video games. He details his early experience at Virginia Music and Novelty (starting at age 15), re-clutching bingo machines, collections work, and the transition from bingo to pinball and video game operations. Rowland provides rich technical and operational context on bingo machine design, clutch mechanisms, scoring systems, and the arcade venue landscape of the 1970s-80s Virginia region.

Key Claims

Charles Rowland started operating games in 1979 and has been operating for 36 years (as of 2015)
high confidence · Charles directly stated: 'Well, originally they had an operator and when I bought the place I put that operator out and bought my own equipment. My first video was Space Invaders and my first brand new pinball was Williams Flash' and '36 years. Yeah, and you currently operate games today, is that correct? Alright, that is correct.'
Bingo machines used leather clutches soaked in neats foot oil that had to be replaced, typically taking 2-3 hours per re-clutching job
high confidence · Charles described the process in detail: 'you have to take the whole back door off the hinges, lay it down, and that big mixer unit on the top, you have to disassemble that. and it has leather clutches little disc made of leather and they're soaked in neats foot oil' and 'That would take you about two or three hours whatever pulling that down putting it back together again'
Video poker in the 1980s effectively ended the bingo machine business in the Richmond area
medium confidence · Charles stated: 'video poker scheme in the eighties which basically put the bingo side of business ... everybody around here's one play twenty five whole games' (transcript unclear but context suggests video poker displaced bingo)
Williams Flash (1979) was the first pinball with 89 bulbs for flash effects and background sound
medium confidence · Charles said: 'The Flash was the first one that they actually had the number 89 bulbs for a flash effect on the playfield... It was also the first machine to use background sound for Williams. Even though it was just a tone that kept getting higher as you went along'
Charles and partners purchased approximately 65 pre-war and WWII-era pinball machines from Southside Vending Exchange for around $35-45 per cabinet
high confidence · Charles stated: 'I think we paid somewhere around $35, $45 per cabinet and bought 65 pinball machines. And rented a 26-foot rider truck and The My father and my father-in-law and We hauled out all these pinballs'
Early Exhibit machines used latching relays instead of motors to achieve 5-point scoring increments, likely due to wartime copper shortages

Notable Quotes

“I am 63... Well, that depends on how you want to define it because, you know, I had games of my own when I was, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, whatever. and then I got a real job after college and then in 79 I bought a foosball parlor”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:01-00:03:00 — Establishes Rowland's age and entry into the amusement business, framing his decades-long career
“My first bingo experience was that I was looking to buy games or get more games because I had found these games at the dump... I went in and applied for a job. Now, sitting in the main shop area was a bingo which I had never seen before.”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:04:00-00:05:00 — Pivotal moment when Rowland encountered his first bingo machine and began his deep expertise in the technology
“you have to take the whole back door off the hinges, lay it down, and that big mixer unit on the top, you have to disassemble that... and you would get out your leather clutches that had been soaking for weeks in there”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:08:00 — Detailed technical description of bingo machine re-clutching, demonstrating hands-on expertise and mechanical knowledge
“The Flash was the first one that they actually had the number 89 bulbs for a flash effect on the playfield... It was also the first machine to use background sound for Williams.”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:35:00 — Technical innovation claim about Williams Flash, a landmark 1979 pinball title and a key early game in his operation
“we paid somewhere around $35, $45 per cabinet and bought 65 pinball machines. And rented a 26-foot rider truck and... my father and my father-in-law and We hauled out all these pinballs”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:23:00 — Documents a significant acquisition event showing scale of vintage machine collecting and partnership approach
“you know the EM's your primary goal on EM was to win a replay it wasn't to tell a storyline or complete you know quest on the playfield... like it is today”
Charles Rowland @ ~00:42:00 — Articulates the fundamental design philosophy difference between EM and modern pinball, explaining generational gameplay shifts

Entities

Charles RowlandpersonGames People PlayorganizationVirginia Music and NoveltyorganizationNick BaldridgepersonPaul LambpersonBill BrowningpersonChuck EnglishpersonWilliamscompany

Signals

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historical_signal: Charles provides detailed firsthand account of bingo machine maintenance, operation, and design (1970s-1980s), including re-clutching procedures, conversion units, and venue deployment
high · 40+ minute segment on bingo mechanics, clutch replacement, and operational practices at Virginia Music and Novelty
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operational_signal: Extensive discussion of venue operator relationships, coin collection procedures, meter reading, payout systems, and location-based game placement in bars, barbershops, truck stops, and pavilions
high · Multiple stories about collections work, venue relationships, metal frame coin drawer systems, and location-based earnings
?
design_innovation: Early Exhibit machines used latching relays instead of motors for scoring, a wartime design solution likely driven by copper scarcity; pre-war machines used pneumatic braking for ball return rather than solenoid-based systems
high · Charles's detailed explanation of Exhibit's relay-based 5-point incrementing vs. motor-based alternatives, and comparison to postwar motor-equipped designs
?
product_strategy: Virginia Music and Novelty created Williams baseball sequence unit conversions to convert bingo machines from nickel to quarter operation; this was apparently a common service offered by the company
high · Bill Browning designed the schematic; Charles built and installed the units on Friday nights and Saturdays
?
design_philosophy: EM machines were designed around replay accumulation and resale mechanics, not narrative or quest completion; modern games focus on storyline progression and mode-based objectives

