Hey Ruthie, did you see this photo of The Charcoal Hut in todays
Citizen? It is right next door to the Strand movie theater. I would
ride my bike up Simonton from Truman and go up the alley and park
behind the Strand. No one stole bikes back then.

A million years ago we used to play the pinball machine in the back
of this place all night until we had to be home. I could play all night
for one nickel. How you say?

One evening we managed to break the glass on the machine top by
accidentally dropping a coke bottle on it. Before we reported it and
before the owner could get back there we exchanged the steel ball
with a slightly larger "steelie" we used for marbles. The new steel ball
was just large enough to still work fine without anyone noticing and just
large enough to not go down past the flippers if you pushed both
flipper buttons at the same time. That sure saved a lot of money for us
kids.

I would leave in the mid evenings and have over 50 free games racked up.
This place was open 24 hours a day and the sailors would give me my
nickel back for the free games on it. The owners had a policy to pay
for any free games still on the machine when a player had to leave. It
was not much but I could not collect as I was underage. Plus, we did
not have to pay for the fries or cokes I remember. Everyone would
watch us play for hours and hours.

The owner knew we were up to something and thought we were tipping
the machine to keep the ball out of the return holes. I bet he reset the
motion sensitivity switch every day. He never did catch on about the
ball switch. It was probably still in there until he got rid of it.

Oh the memories.