Pinball Wizard

Electrical engineer for utility unwinds by restoring and refurbishing old pinball games

Story by Lee Marie Reinsch

Ten minutes after Eric Strangeway bought his first pinball machine, he felt himself tilting toward another one. Four and a half years, more than 30 pinball machines and $30,000 later, Strangeway hasn’t hit the wizard bonus yet, but he’s still in the game.

“It’s like a disease,” said Strangeway, 28, about the pinball machine passion. “People who collect pinball machines are kind of hard core about it. It’s like some guys are with their classic cars. People who aren’t associated with it can’t relate to it.”

As a regional electrical engineer with Wisconsin Public Service Corp., he’s responsible for ensuring that 41,000 customers get the power they need to keep their own electronic gadgets and appliances humming properly.

But off the company clock, Strangeway morphs into the pinball sorcerer of his basement game room, which is home to 18 full-sized pinball games.

Since rediscovering his childhood zeal in 2004, Strangeway has also discovered a subculture of grown-up fellow pinballers who can relate to him and his enthusiasm for flippers, bumpers and playfields.

“There’s a healthy community out there among people who like to buy, sell and trade pinball items,” Strangeway said.
One of his friends has 50 pinball games from the 1950s.

Boredom leads to childhood re-connect
Four and a half years ago, Strangeway was six months into his new career in Oshkosh when he began to wonder what the city had for after-work recreation.

He recalled the fun he had at age 10 growing up in Waukesha, playing pinball at the local Red Carpet Lanes, when he was supposed to be focusing on his bowling league. He felt like recapturing that boyhood exuberance.

“I wanted to play pinball, so I started looking around for pinball machines and places to play here,” Strangeway said.
Look as he might, all Strangeway found were a few games in shabby condition, stuffed along the side walls of very dark taverns.

With the advent of the Internet, the BlackBerry and the XBox, interest and time for basic pinball machines diminished over the last few decades. Even though games are still being manufactured, every pinball company but one – Stern Pinball, Inc. in Illinois – has closed down. But the newer generation of arcade video games that nudged pinball out of the scene can’t compare, Strangeway said.

He all but gave up on finding a place to play pinball.

Then the eureka moment hit him.

“I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I can afford to buy my own pinball game,’” Strangeway said.

So he did. He bought himself a used Twilight Zone game, in fairly good condition and needing just minor repairs.
But it didn’t satisfy the urge.

“Ten minutes later, I knew I had to have another one,” he said.

Start of something ‘new’
His next acquisition: a 1978 Sinbad game, which he bought for $100 and which turned out to be, in his words, “a complete project.”

He had to rebuild the circuit board – which actually turned out to be great review for an underworked part of his brain as it’s not something he gets to do in his day job with WPS.

The game’s body lacked legs, so he built new legs. Its display had been smashed, so he put in a new display piece. Rubber parts were dried out and needed replacing. He ended up stripping the game down to its bald playing surface, rewaxing it, and piecing it all back together again, piece by painstaking piece. The average pinball machine consists of 3,500 parts, a half-mile of wire, and 1,200 nuts, screws and washers, according to officials at Stern Pinball.

Needless to say, Sinbad kept him shipwrecked for a while. Strangeway estimates he put four times his purchase price into the game — not to mention three or four months of labor.

But that didn’t deter him.

From Dolly to Larry, Moe, Curly
His biggest feat came when he transformed Dolly Parton into the Three Stooges.

He bought a Dolly Parton game that was in rough shape – such rough shape that it didn’t even make sense to him to try to recreate it. Besides, he felt up for a challenge.

“I had some time and was out of project games and I thought it might be fun to try to make my own game,” Strangeway said.

He had always thought a Three Stooges game would be neat, and none existed that he knew of. So he dissembled Dolly Parton, repaired the electronics, sanded down the playing area, repainted it and added his own Three Stooges decals and stencils.

He even recorded his own sound clips with his laptop, a computer chip and some speakers and created his own soundboard for the game, using Three Stooges’ signature sounds. Nine months passed before he wrapped up the final detail on the custom pinball machine.

“It’s one of the toughest things I’ve ever done – a lot more work than I’d ever anticipated,” he said.

Two dozen and holding
Strangeway has 24 games now. That includes the 18 in working condition set up in his basement game room, two on “long-term loan” at family members’ houses, and four more that are non-functioning winter “projects.”

He has only sold a handful that he’s repaired – after so much labor and love, he prefers to keep them.

Strangeway technically isn’t exactly a pinball machine collector, but he does collect pinball machines. He said he doesn’t want to acquire too many more lest he get too carried away, he said.

He also doesn’t have infinite space to store many more than he already has. Each game weighs about 300 pounds. And with 5,400 pounds in his basement, it’s a good thing his game room isn’t in his attic.

He said when he runs out of room for games, he’ll have to decide which ones to start whittling out of his collection.

Strangeway also isn’t technically a pinball repairman, although he does repair pinball machines. He says the pressure of having to repair something on someone else’s time schedule would drain the pastime of fun.

“I don’t want to get into the business of fixing and selling pinball machines; I already have a fulltime job,” he said.

If you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s just a guy who likes to play pinball. And to him, fixing the machines is just part of the fun, whether he admits it or not.

“I find it relaxing,” he said.

While he doesn’t want to start his own pinball repair business, he doesn’t mind taking phone calls from people who have questions about their own machines.

“I prefer to tell somebody how they can do it themselves than to do it for them; it makes them more proficient,” he said.
He advises those stumped by a pinball problem to bite the bullet and try to fix it.

“A lot of people are afraid they are going to break something,” Strangeway said. “But the way I see it, if you break something, you can fix it, too.”

Strangeway’s niche is games between 1977 and the present. They differ from the explosion-ridden arcade games found in many malls after about 1990.

In Strangeway’s opinion, pinball machines beat arcade games hands down. He said that’s the way the general public feels, as well.

“You see arcade game people getting into pinball machines, but you never see pinball machine people getting into arcade games,” he said.

He splurged not too long ago and bought himself a new game, in honor of his October wedding.

The Family Guy cost him $4,000.

It may sound like a lot of money, but it could end up being a decent investment if it becomes a collectible.

“You never know how much longer Stern will be in business,” Strangeway said.

Lee Marie Reinsch is a freelance writer based out of Green Bay.