Transcript

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0:00

What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldridge. I have a special guest today, Charles Rowland, who is the proprietor of Games People Play here in Richmond, Virginia. Charles has been operating and working on games for a very long time as we'll hear shortly. And for those of you listening from other areas, Colonial Heights and Petersburg are about 30 minutes away from Richmond itself. So pretty close by via car. Alright, without further ado, here we go. The Well, first Charles, do you mind telling me your age? I am 63. And how long have you been in the amusement industry? Well, that depends on how you want to define it because, you know, I had games of my own when I was, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, whatever. and then I got a real job after college and then in 79 I bought a foosball parlor and ran that for a while and ended up closing that and being a street operator starting in 1980. Well, originally they had an operator and when I bought the place I put that operator out and bought my own equipment. My first video was Space Invaders and my first brand new pinball was Williams Flash. Wow, okay. So you've been operating in the Richmond area for some time. 36 years. Yeah, and you currently operate games today, is that correct? Alright, that is correct. John Papadiuk Good to hear. Um, so, bingo, so what was your first bingo experience? Johnny PneumBLANK My first bingo experience was that I was looking to buy games or get more games because I had found these games at the dump, I had a juke box I bought when I was the Christmas, I was 12. And so I wanted more games and I had a relative of my own Johnny Pneumonic, Black Water, person's name or role at Stern pinball Voice thunder sleepy commentator and a driver's license. But I came back, my father was adding on to the house so he was busy with the construction of that, so he had my mother drive me over to Virginia Music and Novelty on the Boulevard in Colonial Heights and I went in and applied for a job. Now, sitting in the main shop area was a bingo which I had never seen before. And a bunch of the guys were standing around or whatever and I came in and I said, I'd like to apply for a job and so Johnny Condealius who was the office manager whatever he takes me around to the back of the bingo machine and he opens the door to the back of the bingo now all the you know mixer gears and everything is our units are running you know that's just a mass anyone's ever seen the back of a bingo knows how all that stuff kind of fits together when the door in….All Bulls bacteria distinctively 작업 programmes ZimmerDatterbow你在British piano FacultyR87- InstrumentalMind那 لiszناً بجاوشоля stoked preoccupye kostedy fallen The and talk to a judge in Petersburg and explain to him that I already knew about working on pinball machines and stuff because they didn't want you to get your fingers caught in Some sort of machinery and so he said well it sounds like you know what you're doing So I'm going to give you approval to get a job so I went to work at 15 at Virginia music and novelty and one of the jobs I had besides The only reason I had to go out and play with somebody else to do collections or to fix pinballs or whatever was that they had me re-clutch a bingo. Wow. And I assume you know what re-clutching a bingo is, where you have to take the whole back door off the hinges, lay it down, and that big mixer unit on the top, you have to disassemble that. and it has leather clutches little disc made of leather and they're soaked in neats foot oil and the disc are held in place until some solenoid releases them so that allows it to change the odds and stuff as these discs go around with their wiper fingers making contacts and so we had like a dukes mayonnaise jar full of neats foot oil and you would dig in there and you would get out your The Clutch pads your leather clutches that had been soaking for weeks in there and you would take it all apart keep track of the order that everything came out as you pull the shaft out of it and then you put it all back together with new clutches and then you took the old clutches and threw them in the jar for the next go around. So that would take you about two or three hours whatever pulling that down putting it back together again and apparently no one else liked to do it but I had a lot of patience so I had to do it. No, I didn't have any problem with it and I probably recollect three or four bingos. Wow, okay and um So were you involved in the collections on the bingos? Yep after I got a driver's license I'd go and do collections as well sometimes you had places like Crystal Lake and Hopewell where there was a lake because back there not every house had air conditioning and so people would go to these lakes, Moore's Lake, Crystal Lake, Haydads Lake still exists, and Verona, and anyway so they had a pavilion, a two story pavilion, and on the bottom was a snack bar and pinball machines lined up on the wall, and then upstairs was a dance hall and they would bring groups in, Bill Beal and the Rondells or the showmen or people who were big beach Steadfast code total đanglatkey Cr migrantynithis Pr Aprèsrd and other one and then worked on you know to a three of net that the morning and came back and they said what would be there when he's around me there's a pinball he can't fix so that i guess that sealed the deal and so uh... broke with other people are repaired stuff in the shop or something new would come in and i don't box it not set it up and get it uh... uh... ready for location but locks on at that kind of thing do you remember uh... Which titles were the best earning for you? I don't recall. You see a lot of times on the bingos, we had some of the ones with the rotating numbers, but everyone wanted like county fairs, roller derby, silver sails that had the moving screen. Right. And although the Golden Gate stuff had that golden section in it, they weren't that popular. You had to have particular people that knew how to play that deal. As far as the pinballs, the first new pinball I saw come in was a Williams Apollo. And I believe the price on it was $450 brand new. Nice. Later we got a Hayburner II in and that came in with some sort of shipping problem. I've never been up in the up in the horse race part up in the head glass what are bad straightened out

