austin_dern

After MEW and the Traverse City players left the player roster at the Michigan Women's State Pinball Championship settled down. I don't believe anyone else left, simplifying the problem of keeping track of who was where in the tournament, and I was better able to keep up with the dwindling number of matches and tracking who was where. The Ypsi Pinball podcasters/streamers had stuff to talk about.

They also had someone to talk with. bunnyhugger joined them in the booth for what was initially meant to be just a couple minutes of talk about running the tournament. But as she ran out of matches to play --- and with fairly infrequent rulings to make --- she kept going back into the booth, enjoying the chance to talk about competitive pinball without obvious fear of the camera. I don't know what exactly she said --- I wasn't in places where I could hear what she was saying and I haven't gone back to watch the stream --- but she was happy about that, at least, as the day went.

Her tournaments. To win among the 9th-through-16th positions bunnyhugger faced, essentially, the problem of winning an eight-player bracket tournament. Four people declining to play out their ties should logically have resulted in a four-person tournament. But because the tiebreaker brackets were filled based on the original standings --- the loser of the 1st-versus-16th match played the loser of the 8th-versus-9th, that sort of thing --- two of the players who left early ``faced'' each other in the first round. The other two withdrawing players forfeited their matches to people who stuck around, and as the pigeon-hole principle tells us, that means two people who were there had to play a round. Effectively, two people of the four had to play more matches than anyone else. And guess who one of those two people was.

She won that match, a mere three-game one to keep the tiebreaker rounds from taking longer than the main tournament. And she won the three-game match after that. All on track to at least take the consolation of being top of the people knocked out first round. And then, I am sad to report and was sadder to witness, she lost the final round, closing out the tournament as second-best among the first-round losers. And to a person who played one less round than she had; it's very plausible that had we balanced things correctly she'd have won. She won enough games to.

Otherwise, let's see. Back in the main tournament --- which had four upsets of the eight matches its first round --- HLC went on to beat KEC, last year's runner-up. But HLC went on to lose to MLS, one of the stronger players and a good bet to be champion this or any year. (MLS was the only player the whole tournament to sweep an opponent four games to none. On the other hand she was also one of only two people to win a match in seven games.) I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved by that. There's a sense of dignity in losing to the person who ultimately wins the tournament --- she beat everybody, after all, in a sense, not just you --- but there's also a sense of turnabout-being-fair-play if she's beaten. But, between knocking out bunnyhugger and knocking out KEC --- probably the woman we're best friends with --- I was fine with HLC getting knocked out.

On the other side of the bracket JLL, the inaugural Michigan Women's State Pinball Champion, had several nice wins, going 4-2, 4-2, and then 4-1 to make finals. It'd be a tough match against MLS and not made any easier by bunnyhugger's laptop running critically low on battery again. I had to bundle everything up to put off in the corner where it could drink up electricity a while.

MLS took the first game, The Six Million Dollar Man, a game people on their scoresheets insisted on abbreviating as 6M$M, which never stopped annoying me. But JLL tied it up on Monster Bash. And then took a lead on The Beatles, giving both of them a good game like bunnyhugger should have had. MLS then tied it back up with Iron Maiden, a game that had been everywhere up to the pandemic and then just disappeared from venues. And that wouldn't be the last time we saw it that week.

Whoever won two of the next three games would win the tournament. And on a game of High Speed --- the late-solid-state precursor to Getaway --- JLL took a win that I didn't see a moment of because of the above power problems. And then came Sky Jump, the one-player electromechanical, and a game I realized I was kind of visible in the far background during streaming and tried to be invisible about. MLS put up a score of 24,130, which you'll remember is less than the 28,500 which lost bunnyhugger the game first round. More importantly here it's less than the 35,990 that JLL scored.

And so JLL won, becoming the first repeat women's champion for Michigan.

Congratulations and good feeling abounded, of course, as did a bunch of photographs. I got to use bunnyhugger's camera to take the official-for-the-tournament pictures of her handing the plaque to JLL, and the trophies to the top four finishers. I also got to bang into the streaming rig and the guy holding it, as he was trying to position the camera to record all of this from the exact spot it made sense for me to photograph things. (Especially as the streaming rig carries lights, offering the hope of a better photograph.)

And then, in not too much longer, people collected their payout checks, gathered up all their stuff, and cleaned up the tournament space. bunnyhugger returned the coin door key. We got stuff moved to the car and bunnyhugger indulged my desire to play some of the games in the non-tournament area. (I wasn't sure if I would be allowed to play any of the tournament games --- set on free play --- now that the tournament was over. Probably nobody would have cared but I didn't want to presume.) I even pressured bunnyhugger into playing this 90s Gottlieb game, Gladiators, which on The Pinball Arcade is one of my favorite tables. It's the rare 90s Gottlieb game that's got a fun theme and pretty well-balanced, enjoyable modes, a lot of fun. The real table plays rougher than the virtual table does but it still makes a good impression, and bunnyhugger seemed taken by it. It's a shame that Gottlieb --- which by then wsa reduced to boasting in its flyers how their games were UL-listed --- couldn't do more like this.

We ended up staying at Crazy Quarters Arcade pretty close to their closing hour, which you'd expect of us. And drove home, trying to convince bunnyhugger that she'd be champion again someday. If JLL can do it, after all, it's proven possible.

And now after a needless delay here's more of Dollywood, and let me remind you, this is the short day when we were there only a couple hours and still rode all but two of the roller coasters. None of which you have seen yet!

There's the Dollywood train 'Cinderella' starting out its track. If I remember correctly this is one that had been built around 1940 and used in building the Alcan highway.

The train is mostly single-tracked; here's the split used to make a turnaround by the Country Fair.

The next Roadside Attraction, and the one seen from below the hillside: the Sky of Many Colors, which is a great idea.

That's what the sky looks like above you. That's just good.

Just past the sky bunnyhugger stops to get a picture of the Largest Bean Can. I must in honesty report we don't know how large the bean inside is.

Non-working pond at the park, part of some nice scenery. I think the Loading Dock over there might be one of the places you can pick up cinnamon bread but can't swear my geography is correct.

