The relevant dates to this blog entry are going to be a little difficult to get straight, even if I look in my old hand written journals from over 3 decades ago, which I won’t because it generally gives me the creeps or bores me to incredible new highs nowadays. A “that was then this is now feeling” has long taken over some years back during my mid-life, and add to this the fact that things have changed so much that the past can no longer be accurately referenced to a long gone context which itself wouldn’t stand up to a hipster’s discreet fart in the wind on Queen Mary boulevard near the Décarie expressway, even on a clear day.

Just got in a few minutes ago and thought of cracking open a beer in order to help and get the words flowing, but have refrained from doing such a thing so far, and I am not completely sure as to why. Tonight’s service call threw me into a bit of a time tunnel and I think this may be the reason that I don’t want to soften the effect it had on me tonight. I want to jot it down first as it is fresh in my mind. The past is so gaseous and accurately uncapturable outside its own present context, that it seems to melt in your hands as you try to grasp it and preserve it. At best it changes each time you remember it, or recount it for that matter. You can not change the events that have occurred, but you can certainly change their meaning, and that provides a solace for the bad things that will likely take place in many of our lives.

And for the record, I don’t think that life is too short, I think it is quite long, and was reminded of this when I couldn’t remember what I did for this woman’s pinball machine decades ago, but still saw my own work staring right back at me from way back when I worked with an apprentice called Jesse Page who was about seven years younger than I and who is now much older than me I am told. Something along the way should have triggered that this service call was shaping up to feel like Bob Dylan’s highway 61 revisited & his 115th dream all wrapped up into one old night in Cote-St.-Luc.

Ricky Kaufman is a sweet older lady now, a grandmother yet I don’t feel her to be much older than when I first fixed her pinball machine for her family in the early 90’s, - no I don’t feel  my age and maybe she doesn't either, she certainly doesn’t feel or look like 60 up or something of the sort. The real difference I noticed tonight from the last time I fixed up this lady’s Bally is that I now have to work a little slower to do the job right and that I am more impatient and less tolerant to people‘s comments about things I already know. And even if being misunderstood always sucked, it seems to happen more often now, yet I can’t be bothered explaining my point of view to most people anymore because I know I will lose sight of them by a clear & blatent lack of affinities. Ricky Kaufman is not that type of person, maybe it is generational or a shared set of values we grew up with, she still makes me think that life is beautiful when she talks.

The machine itself had been over-hauled by Jesse and I and had broken down once in the late 90’s when I paid Ricky another visit this time without Jesse, and for the life of me I can not remember that service call. I must have changed a step unit reset coil, cause there was a burnt one in the cashbox along with a fuse. These were the only things in the coinbox. Knowing that after a full shop over haul, it was always my practice to put all the old parts in a zip lock bag and hand it to the client so they can see what we changed before disposing of that crap, these two burnt parts must have been changed after the initial shop job. Bravo !! So this burnt coil and fuse were clues to an event I couldn’t recall. Regardless, the repair proceeded as Ricky asked me about my family, work and life. I answered, and threw some questions back for the sake of a balanced conversation while Ricky’s teenage grand daughter stepped up to the treadmill behind Ricky and began running in fitness gear a little too tight for my attention span to be unaffected and I missed some of Ricky’s life story. Time was indeed marching on and speeding up from what I was observing as Ricky laughed at my lack of attention to her words.

Back to the machine which had now broken down in a slightly poetic justice cause and effect way. A post screw on a rebound rubber at the center of the play field had come loose in time during the new millennium from repeated pounding in the 1990’s and caused that particular post to change angles which caused the rubber ring it held in place to loosen up which in turn allowed the 1-1/16” carbon steel ball to slip under the light shield via a thumper bumper hit which caused a 10 point scoring switch to stay engaged which also caused the 10 point relay to stay energized and burn up the match unit step up coil as well as the 10 point chime coil. That misplaced ball could have done more damage to the 1st player 10 point score reel coil and the relay itself if it wasn’t for Ricky‘s third husband who saw and smelled smoke while reading his paper nearby, thus pushing the kids aside and turning off the machine before the fuse blew. The question I asked myself after speculating on what had likely happened was why didn’t the fuse protecting the 50 volt line not blow when the first coil burnt ? The same reason that Ricky still looks good, and the same reason that a 15 amp fuse had been replaced by a 20 amp by a younger man wanting to get the job done quickly so he could get to other things that interested him back then, and then again maybe I can’t recall anymore, life is full of things we forget which makes it seem short as we get older and as we tend to forget all we have lived and done, big and small. In fact life is too long when you remember it all, and all just like so many a fart in the wind that doesn't seem to amount or even relate to a hill of beans, time marches on and as Ezra Pound once wrote, "life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass", don't allow that to happen over and over again.

