Pinball, 1973

17

The three-flipper "Spaceship," somewhere she kept calling me. For days and days, she called.

With devastating speed, I finished the mountain of work that had piled up. No more lunch breaks for me, no more playing with the Abyssinians. I spoke to no one. The office girl would come in to check on me from time to time, only to walk out again shaking her head in exasperation. I'd finish a day's work by two in the afternoon, throw the manuscripts on the girl's desk, and fly out of the office. Then I'd go around to game centers throughout Tokyo, just looking for my three-flipper "Spaceship." But it was no use. Not a soul had seen or heard of it.

"A four-flipper 'Underground Explorers' won't do? Brand-new machine, just in," one game center owner said.

"Afraid not, sorry."

He seemed a little disappointed.

"How about a three-flipper 'Southpaw,' then? Gives you the bonus light on cycle hits."

"I'm really very sorry, but I'm only interested in the 'Spaceship'."

So he did what he could. He gave me the name and phone number of a pinball fanatic acquaintance of his.

"This guy might know something about the machine you're looking for. He's a regular encyclopedia, probably the most up on any machine in the catalogue. Kinda strange character, though."

"Thanks," I said.

"Nah, don't mention it. Hope you find it."

I went into a quiet little coffee shop, dialed the number. Five rings and a man answered the phone.

In the background I could hear the NHK seven o'clock news and a baby crying.

"I'd like to ask you about a special pinball machine, if I may," I declared after giving my name.

For a while, there was total silence on the other end of the line.

"What kind of machine might that be," said the man, turning down the sound of the television.

"A three-flipper 'Spaceship'."

The man gave it a thoughtful hmm.

"With planets and a rocketship painted on the board – "

"I know it," he interrupted, then coughed. He spoke like a teacher straight out of graduate school.

"Nineteen sixty-eight model by Gilbert & Sands, Chicago, Illinois. Of some fame as an illfated machine."

"Ill-fated machine?"

"Well, how about it?" he said. "Worth your while to get together and talk?"

We decided to meet the following evening.

* * *

After exchanging name cards, we gave the waitress our order. Two coffees. I was taken aback to find out he was a university lecturer. Somewhere in his thirties, his hair was beginning to thin, but his body looked strong and tanned.

"I teach Spanish at the university," he said "It's like sprinkling water over the desert."

I nodded eagerly.

"Get any Spanish work at your translation service?"

"I handle English, another guy does French. And that's almost more than we can manage."

"Unfortunate," he said, with his arms crossed.

Although it didn't seem so unfortunate to him at all. He fiddled around with the knot in his tie a while.

"Ever been to Spain?" he asked.

"No, unfortunately not," I said.

The coffee came and that ended our discussion of Spain. We drank our coffee in silence.

"The Gilbert & Sands Company is what you might call a latecomer to pinball," he began suddenly. "From World War II through the Korean War they were mostly involved with making bomb bay mechanisms. When the Korean operations ended, they took it as sign to diversify into other fields. Pinball machines, bingo machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, popcorn vendors – your so-called peace-time industries. They came out with their first pinball machine in 1952. Wasn't bad. Real sturdy, cheap pricetag. But not a particularly interesting machine. Or rather, as the article in Billboard put it, 'A pinball machine like a Soviet government issue woman's army brassiere.' Nonetheless it did quite well as a business venture. They exported it to Mexico, then to all of Latin America. Countries where there aren't many special technicians so they're happier with sturdy machines that don't often break down than with ones with complicated mechanisms."

He paused long enough to drink some water. It was a real pity he didn't have a slide projection screen and a long pointer.

"However, as you know, the pinball industry in America – that is to say, the whole world over — is all sewed up by four companies Gottlieb, Bally, Chicago Coin, and Williams – the so-called Big Four. Gilbert tried to punch its way in. Put up a good fight for five years. Then in 1957, Gilbert pulled out of pinball."

"Pulled out?"

He nodded and dourly drank the dregs of his coffee, then wiped his mouth with a handkerchief a couple of times. "Yeah, they gave up. The company itself was turning a profit, what with the Latin American exports and all. But they just decided to get out while the going was good, before their wounds got too deep. It turns out pinball manufacturing is a complicated business, and requires a lot of know-how. You need a team of crack technicians, and you need a supervisor to coordinate them. Next you need a nationwide network. And agents to continually stock your parts, along with enough repairmen to get to any broken machine within five hours. Well, unfortunately, our newcomer, Gilbert, didn't have what it took. So they simply swallowed their tears and withdrew, and for seven years they stuck to making vending machines, and windshield wipers for Chrysler. But that didn't mean they'd given up on pinball."

At that he pursed his lips. He took a cigarette out of his jacket pocket, tamped the end on the table-top, and lit up.

"No, they hadn't given up. They had their pride, you know. R&D was underway at an underground workshop. They secretly rounded up experts who'd left the Big Four, and formed their own project team. What's more, they gave them a huge research budget for their mission to make a machine that'd be more than a match for anything the Big Four had. And within five years, no less.