Trivia: One of the Sanskrit words for 'Monday' was 'Somavara', meaning 'cool' and 'moist' and 'soma'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: The Lunar Landing Research Vessel, Gene J Matranga, C Wayne Ottinger, Calvin R Jarvis, with D Christian Gelzer. It's a pretty nice industrial-grade history like you'd expect from this genre of book but I am a bit surprised that unless I missed it they didn't answer why NASA figured they needed a free-flying testbed for practicing lunar approaches. Like, why wouldn't something tethered from a tower be doable with a lot less complication? I guess if they want to do a long descent there's no building a thousand-foot-tall tower for holding a mockup craft and maybe they figured they wouldn't be able to get the accelerations accurate enough to be worthwhile but surely someone asked if they can just put a cockpit on a bungee cord and had to be told why not.

First round! After the delays of getting started and the false start of having to tell people that they were entitled to practice time on the games, eight pairs of women went off to play games and, after two groups came back to ask how the game-picking routine worked again (bunnyhugger had just explained it) they were off. I settled in at bunnyhugger's computer to wait for results of the best-of-seven head-to-head matches.

Minor mistake on my part: I was just sitting there waiting for people to come back and give me results, like, game-by-game, which the computer could track. Nobody had any idea they should do that, and it took me a long while to realize I could go around and check scoresheets and enter what people had. (Though more than once people protested they weren't done yet.) This wasn't all that significant a delay except for how it frustrated Ypsi Pinball, who were livestreaming and trying to commentate on the tournament, and had no results to talk about except what they could see on the one livestreaming rig they had. (Pinball tournaments have taken to having a streaming rig, a sort of inverted U-shaped clip with cameras pointing at the score screen, the playfield, and the player. Everyone uses the same design that one guy, somewhere, figured out, because it fits most any venue and can be set up and disassembled for travel in a few minutes.) Things got better during the day, both in my peeping on tournament results and my passing notes to the streamers so they could provide reports.

The most important games were those bunnyhugger played, against HLC. HLC got the first pick of the games, the Metallica Remastered that took a table bunnyhugger was familiar with from a decade of it being around our local barcade, and whomped it with modern Stern Pinball video screens and all that to make it seem new. There are a couple changes in the scoring, and the playfield, particularly in the addition of a spinner on the right orbit that I believe juices multiball, and bunnyhugger hasn't got the hang of the new rules yet. HLC, however, has, and she took a huge lead on ball two that bunnyhugger couldn't expect to catch. Even if she hadn't been interrupted by ... I'm not sure. I think this might have been where one of the mid-era games, Whirlwind, suffered its first malfunction and she had to go make rulings on that.

Still. That's just one game, even if it starts with a loss. It was bunnyhugger's turn to get one of her games and she picked Sky Jump. This is one of the two electromechanical games in the venue, a single-player game on which she put up 28,500, suffering two or maybe three house balls in the process. Still, anyone can get house balls a lot on this era of game; it's why they're normally set to five-ball play in tournament settings. And her 28,500 would be a solid score, compared to what other players did during the day; there were, I think, only three or four other people all day who beat that on their game. The tragic thing is HLC was one of those people, putting up 38,360 which I believe was the highest score anyone put on the table. It's not good to take any losses, but to take a loss on your own pick is brutal.

HLC's pick. Embryon, the 1980-era prog-rock-themed game we mostly know from playing at tournaments in Fremont. I didn't see the game at all, because of its position and because I was now prowling and creeping on other scorecards. Also because I started to worry I was jinxing bunnyhugger by watching her progress. Maybe so: bunnyhugger won this game and was back in the running.

Next game, another of bunnyhugger's picks: The Beatles. I had seen a couple groups playing this already and nobody had put up a score more than about 1.1 or 1.4 million. bunnyhugger never falls short of two million on our home table and this was playing close enough to our home table that the win was all but sure. Except this time bunnyhugger has the ball take some bad bounces, first and second balls. And she's able to get one jackpot, I think, in All My Lovin' multiball, but that's not much. She finished at something like 1.2 million. HLC didn't do much the first two balls, but she got a couple of jackpots and took the win, not just on one of bunnyhugger's games, but on the bunnyhugger game.

Now came Creature from the Black Lagoon, another HLC pick. And a heck of a lot of distraction as one of the news crews came in, wanting attention and talk and footage. And if that weren't enough, Whirlwind malfunctioned again, and bunnyhugger had to decide to take the game out and to put Earthshaker in to take its place as a middle-era game. And to inform all the groups that they were allowed to re-pick their middle-era games that round if they wanted, even if they hadn't picked Whirlwind. And yet, despite all this pulling her in every direction, she played a god solid game, shooting up the middle until the points-generated Move Your Car mode started, and ended up winning in a walkoff. She was down three games to two, but that's something you can win from. And this past year bunnyhugger has been --- and has been getting known for being --- a rally player, someone who steps up when it's hard and pulls out a win. She could do this.

Afterwards, bunnyhugger would tell me, she should have changed her own middle-game pick to Earthshaker. While she hadn't touched it all weekend just on general principle she felt stronger on it than she felt on her pick, No Fear. It's a game I like --- it gave me a powerful lucky win at Pinburgh one year, and it plays well in The Pinball Arcade simulation --- but my enthusiasm and vague idea of what the heck I do exactly isn't very transmittable. HLC took a pretty big lead by the end of the second ball, but bunnyhugger --- switching from my advice to play modes to instead play multiball --- did the perfect thing on the third ball, bringing a mode into multiball, with the promise of scoring all the points.

She did not. She finished the ball something like sixty million points ahead of HLC. But sixty million points is not that many in No Fear. HLC could lose if she had a short enough ball and didn't get any modes started. But she did get a mode started, and she played it pretty well, and blew past bunnyhugger's score. Reigning champion bunnyhugger was knocked out in the first round, four games to two.

It was not going to be a merry ride home.

But what is merry, any time? A good day at an amusement park. Such as seen here, pictures from our first, partial, day at Dollywood. See for yourself:

The first thing you see inside the park! One of the multiple theaters --- we didn't get into this one --- and the photo spot for the park's entry. You can see one of the park photographers there. The Summer Celebration was the seasonal special event going on then.

To the left of that is the last thing you see inside the park, the Emporium gift shop that's also the exit. I assume you can exit without going through the gift shop too. I'm not sure what the building on the right there is. Oh, but say, you were wondering how summer is celebrated at Dollywood?