Robert A. Baraké (Rab)

The relevant dates to this blog entry are going to be a little difficult to get straight, even if I look in my old hand written journals from over 3 decades ago, which I won’t because it generally gives me the creeps or bores me to incredible new highs nowadays. A “that was then this is now feeling” has long taken over some years back during my mid-life, and add to this the fact that things have changed so much that the past can no longer be accurately referenced to a long gone context which itself wouldn’t stand up to a hipster’s discreet fart in the wind on Queen Mary boulevard near the Décarie expressway, even on a clear day.

Just got in a few minutes ago and thought of cracking open a beer in order to help and get the words flowing, but have refrained from doing such a thing so far, and I am not completely sure as to why. Tonight’s service call threw me into a bit of a time tunnel and I think this may be the reason that I don’t want to soften the effect it had on me tonight. I want to jot it down first as it is fresh in my mind. The past is so gaseous and accurately uncapturable outside its own present context, that it seems to melt in your hands as you try to grasp it and preserve it. At best it changes each time you remember it, or recount it for that matter. You can not change the events that have occurred, but you can certainly change their meaning, and that provides a solace for the bad things that will likely take place in many of our lives.

And for the record, I don’t think that life is too short, I think it is quite long, and was reminded of this when I couldn’t remember what I did for this woman’s pinball machine decades ago, but still saw my own work staring right back at me from way back when I worked with an apprentice called Jesse Page who was about seven years younger than I and who is now much older than me I am told. Something along the way should have triggered that this service call was shaping up to feel like Bob Dylan’s highway 61 revisited & his 115th dream all wrapped up into one old night in Cote-St.-Luc.

Ricky Kaufman is a sweet older lady now, a grandmother yet I don’t feel her to be much older than when I first fixed her pinball machine for her family in the early 90’s, - no I don’t feel  my age and maybe she doesn't either, she certainly doesn’t feel or look like 60 up or something of the sort. The real difference I noticed tonight from the last time I fixed up this lady’s Bally is that I now have to work a little slower to do the job right and that I am more impatient and less tolerant to people‘s comments about things I already know. And even if being misunderstood always sucked, it seems to happen more often now, yet I can’t be bothered explaining my point of view to most people anymore because I know I will lose sight of them by a clear & blatent lack of affinities. Ricky Kaufman is not that type of person, maybe it is generational or a shared set of values we grew up with, she still makes me think that life is beautiful when she talks.

The machine itself had been over-hauled by Jesse and I and had broken down once in the late 90’s when I paid Ricky another visit this time without Jesse, and for the life of me I can not remember that service call. I must have changed a step unit reset coil, cause there was a burnt one in the cashbox along with a fuse. These were the only things in the coinbox. Knowing that after a full shop over haul, it was always my practice to put all the old parts in a zip lock bag and hand it to the client so they can see what we changed before disposing of that crap, these two burnt parts must have been changed after the initial shop job. Bravo !! So this burnt coil and fuse were clues to an event I couldn’t recall. Regardless, the repair proceeded as Ricky asked me about my family, work and life. I answered, and threw some questions back for the sake of a balanced conversation while Ricky’s teenage grand daughter stepped up to the treadmill behind Ricky and began running in fitness gear a little too tight for my attention span to be unaffected and I missed some of Ricky’s life story. Time was indeed marching on and speeding up from what I was observing as Ricky laughed at my lack of attention to her words.

Back to the machine which had now broken down in a slightly poetic justice cause and effect way. A post screw on a rebound rubber at the center of the play field had come loose in time during the new millennium from repeated pounding in the 1990’s and caused that particular post to change angles which caused the rubber ring it held in place to loosen up which in turn allowed the 1-1/16” carbon steel ball to slip under the light shield via a thumper bumper hit which caused a 10 point scoring switch to stay engaged which also caused the 10 point relay to stay energized and burn up the match unit step up coil as well as the 10 point chime coil. That misplaced ball could have done more damage to the 1st player 10 point score reel coil and the relay itself if it wasn’t for Ricky‘s third husband who saw and smelled smoke while reading his paper nearby, thus pushing the kids aside and turning off the machine before the fuse blew. The question I asked myself after speculating on what had likely happened was why didn’t the fuse protecting the 50 volt line not blow when the first coil burnt ? The same reason that Ricky still looks good, and the same reason that a 15 amp fuse had been replaced by a 20 amp by a younger man wanting to get the job done quickly so he could get to other things that interested him back then, and then again maybe I can’t recall anymore, life is full of things we forget which makes it seem short as we get older and as we tend to forget all we have lived and done, big and small. In fact life is too long when you remember it all, and all just like so many a fart in the wind that doesn't seem to amount or even relate to a hill of beans, time marches on and as Ezra Pound once wrote, "life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass", don't allow that to happen over and over again.

Robert A. Baraké (Rab)