685. a nickel’s worth of fun

one pinball machine
 blanging - clack - a free game
nickel… “zall’ it took  🦊❤️

I saw this photograph in my hometown’s Facebook page, “Celebrating Monongahela”. A flood of childhood memories entered my mind. Mostly the nondescript hollowness of the City Taxi building. In that hollowness there stood a solitary nickel pinball machine, usually being manhandled by one or another of the town’s “tuff guys”. I can still hear the crisp clanging and blanging of the machine’s bumpers - and the sharp “CLACK” sound when a free game was won and announced by the machine. If you were good, a nickel could buy you hours of fun… unless of course one of the “tuffs” wanted to play the machine, then you just stepped aside and watched them play the games you had “rung up” on the machine. 🦊❤️