Well, here! They set up a bunch of ``Roadside Attractions'', such as this Kite Sky, with dozens of kites above the midway, just glowing in the brilliant light. It was gorgeous. There's no capturing the subtleties of color and shade this presented.

Another view of the kites, again trying and failing to get at the brilliance of the colors in the afternoon sky. There would be a bunch of ``Roadside Attractions'' along the park and you're going to see every single one of them. (Not really.) (Probably.)

Here's a more nearly attraction-free part of the midway. Note the Smokey Mountains in the background, smoking. (That's actually from the locomotive, the ride that Dollywood was built around.)

Oh, but, just before that next attraction we noticed this charming birdhouse with an outbuilding.

Trivia: Something like 930,000 Korean refugees were repatriated from Japan to Korea over the course of 1946, joining 630,000 who had been returned the year before. Source: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John W Dower.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 14: 1952, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

We set out early, but not horrifically early, Sunday the 19th, the last full day of Weimar America. The weather was never so bad that we had to drive up the night before and find a local hotel, the way we had for the 2019 and 2020 state finals. All that it was, was bitterly cold; I don't think the high for the day was 10 Fahrenheit and it was much less than that whenever we were outside.

When we got to the City Market, formerly the Bay City city market and now the Crazy Quarters Arcade plus some side gigs, we found a news van outside. Channel 5 Or Something news, not the station that bunnyhugger had done the morning show for on Friday, had come out, probably drawn by overhearing that there was a highly photographable event going on. So they were, and some of bunnyhugger's precious setup and preparation time was taken standing not too directly in front of a camera and trying to describe what was going on and that you, too, should definitely play pinball.

There would be more media coming around later in the day, with another TV news crew coming in the middle of the first round of the playoffs. So bunnyhugger had the extremely fun event of having to deal with, first, a game that needed some kind of ruling made, and second explaining to local TV news that pinball is a great pastime that you should definitely participate in, all while waiting to get back to a game where she expected to be knocked out. There was also some struggle as the news crew wanted footage of people playing but also had to follow direction to not get too near competitors and stay out of their lines of sight.

The answer, of course, was to follow the practice dating back to Edison Studios' astounding newsreel footage of the Spanish-American War, and that is, fake it. (Much footage of American forces invading Cuba was filmed in New Jersey.) They got a couple volunteers to stand at machines and play nothing particular while bunnyhugger answered a couple questions, and everyone agreed this didn't count as extra practice time for the extras. They also took some legitimate footage of the actual competition, from far enough away and behind the competitors that they wouldn't cause trouble. And so it is that the TV footage contains incidental pictures of bunnyhugger having an inadequate rally on skull-themed game No Fear.

Outside that, though, inspecting the games went just fine. There had been one game substitution the day before, as Stranger Things suffered a catastrophic malfunction requiring parts they didn't have to fix, and The Beatles came in as replacement. bunnyhugger counted this as maybe a saving moment as she is, if nothing else, reliably good on The Beatles. Fortunately PH made this choice of replacement game so she could not be accused of rigging the game list in her favor. A couple practice games confirmed that the Crazy Quarters table plays enough like our home venue's table that her reflexes should still count.

And there were reports that one of the early solid state games, Gottlieb's 1980 Circus, was not tilting. It's a widebody game, three inches wider than the standard game of that time (and of today, for that matter), so even if it wasn't tilting who could nudge it that far? The arcade owners swore it was tilting just fine and bunnyhugger tested it, satisfied the game gave warnings and tilts to reasonable shoves.

The owners also loaned bunnyhugger a key to the coinboxes, so that she'd be able to open up the games and free stuck balls. She told me she didn't know how to get a game opened up; apparently, I've been hogging the chances to open up our Tri-Zone pinball machine and she didn't know the magic. So I explained. Once you open the coinbox, you need to take off the lockdown bar. This is the strip of metal or heavy plastic across the front of the playfield. That's locked in place, and you just need to grab the lever handle underneath and swing it to the left, releasing the game body's grip on the lockdown bar. Take the bar off, slide the glass off, and the game is yours. She opened up The Beatles, to test this out, and could not find the lockdown bar's release lever.

Neither could I. It turns out that since the days of the 90s they've replaced the lever with a pair of thinner but long clips, attached to the front of the pinball machine's main box, on either side of the coinbox door. I had no idea either, and the arcade owner had to explain this and to show how to do it. Once she'd set fingers on the clips on either side of the coinbox door's interior she understood.

My recollection is she never had to open a game and remove the lockdown bar, but still, it's good to be ready.

Despite the Lions' loss the night before HLC arrived, checking in well before the deadline moment. So did all the other players who'd committed to attend, and the alternates went home, sad. (I'm surprised they didn't hang around to play in the open-to-the-public area, or stick around to watch and root for anyone, but I guess if they'd been there practicing for a couple hours already they might have had enough.)

bunnyhugger was as ready as could be to start the contest.

I bring you now ... the end of our day at Camden Park, starting with the reveal of what was hidden underneath that open panel in the welcome sign.

There's the secret of the open panel underneath the Camden Park sign! It's ... uh ... electrical boxes, like you'd probably guess was there. I'm not sure that they should be quite this exposed to the elements but I guess it's not like it's going to rain up into there and the neon lights aren't on much either.

The other side of the Camden Park clown and arrow. I wonder if the missing panel underneath the arrow was always missing or if it only recently (in the cosmic sense) left the sign.

Camden Park's entrance, with the rare chance to see lights and things illuminated.

Some of the clowns warning about acceptable dress in the park. Note that my shirt was not buttoned.

And what the heck, a photo of the park rules and refund policy and all that. We went on Saturday, the expensive day, although it's not that expensive and was certainly worth it.

And a last picture of the ticket booth and the entrance, as the park shuts down --- it was only a couple minutes until the staff were leaving for the night --- and we make ready to get dinner and sleep ahead of the long drive the next day.

