Never A Tilt

Pinball machines were viewed by the righteous, as if the souls of young people were threatened by helping a steel ball defy gravity, then again the Church had sentenced the humanist Galilleo to a long house arrest for his assailing the Vatican's belief that Earth was the center of the universe. or that's how I remember his sin. The Dark Ages were Dark, because the Vatican destroyed all sources of knowledge beyond the New and Old Testaments, except those out of their reach in the Moorish kingdoms, India, China, and the empires of the New World.

My family lived in a pink split-level ranchhouse built on an old army base in the BlueHills south of Boston. My mother insisted that we attend St. Mary's of the Foothills. The Sisters of St. Joseph were a teaching order. Their students learn that the Earth was round, Latin, Geography, Math and lessons of Catholcism from the Baltimore Catechism. Thankfully as an atheist in the early 1960s I had freed myself from their ignorance of the One and True Faith. I shared my devotion with no one and wandered the Blue Hills, played sports in our backyard and in 1964 after school walked to Mattapan Square across the Neponset. Pizza 25 cents and the Ashmont trolley was free connecting with the T to downtown Boston.

During my childhood my Irish nana had taken my older brother and me on trips to Washington Street. A prayer and confession at The Shrine of St. Anthony. A hot dog on a grilled bun at WT Grant's followed by a movie at the Orpheum. Always during the day, although myeyes were drawn to bright lights of the amusement centers. Pinball, skeet, and teenagers in leather. Nana loved Robert Mitchum as a bootlegger in THUNDER ROAD. She had brewed beer in the basement of her three-decker in Jamaica Plains, but her grip tightened passing those dens of inequity. They were off-limits for good boys, but not for long.

At the age of twelve I rode the Ashmont trolley first to Mattapan Square and then the T to Washington Street, heading straight to the amusement center with my pocket filled with quarters from my newspaper route. No one challenged my entry. Men and boys of all ages stood before a wide array of pinball machines. I watched to learn the game. Shooting the ball, flippers, bumping thr machine. The defiance of gravity. I like the name of Bally's ACES HIGH. I barely broke a thousand my first game, but my skill improved that day and every year until I moved to New York in 1976.

In Times Square I was one of the best. I spent hours at the amusement of Broadway. At night I hung out at bars. Always getting top score. After leaving Park Slope I ended up at CBGBs. The punk bar on the Bowery had rock, pinball, and loose women. The Ramones, rock musicians, and Hells Angels dominated the two machines. I was better than them, having honed my skills in Times Square, but respected tgat this was their turf, but as the nights in CBGBs got late, the pinball machines were q