"That was in 1959. Those five years the company put to good use. Using their other products, they set up the perfect network that covered everywhere from Vancouver to Waikiki. Now all the preparations were complete.

"They came out with their first new model on schedule in 1964. It was called the 'Big Wave'."

He pulled a black scrapbook out of his leather briefcase, opened the pages, and handed it over to me. There, he'd pasted what seemed to be a magazine clipping, complete with a frontview photo of the "Big Wave," a field chart and board design, even an instruction card.

"This was a truly unique machine. Full of all sorts of gimmicks which had never been seen before. Like the selectable sequence patterns, for one. With the 'Big Wave,' you could choose the pattern best suited to your own technique. This machine caused quite a commotion.

"Of course, these ideas the Gilbert Company came up with have now become commonplace, but at the time they were state-of-the-art innovations. Moreover, the machine was extremely well built. In the first place, it was built to last. Where Big Four jobs might give out after three years, this could last a good five years. In the second place, it was geared to technique, rather than luck. After that, Gilbert brought out a number of famous machines along the same lines–the 'Oriental Express,' 'Sky Pilot,' 'Trans-America' – all highly acclaimed among true enthusiasts. The 'Spaceship' was their last model.

"The 'Spaceship' was a major switch from the previous four machines. Where those four had been packed solid with innovation upon innovation, the 'Spaceship' was frightfully orthodox and simple. There was not a single device the Big Four hadn't already used. On the contrary, you might even say the machine was really meant as a challenge to the Big Four on their own terms. They'd gained self-confidence by then."

He spoke slowly, enunciating every word. I kept nodding as I drank my coffee. I drank water when the coffee was gone, then smoked a cigarette when there was no more water.

"The 'Spaceship' – now there was a curious machine. Nothing that would really grab you at first sight. But give it a play and there's something different about it. Same flippers, same targets as all the others, but something's different. That something possessed people like a drug. I don't know why. But I do have two reasons for calling the 'Spaceship' an ill-fated machine. The first being that people never fully understood its greatness, and by the time they did begin to understand, it was too late. The second was that the company went bankrupt. They overdid it on the conscientiousness. Gilbert was absorbed by one of your conglomerates. Whereupon the head office said there was no need for a pinball division. And that was that. A total of fifteen hundred 'Spaceships' were produced, which explains why today they are regarded with such awe, and why in America fanatics will offer two thousand dollars for a 'Spaceship.' Not that there are any up for sale."

"Why is that?"

"Because nobody wants to let go of one. Nobody's capable of letting one go. A curious machine, that."

He looked at his watch out of habit when he finished, then smoked his cigarette. I ordered a second cup of coffee.

"How many machines were imported into Japan?"

"I looked into it. Exactly three."

"That's all?"

He nodded. "That's because there wasn't any route to Japan for Gilbert products. In sixty-nine, one import agency brought some in as an experiment. Those three machines. And by the time they got around to a supplementary order, Gilbert & Sands no longer existed."

"Those three machines, do you know their whereabouts?"

He gave the sugar in his coffee cup a few stirs, then scratched fervently at his earlobe.

"One machine went to a small game center in Shinjuku. The game center folded the winter before last. The whereabouts of the machine, unknown."

"That much I know."

"Another machine went to a game center in Shibuya. That burned down last spring Granted, they had fire insurance and nobody took a loss. Only another 'Spaceship' vanished from the face of the earth. No two ways about it, it's an ill-fated machine."

"It's starting to sound like the Maltese Falcon," I said.

He nodded. "And as to the whereabouts of the third machine, I have no idea."

I gave the address and telephone number of J's Bar. "But it's no longer there. Got rid of it last summer.

He meticulously made a memo in his notebook.

"The machine I'm interested in was the one in Shinjuku," I said. "You really have no idea where it went?"

"There are several possibilities. The most obvious being scrap. The turnover of machines is quite fast. Your ordinary machine depreciates in three years to where a new machine is more economical than repairs. Of course, there's the question of what's in style. That's why some things get scrapped. A second possibility is that it gets traded in as used equipment. Old models that are still usable get passed around from hand to hand, and wind up in some dive, where they end their days at the mercy of drunks and amateurs. Then third, in extremely rare cases, an enthusiast might get hold of it. But eighty percent of the time, it's the scrapheap."

I scissored an unlit cigarette between my fingers, and thought myself into a dark mood

"About that last possibility, any way to check up on something like that?"

"Couldn't fault you for trying, but it'd be difficult. Hardly any contact between enthusiasts. No registers, no official society organs but hell, we'll see what we can do. I myself have some interest in the 'Spaceship'."

"Much obliged."

He sank back deep in his chair, and puffed on his cigarette.

"Just out of curiosity, what was your best score on the 'Spaceship'?"

"A hundred and sixty-five thousand," I said.

"Now that's impressive," he said with not the least change of expression. "Really quite impressive." Then he scratched his ear again.