Trivia: At his postwar trial Pierre Laval, prime minister of Vichy France, protested to the judges, ``You can condemn me! You can do away with me, but you do not have the right to vilify me!'' One of the jurors then shouted ``shut up, traitor!'' Laval screamed that he was a Frenchman who loved his country. The jurors shouted back that he was a ``bastard'' who ``deserved twelve bullets'' from the firing squad. Source: Year Zero: A History of 1945, Ian Buruma. Laval was executed, after a failed suicide attempt, eleven days after the start of the trial.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 14: 1952, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

In the weeks leading up to the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship bunnyhugger, as state representative, did a lot of work that doesn't get much acclaim. Some of it was finding all the women in the state who were qualified to play or were even remotely plausible alternatives. This brought the discovery that a lot of the women who were qualified or almost-qualified didn't have contact information with the International Flipper Pinball Association already, and so needed tracking down. This (in part) because while nobody was looking, Traverse City got a women's league that played each other enough that they started to earn some points despite having essentially no contact with the state's pinball community. There's often a competitor who isn't really known outside their home venue; what would happen when a quarter of the competition were people nobody else knew anything about? The answer may surprise you.

She also did the work of getting publicity. bunnyhugger made the reasonable supposition that the Bay City media might like to know about the women's pinball championship happening in town Sunday. She didn't tell them about the open tournament, happening Saturday, on the reasonable supposition that PH, running the open tournament, could handle his own publicity. He didn't, though; the local TV stations only found out about it from asides in her own discussions.

Then came the exciting news that one of the TV stations wanted to have bunnyhugger on, showing people how to play pinball, live and direct! Only they wanted her for the morning news. The very morning news, going on the air at 5:15 and coming back every half-hour until 6:45. I wasn't surprised that a TV station would send someone out for this; it's almost perfect human-interest material. I was surprised they'd want to interview her live instead of doing, you know, twenty minutes of talk the night before and have it safely on tape.

The big drawback here is that Bay City is like an hour and a half away. To be there --- as they hoped --- for 4:45 am, she'd have to leave here 3:15, and allowing for getting prepared in the morning that's reaching the point of not bothering going to bed. Add to that how she had a work meeting for 10 am --- and hoped to get back to the venue for practice in the evening --- and you see how that wouldn't happen. She made the excuse that the venue would have to open at that ridiculous hour, but the venue owners were happy to bring in a reporter to talk about how this fun, exciting event was going on right here.

So this is how bunnyhugger ended up getting a hotel in Bay City, none too far from the venue, and spending Thursday night hoping very much that some event wouldn't cancel the lighthearted fun segments of the morning news. While she got her most awkwardly scheduled night's sleep in a long while, I left the hallway light on back here, completely forgetting she wouldn't be coming upstairs and turning it off. Not the dumbest thing I did while she was away.

And this doesn't even cover things she had to do to prepare as a competitor.

Back to the Camden Park carousel for an evening picture here:

There's that chariot, seen in motion, so only the teeth are in focus. The ride operator's hopped into the middle of the ride, you can see.

There's the turquoise horse also in an attempt at a tracking shot. At least I got the poles in perfect focus.

And there's a tracking shot on another horse, getting good focus instead on the one that's half out of the frame. So it goes.

We took a ride on a chariot, and here's the view out looking to the north from on the ride. That's the toy shop outside the building, and if you see an overhang in the distance? That's where the park entrance is.

Looking over my shoulder at the horses behind us on our chariot ride.

And here's a look ahead, at the door into the ride's machinery and also the fire extinguisher.

Trivia: The first football match in Berlin after the surrender was played the 20th of May, 1945, in front of about ten thousand spectators. Source: Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II, Paul Betts.

Currently Reading: Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind, Art Friedman.

My humor blog this week has been one of me discovering things to my mild wonder and amusement. Plus, Mark Trail. Here's what you missed if you haven't been reading it on your RSS feed. But now is your chance to catch up, if you've been looking for that:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 6
• If I may explain myself
• Statistics Saturday: Some Aromatic Compounds With Names I Would Totally Believe Were Pokemon
• The Sweet Smell of Reading
• Huh, So That’s the Take They Went With?
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Why is Mark Trail in a lion house? July – September 2024
• New Universe of Numbers Hypothesized
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 7

And now on to more pictures from the Women's State Championship Series of pinball and maybe a surprise in the picture set. Hope you like!

bunnyhugger handing out payouts --- in envelopes, because she's classy --- to some of the competitors. Everyone who made it to finals won some money, although only the total pot that was paid as admission fees to that day. Next year the payout will include excises from every sanctioned women's event held in the state.

The last game. Nitro Ground Shaker was KEC's pick; the table would give bunnyhugger very many happy breaks. This is a picture of the stream and yeah, I'm amazed that the picture of a TV picture looks this good.

Decoration in the place. This is a bit of fan art that asks, what if we took some of the iconic images of (mostly) 90s Bally/Williams pinball games and made the guys look more aggressive and the women more sex?

One of the rows of games at the venue. The Genesis there is the one I learned that Pinburgh-useful trick for winning a game right when I needed to.

bunnyhugger mentioned knowing a guy whose friend circle had made an in-joke out of the short person raising his hand and masking a kissy face, so here's a bit of focus on that in case you want to do the same.

Oh yeah, in the other room, outside of tournament play, they had a game for anyone who was just there hanging out to play. The table also had had a bunch of things to eat, like little decorated cakes someone brought in, good stuff like that.

Some of the other, inactive, games in the other room. I don't know how many are waiting for repairs and how many are just off because there wasn't space for them.

The game bunnyhugger won on, with the final score. She got a lot of help from lucky scoop bounces.

After the event RLM and other people hanging out turned to playing a bit themselves, doing dollar games, that sort of thing.

Oh hey, here's dear Roger, wondering why he has to deal with a hard wood floor when he is clearly a rabbit.

Seriously, he couldn't believe we'd make him deal with that surface. Well, we eventually put a rug down for him to get better traction.

Roger considers the fireplace: is this a thing he should be getting into? (No.) Is it a thing he did get into? (Not this time, but I do have a picture of him sitting on the iron shelf for the wood there.)

Trivia: By 1830 Americans drank a per capita five gallons of alcohol each year, around triple the current averages. Source: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, Peter Andreas.

Currently Reading: Comic books (miscellaneous). I'll get to (specific) sometime.

Let me break format a little bit by bringing you the concluding round of the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship.

When KEC beat SJV she seemed surprised to have made it to finals. All the top four finishers were amazed they had gotten this far and were going home with not just money but also some hardware. The top finisher got a plaque, of course, but second through fourth got these nice rosette-bearing buttons bunnyhugger made. KEC was thrilled to think that her name was going to be on the banner, the one that hangs in the Clubhouse Arcade in Fremont where PH, state representative for the International flipper Pinball Association, has home base. She said she didn't even care if she won, getting her name on the banner was enough. She's a good enough sport I can somewhat believe that.