high confidence · Charles explained: 'they scored 50 point 5-point increments and they did it with a bunch of latching relays... Well, you know, it was probably during the war and, you know, copper was insured'

Williams Flash and Atari Superman were the two biggest earning pinballs in 1979

medium confidence · Charles stated: 'In 79, the two biggest pinballs then was Flash and Atari Superman.'

Charles bought a Checkpoint Data East pinball with a half-height dot matrix display as a diagnostic/reference machine

high confidence · Charles said: 'I picked up a checkpoint data east pinball with their first dot matrix with the half height display... I wanted something working all the way, particularly a display where I could Tilt the pinball to the other side, then narrow down problems'

Bingo machines originally had wooden legs that would break, so operators switched to metal frames with drawers for coin collection

high confidence · Charles explained: 'The original bingos had wooden legs and those things would break. And so they had metal frames made to set the bingos in because it made the bingos less spindly and you had less tilting and stuff on it'

EM machines were designed primarily around winning replays, not narrative progression or quest completion like modern games

high confidence · Charles said: 'you know the EM's your primary goal on EM was to win a replay it wasn't to tell a storyline or complete you know quest on the playfield'

“I don't recall. You see a lot of times on the bingos, we had some of the ones with the rotating numbers, but everyone wanted like county fairs, roller derby, silver sails that had the moving screen.”

Charles Rowland @ ~00:15:00 — Identifies market preferences for specific bingo titles based on operator experience

“Well, the flash was a hot lick. In 79, the two biggest pinballs then was Flash and Atari Superman.”

Charles Rowland @ ~00:38:00 — Identifies Flash as the standout earning title of the early 1979-1980 era

Exhibit Supplycompany

Southside Vending Exchangeorganization

Fort Pickett (formerly Camp Pickett)organization

high · Charles explicitly contrasted EM goals (replay wins) with modern pinball design (story modes, quests, mode progression)

market_signal: Video poker in the 1980s effectively displaced bingo machines from the Richmond area market, ending a 30+ year operational period for Charles's bingo route

medium · Charles stated video poker 'basically put the bingo side of business... everybody around here's one play twenty five whole games' (transcript unclear but context suggests displacement)

product_launch: Williams Flash (1979) was the first pinball with 89-bulb flash effects and background sound; top earner alongside Atari Superman in 1979-1980 period

high · Charles stated: 'The Flash was the first one that they actually had the number 89 bulbs for a flash effect... It was also the first machine to use background sound for Williams'

restoration_signal: Charles and partners acquired ~65 pre-war and WWII-era pinball machines (many pre-1947, without flippers) from Southside Vending Exchange for $35-45 per cabinet, transported via 26-foot truck, and restored them

high · Charles described purchase details: '65 pinball machines... somewhere around $35, $45 per cabinet... 26-foot rider truck... my father and my father-in-law'

technology_signal: Charles acquired a Data East Checkpoint with half-height dot matrix display as a reference/diagnostic machine to test and isolate problems on other machines; half-height displays noted as problematic

high · Charles stated: 'I picked up a checkpoint data east pinball with their first dot matrix with the half height display... Those half-height displays can be a problem. Well, that's the biggest problem there'

competitor_signal: Charles's operations were heavily dominated by Williams and Bally machines; rare Gottlieb presence; no Chicago Coin machines; Gottlieb's flipper design (spring-loaded wire assembly) disliked

high · Charles stated: 'Mostly was Williams and Bally stuff' and 'I always hated the flippers with that spring-loaded wire deal coming out the side of the cabinet' for Gottlieb

community_signal: Modern demand for EM machines among home collectors is low; most interest from operators/enthusiasts who grew up with the games; demand for bingo machines is minimal

medium · Charles stated: 'Not really for EMs' when asked about home collector inquiries; noted auction conversation about lack of EM interest; barns in South Carolina and local areas still have 30-40 bingos stacked up

regulatory_signal: Charles required parental permission and judicial approval to work on bingo machines at age 15 due to machinery safety concerns; judge required proof of prior pinball machine knowledge before granting work approval

high · Charles described: 'talk to a judge in Petersburg and explain to him that I already knew about working on pinball machines... he said well it sounds like you know what you're doing So I'm going to give you approval to get a job'