Friday, March 28, 2014

Forty Days of Lent: Day Twenty-Four

Life Inside A Pinball Machine

My favorite bar in my neighborhood has at least one, sometimes two, pinball machines.  This is as opposed to my second favorite bar in my neighborhood, which is filled with video arcade games, yet curiously has no pinball.  

There seems to be a rotating schedule of pinball games, by which I mean there will be one game for a number of months (I've never kept track) and then one day - surprise! - a new pinball machine has replaced it.  My favorite bar flirts with dive bar-ness, though it really isn't.  I have seen some people walk in, survey the establishment, and walk out without a word.  So it's rather amusing that the current pinball machine at the bar is a Wizard of Oz pinball machine.  I have no idea how they are chosen.

The person who takes care of and services the machines, to whom the bar is beholden, has difficulty walking.  He needs a cane to get around and even so, his entire body lurches to one side with every step as if he is falling over, though he never does.  The bar's reliance on him to fix the machines when they break has given him a sense of entitlement and the arrogance that often goes with it.  It's not easy to spend a few minutes in his vicinity without contemplating kicking his cane out from under him.

Regardless, once when he had the plate glass top lifted up to fix one of the pinball machines I was able to stick my iPhone in and take a few shots.





  

     

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