KEC had good narrative claim to the championship. She's been playing just forever, and has been steadily improving, like, all that while. I mean, everyone who takes pinball seriously improves, but usually they improve dramatically, reach a plateau of getting only a little better, then have another big jump, and another little plateau. KEC didn't; she's just gotten a little better steadily, never a big jump but never a plateau either. It's the sort of endurance that earns people PhD's.

And she also has a narrative claim to the championship in her service to women's pinball, particularly in Grand Rapids, where she organized and built to a healthy base the Bells and Chimes women's club. She's stepping down as head of that club, saying that it's to free up the time she spends on this. Maybe so. I have the secondhand, vague impression there are club politics she's decided she is not getting paid to deal with, which is also a valid reason to bow out, but a sad one. I hope she feels appreciated for her work.

Now on to pinball, though. For the first and only time this tournament bunnyhugger was not the high seed. KEC was. bunnyhugger, keeping the scoresheet --- she likes doing this, as do I, because we both know we do this right --- accidentally writes KEC's game picks on the wrong side, so used is she to having the high-seed side of the sheets.

The first game would be bunnyhugger's old-era game, Fast Draw, so as you already know she won that. Hopeful start; while you can't win or lose the match in the first three games, starting on a win does feel better. The second game was KEC's pick of a modern game, 007 James Bond. Once more bunnyhugger can't seem to get the multiball going, and KEC beats her out. It's tough being 1-1, but bunnyhugger's been there before.

The next game is bunnyhugger's pick of a middle-era game, The Shadow. And this time the weed of crime breaks her way, letting her get up two games to one. KEC's middle-era game is the next pick, Torpedo Alley. This is a late-80s Data East game that's kind of cheesey but we like it. The theme is something or other about sinking ships, which you do by collecting sets of targets and shooting scoops and ramps. The art suggests your ship's populated entirely by perky, slender women in body-fitting white outfits that seem like they're from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture era. The sound chip starts your game with Anchors Aweigh, and it bids the captain farewell when your last ball ends. It's everything bunnyhugger wants in a game, but it's also one KEC has specialized in; she kept taking people to it. bunnyhugger enjoys her game, not least because for the first time --- with all other play finished --- she can hear all the sounds and music and callouts and be delighted by them anew. But she can't manage a critical ramp shot, leaving her with only about three-quarters the score KEC tosses off. 2-2, with the championship now a best-of-three match.

On to bunnyhugger's last pick, the modern-era Foo Fighters. Once again bunnyhugger can't get mode and multiball working together the way they should. It doesn't matter. She beats KEC and now needs only one win in the next two games. At this point I'm nervous, and while I know how bunnyhugger is feeling, I don't go and add to her troubles by talking with her about it.

KEC's last pick --- unless it goes to game seven --- is her old-era game, Nitro Ground Shaker. It's a 1980 Bally game, one where you build the bonus by shooting spinners and then collect the bonus during the ball by shooting scoops on the side. And --- and this is important --- build up your bonus multiplier by shooting a scoop at the top center of the table, like all pinball games had from 1974 through 1980, when the correct light is lit. Every spinner spin changes which of three lights is lit, so you can shoot up there a lot of times without getting it. During the open finals the night before we watched with increasing anxiety as --- I'm going to say MSS, and if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter --- kept making perfect shots that came in one switch too many or too few.

bunnyhugger has no such problem, especially on ball two. It's as though the game recognizes an old friend and wants to set out its most generous spread. Some games are like that. She doesn't just get the bonus multiplier from the center. The pop bumpers keep shooting the ball into the bonus-collect scoops, and the bonus-collect scoop shoots the ball back into the bumpers for a return. Nitro Ground Shaker has decided whatever else happens, it wants to give points to bunnyhugger, and she barely has to give it anything.

bunnyhugger wins, four games to two.

KEC is a gracious loser, of course; she's possibly got the best spirit of sportsmanship in Michigan pinball. bunnyhugger is a gracious winner, or trying to be; she realizes too late that there's no way to give herself the plaque without it looking awkward. Someone suggests giving it to last year's winner (JLL, who came in sixth, this time) to present to bunnyhugger and that's what they go with, although it has the effect of bunnyhugger handing this plaque to someone who passes it right back while people try to get their phones to focus. They organize for pictures, RLM taking some, me taking others (with bunnyhugger's camera). At least one of the photos of the top four finishers gets sent to that Kalamazoo TV station that sent the reporter/camera person.

Someone calls for the ``women of RLM amusements'' to gather for a group photo. Grand Rapids players are the biggest group of the top sixteen --- we counted ten who could call it one of their regular venues, bunnyhugger included --- although bunnyhugger isn't confident she's counted as one of that gang and doesn't get into the group picture. And worries about the fairness or exclusiveness of having just this group gathered.

Things wind down for the next hour or so, people saying their goodbyes and thanks and congratulations and thanking bunnyhugger for running the tournament so well and RLM for all the work he did in the facility and the streaming and all. A couple people also thanked me for my work in filling out scorecards and updating the standings on bunnyhugger's computer and nobody blamed me to my face for messing up the consolation bracket rules. And as the leftover brownies were taken out of the other room, and the handful of remaining folks started going to dollar games, we thanked everyone and drove back home.

That evening bunnyhugger found the Kalamazoo station's article and was thrilled by most of it. There were a couple points she disliked, things where the phrasing was unclear about when the women's finals started, that kind of thing. She did the digging around it took to find who to contact about corrections, and was flabbergasted when two hours later the article was corrected. We had both assumed that any corrections would be made Monday during regular office hours, if ever. So the day finished with that additional, small triumph. Never saw it coming.

Now, just a half-dozen KennyKon/Kennywood pictures. If I'm breaking Thursday format let's break it all the way.

A block of the park has been re-themed as ``Area 412'' (guess what Pittsburgh's area code is), with a space theme. This gift shop had been there before, but now it's remade to look like a flying saucer and took that on so well I forgot it ever hadn't been a flying saucer.

Big alien sculpture outside Spinvasion, one of the new rides. They're a Thunderbolt fan, which is a good solid choice. You can't go wrong with liking any of the wooden coasters at Kennywood or, with few exceptions, anywhere else.

