Something from the Pinball At The Zoo afterparty I forgot to mention, in explicably. The lineup of games at MJS's pole barn has changed from last year, as you'd expect. New to the place is an old game, almost as old as pinball can get. It's Golden Harvest, a Bally game from 1935, or a dozen years before ``flippers'' came into being. It's a game much like those cheap plastic toys you get that call themselves 'pinball' games but are just about plunging a ball bearing into a hole or a small scoop. It's not those cheap plastic toys' fault that the game of pinball has moved on from that pure-mechanical style. But Golden Harvest is not just a flipperless game. It's more sinister.
Now and then you hear about a city repealing the laws against pinball machines that everyone is stunned to learn were ever on the books; Ann Arbor lightened up its rules just this past month, for example. Or you hear about Roger Sharpe and his ``called shot'' that ``saved'' pinball. And it always sounds like a funny moral panic. In loosening the pinball rules one of the Ann Arbor city councilmembers said something like, ``Heavens to Betsy, a pinball parlor!''
Thing is, when pinball was busy getting banned, it's because it was if not a gambling machine, at least awfully close to it. You put your nickel in and if you're lucky, you get a payout. Golden Harvest is one such game. There is no free play here; MJS set a cup full of nickels beside the machine so people could get their ten balls. And if you do it right, getting balls into the right combinations of holes, you get a payout of ten cents, fifteen, a quarter ... all the way up to $1.50, a rather nice 30x return.
As with all pinball, you get your points by completing sets of things. In this case, getting a ball in the 'Harvest Moon' hole up top and then combinations of, say, both cabbages or all three potatoes. Or all four ears of corn. For the higher payouts you need to not just get several targets, but targets that themselves can only be gotten by rebounding a ball from near the bottom of the playfield back up. I managed one of those shots, once, although not to get any of the other ears of corn that would get the $1.50 payout.
I did play several rounds, getting the basics down right. As with even modern pinball you want to launch the ball softly, just enough to get it into play. A fast ball rolls right over the holes it's supposed to drop into. And you have to nudge, patting the game to slow the ball and to guide it where you want. I never got it to a payout, but boy, it was hard not to think just one more game ...
Other people did get payouts, although I didn't get to see how the payout mechanism worked. Turns out there's a small tray underneath the coin slot that you slide out when you get your win. Here's a picture, not of MJS's setup, showing it slid out.
I've played other 1930s pinball machines, pre-flipper and pre-scoring-display and all that. But this is the first time I've played one that was an actual payout machine, ready to give you coins if you manage this game of skill luckily enough.
And now in the Ionia Free Fair we're on the verge of a major discovery. Does it come in this set of pictures? No, but there is a surprise anyway ...
Slightly better framing of the Welcome to Arnold Amusements Midways, in terms of centering the Ferris wheel behind it, but I think I'd have better picture if I had levelled on the sign rather than the horizon you can hardly see anyway. But look at that nice cloud too.
Don't have enough tickets for the carousel? For a quarter, or possibly more, you can get the coin-op ride of Star.
But here's the merry-go-round, far off from the band organ but pretty centrally placed anyway.
Huh. I would have sworn Phantom's Revenge was a kiddie coaster at Kennywood but, you know, seeing is believing.
And here's the Alien Abduction Gravitron, which ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger would not ride and which I wouldn't ask her to. But I like the planet stuff there.
Here's the Fun Slides, reenacting the dramatic Moon Gun launch of George Méliès's A Voyage To The Moon.
Trivia: V-E Day, the 8th of May, 1945, was Harry Truman's birthday. It was also the day an army truck finally moved the Trumans' household effects from Blair House to the White House. Source: 1945: The War That Never Ended, Gregor Dallas. Eleanor Roosevelt had needed twenty trucks to move her and Franklin Roosevelt's effects out.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Volume 60: Wimpy's Walking Handbags, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
