At the age of seventeen, whilst looking through a Trading Post paper I spotted an ad for a pinball machine for sale. Right up until that point it had never really occurred to me that someone could actually OWN one of these things, I just saw them as being only something a business owner could possess, not a mere mortal like teenage me. A couple of hours later, to my mother's abject horror, I returned home with a 1969 Gottlieb Mibs that I paid the princely sum of $50 for. It didn't work, but I tinkered for a couple of weeks and it came back to life. My mother slowly came around to the fact that this spawn of lucifer was dwelling under her house, and about six months later I came home early one day to find both my parents playing the thing, so its safe to say they came around to it eventually. In fact it was my father that found my next two machines for me.

Since that joyous day in the late 80s when I bought that first machine I have owned many machines since then, and still have twelve set up and playing at home today. Like my cars, these electro-mechanical works of wonder have bought me untold pleasure over the years, and even all these years later there is rarely a day when Ruth and I don't play them. Some days I just go down and look at them, standing in wonderment at the sight before me as I did as a child, except with the pride and almost disbelief that I actually own these incredible babies myself.

I am also probably the only person in the world who thinks of pinball when he hears German folk music.