Here we're going to Grand Prix for one of the Informal Take Over Times, where a bunch of KennyKon attendees just get in line for the same ride and try to go on it together. We did pretty well with the bumper car ride.

... The bumper cars seem more crowded when you're on the floor. I don't know. The panels in back remain remarkably fairground-style. The second-from-the-right picture seems to be of a Roll-O-Plane, which Kennywood hasn't had since 2003.

A ride I pushed to make sure we didn't miss was the Old Mill, the tunnel-of-love ride, which depending on how you count things exactly has been running since 1901. It's been re-themed several times over its history and spent a couple decades as Garfield's Nightmare For Some Reason, but now it's back to a more traditional and unbranded ride.

But before we get on that --- it's time for photos with Cowboy Joe, a sculpture on a bench that's been there since 1960 posing for photos. (Or, this particular one, since 2009 when the current, nonsmoking, fiberglass model was put in place.)

Trivia: In 1863 Urbain LeVerrier (discoverer of Neptune) began publishing a daily weather map. Source: A History of the United States Weather Bureau, Donald R Whitnah.

Currently Reading: Matariki: The Star of the Year, Rangi Matamua.

Second round, and what bunnyhugger claimed beforehand was as far as she wanted to get. This round was up against TLH, a Grand Rapids regular --- Grand Rapids regulars, turns out, made up something like ten of the sixteen competitors --- and a solid enough player. Her mid-era game is first: Genesis, the odd Metropolis-themed game. The trick I learned --- from RLM, who used to bring this table to tournaments --- and used to win second place at Pinburgh D Division of hitting the drop targets up front won't work here. Completing the set would give only a fraction the progress that Pinburgh's table did, not enough to make the risk worthwhile. bunnyhugger has good control, though, and takes a win.

bunnyhugger's old-era game, Fast Draw, is next, and of course she takes a win. On to TLH's old-era game, Flash, an early solid state machine. This is not the Flash Gordon machine (RLM doesn't have one, but does have Buck Rogers there), but one with a god-of-storms theme. I am good about not hovering near my wife, lest I jinx her, but she wins on this game too. And then on to bunnyhugger's middle-era game, The Shadow.

It may strike you that she picked Fast Draw and The Shadow last round too. So she did; while you could not repeat a game within a match against a particular opponent, you were allowed to pick the same games in successive rounds. bunnyhugger had her preferred picks for old, middle, and new-era games and picked the same ones each round. I imagine she had backups in mind, in case one of the tables was picked by her opponent, or if the table went down mid-tournament. (Her preferred choice for mid-era game, the Royal Rumble pro wrestling-themed game, had gone down Friday night or Saturday morning and was out of action, in fact, which is how The Shadow got place of pride.)

Well, The Shadow was kind to her, one of the two times the weed of crime bore fruit she kind of liked. And so her second round was a perfect sweep, 4-0. bunnyhugger was now in the final four. I thought this a great relief in that if she lost in the next round, she wouldn't be kicking herself for faceplanting. She would only be kicking herself for falling just short of finals.

Before going on to semifinals, and a more complicated adventure, let me put in two things that don't chronologically fit but will let me balance out word lengths.

First is food. We didn't think to pack foods for the day, only heading out with a sandwich each that we ate on the drive over. RLM Amusements doesn't have a kitchen. Ah, but in the next room --- ordinarily closed to all but staff, but today open to all --- was a table set up with wonderful three-inch square pans of brownies. One of the Grand Rapids women has a baking side(?) hustle and she brought in a couple of flavors. More than could be eaten during the event, in fact, even allowing that the rocky road brownie, protected as it was by chocolate chips and marshmallows and all, was nearly impossible to open with the plastic forks available to us. We'd eat a couple there, and take some home for coffee break later.

Second is administrative. The IFPA provided nice blank forms for seven-game matches, and bunnyhugger printed out enough copies for all the games, both winner and consolation brackets. ... We thought. As we got into the last games I noticed we were going to be two or three sheets short. I imagine a couple of people lost their sheets and then grabbed new ones without my noticing, but I don't really know. I snagged RLM in one of the few gaps between his commenting on the stream and getting stuck balls loose. He didn't have a printer, but he had a photocopier and I had blank sheets and we got through the tournament with several spares.

Tomorrow: More pinball!

Today: more KennyKon of July. And the mysterious gathering on the Thunderbolt infield:

People walking their way past the big T inclined flowerbed.

And here's what we're there for: the group picture! You can just barely make out a camera guy in the distance, on top of the ladder there. Also you can see bunnyhugger facing the wrong way. (Not sure if this is just before or just after the picture was taken.)

Couple of people looking at the Thunderbolt supports, from a view we, like, never get to have.

OK, this has to be the group photo, or close to it. See how bunnyhugger is facing the correct way again?

And here she gets some pictures of Thunderbolt from the inside.

We take dueling pictures of the slightly inclined T flowerbed.

Trivia: In the 1920s landscape architect Ernest Herminghaus recommended that, as an aide to aviators, airfields be planted with geometric flower beds to guide their approaches and ranges. For Kansas City's Fairfax Airport he extended the axis of the main runway with a 150-foot-long reflecting pool filled with water lilies and fountains, and with patterns of tulips, petunias, and roses guiding toward the field. Source: Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure, Alastair Gordon.

Currently Reading: Matariki: The Star of the Year, Rangi Matamua.

Carrying on with the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship, even though it's a Sunday: we got to the venue, RLM Amusements, about fifteen minutes or so after it opened, and nearly two hours before the scheduled start of the tournament. This gave bunnyhugger some time to check the games out and even try them herself, for the first time in nearly a day and a half, before her responsibilities as tournament director would take priority.

And she had some time to learn of tournament-running stuff. Confirming that RLM was going to be able to stream the tournament, for example. (You can watch the whole stream here, at least for now. bunnyhugger can be identified as wearing her KN-95. You might spot me in the background, wearing an N95 and cover to that, making it weird by trying not to be weird.) Learning that there was a news reporter from a Kalamazoo station making the hourlong drive up. (Grand Rapids stations were interested in the open tournament but didn't take the bite for this.) You can see that, at least for now, over here at WMMT's web site, including pictures taken at the end of the tournament.

