My name is Beriah (AKA Beemus) and I am a pinball addict. It has been 2 days since I purchased my last machine and 2 minutes since I last played a game. I am located in Kirkland, Wash. and this is my pinball story...
My disease started in the small town of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Calif. I'd dig through dumpsters for aluminum cans and redemption bottles to go towards my pinball coinage fund. To begin each day I'd cover my coin-return/free money route... 5 newspaper machines, 7 pay phones, the dryers/washers at the laundromat (in them and under them), under the counter at 7-11 and around the check-stands at Vons, the table-top jukeboxes at VG Donut and finally all the other vids/pins at my arcade. Needless to say, we were broke LOL!
The place was called Yellowstone Bus Company. It was a deli/ice cream shop that had pins, vids and pool tables in the back. I was hooked on Capt. Fantastic! Each day Sir Elton and I had a good old time. I didn't think things could get better until...
Silverball Mania entered my life. A machine with digital scores, a cool looking silver guy and a bunch of pretty womanly looking creatures with no clothes and a LOT of curves. I was hooked. Day-after-day I'd play that machine...wasn't that good but at that age did it really matter? The best day was when an older guy came in and racked up 9 free games on the machine. He played all but 5 and he left the rest to me (thanks mystery pinhead).
The fun lasted until my 90 year-old great-grandpa figured out how I'd been spending my days. He told me he didn't want me 'playing those damned slot machines again'! But I didn't listen...
One day as I played my dear Silverball Mania, I felt a painful tug at my ear. As Grandpa Cullison dragged me out of there my good ear heard him shouting, "I told you no more of those damned slot machines!" He also scared the hell out of the teenage employees behind the counter with "I don't know why the hell you let little kids in here to play those damned things!"
THIS time I got the message and so did the poor employees. Even if I did get the courage up to disobey him I KNEW the employees weren't going to let me in... they too feared and respected Grandpa Cullison ;-).
I never set foot in Yellowstone again, unless it was with my mom for a rare ice cream cone, and moved on over to Tempest and Defender at VG Donut... I guess those weren't slot machines in grandpa's book, go figure!
Fast-forward 24 years later...a cousin tells me about a web classifieds site called Craigslist. I visit it for the first time and while viewing the day's ads I find, not one, but TWO Silverball Mania's for sale. One about 2.5 hours away for $400 and one about 20 minutes away for $475...I made contact with the local one, went and looked at it and bought it, no bargaining, no hassles. It was your typical situation where a guy gets married, has a child and moves to the suburbs. Only he doesn't want to deal with moving the pinball machine he bought way back when before life got serious. According to him he bought it from a buddy who bought it from an older gentleman in the early nineties that he was doing some house painting for. The older gentleman had had it for years. As far as I know the machine has been HUO since at least the early nineties...based on the condition, no lock bar drill holes, and the nameplate of the company that originally sold it (Northwest Sales) located in the upper-right corner of the playfield...it has had a very good life mostly, if not exclusively, spent in people's homes.
A few hundred dollars in new parts and labor, some touchup to one spot of wear in the center loop and it plays just like the day I first met Mr. Silverball Mania at Yellowstone. Even Grandpa Cullison would be proud.
Current lineup: Capt. Fantastic, White Water, Attack From Mars and Medieval Madness #2!
I'm out of room and my want list is down to a TZ and one mystery pin but those will have to wait until I move 'cuz I'm done selling! ;-)
Gone but not forgotten: Silverball Mania, South Park, Funhouse, Twilight Zone, Lord of the Rings, Pinball Magic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Medieval Madness #1, Embryon, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Medieval Madness #3. Past visitors to the Grotto Spa: Addams Family, Indiana Jones, Fish Tales, Guns 'N Roses.