The guy they sent hadn't known what he was being sent to Grand Rapids for, and wasn't looking forward to it, until he learned it was a pinball thing and that sounded like fun. So it was, although the first time he interviewed bunnyhugger --- in the middle of her first round of live play, so her opponent waited patiently for this --- he failed to turn the camera on and didn't realize until he bumped the camera and it went rotating. Fortunately as someone who's taught the same class as many as three times in a row bunnyhugger can repeat herself without making it sound too rehearsed.

RLM would serve as the backup tournament director. Usually and in lower-stakes tournaments I serve as bunnyhugger's backup, there to make rulings and direct players in a match that involves her. But who's going to be confident in the tournament director's husband that more than half the competitors have never seen before? RLM, who runs high-value tournaments every week at his place, and who isn't related to any of the competitors except by friendship, was the better choice all around. Also since he owns the venue he has keys to save stuck balls, which he'd end up doing a lot over Sunday too. RLM would also do color commentary for the live stream; he's one of the voices you'll hear on that Twitch recording a lot.

But what could I do, then, besides drive bunnyhugger home and tell her no, she hadn't lost the tournament yet? For one, updating partial results. I'd spend a lot of the day walking around, checking the results sheets people filled out, and entering them in the online system so people watching at home could know, roughly, the state of all eight (then four, then two, the one) matches.

For another, directing traffic. Whenever anyone finished a match both winner and loser would need to know where to go, who they would play next. Winner was easy: the online MatchPlay system would tell you which match you had to wait for to see who your new opponent was. Loser, though, was harder. Though each match had a number, there are a lot of pinball players who don't grasp that the loser of (say) match 5 should go down the brackets to the line marked L5, instead of just putting themselves on whatever the first blank line they saw was.

And we had little online support for this: Matchplay doesn't keep any track of what to do with anyone not competing for the top four slots. The only brackets we could find that describe how to place everyone so that, like, who gets 13th and who gets 16th place makes sense aren't stored anywhere official, not even at places like PrintMyBrackets.com. They're passed around in one step above samizdat publication and I hope we don't lose them before next year again.

Another thing I could do: misinform players! This was an outgrowth of the banks system that IFPA set on the coed and the women's tournaments. Before the start of each best-of-seven match, both the higher and lower seeds would pick three games, one from each bank, no duplicates. Then they'd take turns picking one game from the higher seed's selections, one game from the lower seed's. So each player was guaranteed to pick at least two games. If the match was tied after six games, the higher seed got a pick. (There are more complications to this, none of which matter.)

Ah, but what about if you've already lost a round, and so are no longer in the running for the #1 position? Well, those in the ``Consolation Bracket'' or as some called it the ``Losers Bracket'' would play best-of-three matches, the better to get some more pinball in without spending all day fighting over fifteenth place. How were games picked there, though?

As bunnyhugger explained the process to the players, that those in the Consolation Brackets would take turns high-seed/low-seed just as the winners did (although they didn't need to pick their games before the match got under way), one of the guys hanging around in support of their partners interrupted. He was quite sure that was not correct, and rather than go on about it bunnyhugger promised to check with the IFPA Tournament Directors Discord to confirm she'd understood the process correctly.

Well. It turns out that the IFPA does not care what you do with players from 5th on. They only really care about which round people go out in, and the positions can be settled however the tournament director likes. bunnyhugger decided they would use the same process that the 'Bronze Match', for 3rd and 4th players, would. Which I understood to be, higher player picked a game, lower player picked a game, and if a third game was needed whoever lost game two picked game three.

This was wrong. What bunnyhugger wanted --- and thought she had specified by saying it was done ``like in Lansing league finals'' --- was that loser picks every game after the first. So, loser of game one picks game two, and loser of game two picks game three. And it was several rounds into the Consolation Brackets before we realized I had been giving wrong instructions and, worse, contradictory instructions to what bunnyhugger had.

There wasn't much to do besides tell everyone I had misinformed that I screwed up and here's what they should be doing. bunnyhugger worried that this would reflect badly on her, and worse, that people might insist on their right to redo any and all rounds marred by my screwup. Fortunately, nobody did. That all the players were, if competitive, still amiable and friendly helped. That there wasn't any money on the line for anyone 5th through 16th must have helped too. Next year we're definitely getting this written out ahead of time and not trusting me to understand instructions.

KennyKon pictures: let's see some more of Steel Curtain, again before the park was even open for the day.

Another test train, starting the steeper-than-average lift hill on Steel Curtain.

And there it goes over the banana roll here.

Just looking over at the turnaround for Racer again, but from a higher vantage point, so the coaster itself looks like it's peeking over the fence.

Almost ready for our ride! I was so nervous at whether the con badge would hold on through the ride. Also, I didn't register that the seats were football-themed at first.

Looking over the other end of the launch station. The gift shop is a big one and made to look like a stadium which is the sort of idea that seems like a lot of fun until you realize that even in the modern era of sports facilities that look like stuff, football stadiums aren't that much fun from the outside.

And here's the loading of the next group, after we'd had our ride. It's a fun ride, but it's not going to displace the Racer, in the background, as ride we run not walk to avoid missing. The 'Danger No Step' corner at the end of the platform is normal for this sort of thing and note that there is a bit of fencing there to protect someone from accidentally plunging in a bad spot. No, that is not Cookie Monster waiting for the next train's front-seat ride.

Trivia: Nikola Tesla's first American patent, a commutator for a dynamo electric machine, was issued the 26th of January, 1886. Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes. (He would collect two more before mid-March.)

Currently Reading: Matariki: The Star of the Year, Rangi Matamua.

The run-up to the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship had two major pinball-relevant threads for bunnyhugger. One was in her role as the International Flipper Pinball Association representative for the state. That is, the business of running the tournament. The easy part was picking where to hold the tournament; as she did last year, she used the same venue that the open, coed tournament would the day before. Easier to be sure the games are up to serious tournament state. And this year, held in Grand Rapids, not unbearably far for the players from the eastern Michigan scene. Home venue for most of the western Michigan players, but that's a risk of putting the tournament anywhere.

Sending out invitations to everyone who was qualified, and getting replies, and getting a safe number of alternates is the sort of administrative work bunnyhugger is good at. Getting people to actually commit was ... less bad than you'd think; most of the people who were in range knew they wanted to play, and it's just the couple of last-minute withdrawals that scrambled things.

Media relations turned out to be a solved problem. RLM, the proprietor of RLM Amusements where both coed and women's tournaments were held, tried getting any press he could interested in things. A Grand Rapids station was up for the coed tournament. For some reason the women's tournament got a camera guy from Kalamazoo, which is a whole different metropolitan statistical area, but, all right. He also set up Facebook event page thingies that among other things set the time for the women's tournament. I had thought the IFPA dictated the date and time for the start of the tournament but it turns out no, just the date. The time ended up being noon, which bunnyhugger was fine with, and we assume it was what the coed tournament used. (We don't know if RLM singlehandedly set the time for that or if he was going by what PH, the state coed IFPA representative, wanted.) Going to have to jump on it next year to make sure it's declared by bunnyhugger, or the IFPA, though.

And then there's things to award the winners. The big thing was the official plaque from the IFPA. That arrived early last week, in time, though weeks after the coed tournament plaques went out and a week or more after some states got theirs. Last year, bunnyhugger pressed and gave out buttons to everyone participating and she figured to do the same --- including fancier buttons for the higher finishers --- but tragedy struck. After a year plus of button-making the supply that came with the original button-pressing kit ran out. She tried getting some blanks from Michael's, but these ones were just barely different enough in size that they didn't press convincingly. Or after having got button-pressing down to a rhythm she fumbled the process three times in a row. All she could do is make buttons for only the second-through-fourth finishers and hope nobody from fifth through 16th felt cheated.

Oh, and there's cash. IFPA-sanctioned coed events have, for years now, all paid one dollar per person excise, forming a pot of money to award the state and national champions. (The thinking here is that having money on the line will make the competitions grow. I agree with this principle, but we are headed for a major scandal now that there's thousands of dollars to be had.) Starting with 2024's tournaments, the IFPA is extending this to women's tournaments, so there should be more money given as awards in January 2025, all going well.

But for now, the money paid out would be from what the women attending paid going in, $20 per person times 16 players. The top four players would split this $320 pot. bunnyhugger, flush with cash for reasons that need not concern you, figured it was easier if she made up the envelopes with the payouts ahead of time and repaid herself with the entry fees. She even saw this as a great way to use up a hundred dollar bill that's been a minor white elephant since someone used it to buy admission to one of her paid tournaments. The first place finisher was getting $128, so this made a conveniently slim envelope and the overlarge bill could be someone else's problem.

So that's all the couple days leading up to the tournament, in her role as tournament director. What about in her role as player?

Going to continue that second trip in the Ghostwood Estates. Sad to say this is still with my camera on bad settings that cause everything to be more blurry than should be for the 2020s, but what choice do I have except to share what I have and be ready for the next walk-through tour at KennyKon 2038?

Some more of the second but worse-photographed Ghostwood Estates walkthrough. Here's a suit of armor embedded in the wall; I think that it drops down toward the car when the target is hit. Not positive.

At that turn-around spot, with the emergency exit and with the wheelbarrow, there's this music case. Not sure if it has an instrument inside; I didn't feel like it was safe messing around with the props.

And this time I did think to look on top of the hearse and found it doesn't have a top!

One of the last props is this video screen. Notice the 'PLAY' text on its side there.

And back outside already!

A farewell picture, from the level of the platform as I went downstairs. Boy, imagine this photo if anything particular in it were in focus, though. Too bad.

Trivia: George and Richard Cadbury laid the first brick for the Bournville factory, four miles outside Birmingham, in January 1879, though building only started in earnest in March, and steady rains left the construction site a muddy quagmire for a long while. Source: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between The World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, Deborah Cadbury.

Currently Reading: The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts, Loren Grush.

The great storm has, as of this writing, been a bit of a bust. We've got freezing rain, yes, and I will agree it'd be awful to go driving in this. And our cars are glazed over. But the promised Brobdingnagian snowfall hasn't arrived, and doesn't seem likely to before the temperature jumps (briefly) to the mid-40s tomorrow. It's absolutely right that bunnyhugger stayed home, as it would have been horrible to do a long-distance drive through this. But me, for a two-mile drive? I could certainly have made it in the morning and the way things looked at actual 4:30 pm? That would have been a little slow but probably not bad, given that nearly all this would be on a major road. I feel a bit like I wasted the chance to show when I'd draw the line at going in for safety reasons.

While upstairs, talking on the phone with my dad, I heard this terrible thunderous crash that I take to be a tree falling under the weight of ice and frozen rain. I can't see anything from the house, but that's not much of a range. And bunnyhugger didn't hear anything, a surprise considering she's much more sensitive to sounds than I am. But if it were a few blocks away I'd have a clearer line of sound to the origin. Tomorrow or Friday, when the sidewalks are not sheets of wet ice, we can prowl around and look for signs of something exciting having happened.

Now for the excitement of something happening a month ago: the Women's State Pinball Championship draws to an end! Let's give the exciting action some attention.

Never mind the exciting action here. You see this Atlantis, a late-solid-state game with alphanumeric displays? You notice the replay score there, ``beat 7,859,221 for 3 replays''? Well, (nearly) all pinball scores end in zero. The 1 there is a little hack to allow the game to show scores between ten and a hundred million. The 1 at the end means to read this score as 17,859,220. Why not, you may ask, just make the minimum score 1 instead of 10 points and avoid the inconvenient hack and the answer is but then the scores would be one-tenth as big as they are. (Though Jersey Jack games have mostly gone for 1-point scoring and people don't mind that much.)

Finals going on, and drawing a couple people out to watch the action.

Totally not creeping on the action here.

Triumph! The top four pose for group photos.

And bunnyhugger proclaims the spell which ends the tournament and shrinks her computer to the size of a tablet.

Trivia: The ``Ford'' of Libby-Owens-Ford, a major glassmaking firm (since bought out by the Pilkington Group and, in turn, Nippon Sheet Glass) was a Detroit-area family of chemical manufacturers unrelated to the carmaker Fords. They owed their prosperity to the salt beds of the Wyandotte area. Source: Ford: The Men and the Machine, Robert Lacey. (Wikipedia notes the Libbey-Owens was the first company to produce automotive laminated safety glass, getting a contract to supply Model A windshields. Libbey-Owens merged with the Edward Ford Plate Glass Company in 1930.)

Currently Reading: Suddenly, Tomorrow Came: A History of the Johnson Space Center, Henry C Dethloff. NASA SP-4307.