A MAGICAL WEEK IN CHICAGO.
Approximately 60 years ago, a young boy raised in a loving but impoverished home found out that he had a talent for playing flipper pinball machines. Every Saturday morning, he would go to the local Mid City Bowling Alley which also had a few pinball machines for their younger customers. This was in the early 1960’s and playing pinball was very popular. The games back then cost a nickel per game. He would walk well over a mile and get there as soon as the bowling alley opened on Saturday mornings. At an early age he had learned how to make up for the allowance his parents couldn’t afford to give him. His skill rapidly increased and it wasn’t long before he could beat most of the games, most of the times, earning more games than he could play often running the number of replays up to 15 games. When he had that many replays, he would then step aside and allow the other kids who had money to spend to play his replay games for a nickel a game. In one day, he made enough money to go to the movie theater or just spend his earnings on other hobbies that children enjoy playing.
As the years past and he grew older, he was introduced to “gambling pinball machines”. They were pinball machines that did not have flippers and instead had numerous holes and bumper posts all over the surface of the machine for the silver balls to fall into. Most municipalities outlawed these “gambling pinball machines”. The businesses, bars and restaurants who had these machines provided large tax revenue for the cities and states so most municipalities during that time, allowed businesses to have the machines but didn’t allow the businesses to “pay off” or provide compensation to those who won games when they played the machines. Like most pinball machines, these devices had tilt mechanisms in them and if the machine were hit too hard or moved too quickly the game would be terminated by the “tilt” mechanism. With quick reflexes and tough hands, a good player could move the silver balls toward the desired holes to win games/money. As time went on, his prowess increased and so did the number of pay days. Eventually, while living in Jackson, Mississippi, he became known as Pinball Joey. One day the amusement company who owned all of the gambling pinball machines in Jackson caught up with Pinball Joey and officially warned him that he was no longer allowed to play pinball machines in Jackson, MS. That was the end of an era for Pinball Joey but the love for playing those games of skill just got put on the shelf for a while.
Fast forward decades more and Pinball Joey, who eventually became known as Joey With A Tie by the pool players of the infamous Sport Palace of New Orleans. The passion for playing pinball had seemingly been replaced by a love of playing pool and that began another journey. David Walters, a friend of Joey With A Tie recently retired from a high-level computer job in the government and was interested in learning how to create video pinball machines and told Joey who by now had become known just as JoeyA about a Pinball Expo in Chicago, Illinois. The love for pinball had been on the shelf for so long that it was interesting to see that there was still a flame burning after all these years. JoeyA and David decided to make a trip to the pinball capital of the world and visit the Expo. Plans included playing in a pinball tournament, learning about the new video pinball machines, and having dinner with Elvira-The Mistress of the Dark, a sensual diva from television horror film theater.
Since both David and JoeyA also enjoyed a multi-decade passion for pocket billiards, plans were made to visit the largest pocket billiard chalk and cue tip factory in the United States (and perhaps the world) called Tweeten Fibre Company located in Chicago, Illinois. Little did they know that few people are ever invited to tour this legendary facility which produces Elk Master, Le Pro Triumph and many other cue tips along with the most famous brands of chalk for the pocket billiard industry. Their customers are International in scope and are the largest wholesalers in the billiard industry who sell to the retailers around the world, who then sell to individual cueists.
Upon arriving in Chicago at the Expo, it immediately became clear that despite getting back into the swing of playing pinball with a couple of weeks to get back in “stroke”, the both of them would be at a major disadvantage not because of age or skill but because there would be hundreds of different pinball machine games of which they had never played before and any pinball enthusiast knows that it takes more than quick reflexes and eye-hand coordination to play well. You must have intimate knowledge of the various target values for each particular game and how to magnify those targets to excel at that particular game. Immediately upon arrival, they decided to practice as much as possible before the tournament but alas, they did not have enough time to prepare adequately and were going to be playing against the best pinball players the world has ever seen. The event went on for a few days and while David and JoeyA didn’t place in the money, they didn’t come in last place either, out of the hundreds of other players that came there to test their skills at pinball and win several thousand dollars of prizes, including a new pinball machine. It was a lot of fun revisiting our youth and by the way, there were plenty of gray beards from our era who were also having the time of their life. A side trip to Stern Pinball, Inc., the leader in American Pinball machine manufacturers was just as exciting as the Expo itself. We learned exactly how the machines were manufactured. Our tour guide was a man of extreme knowledge and shared with us, every step in the manufacturing process of the flipper pinball machines. Some things have changed in the design of pinball machines and some of those changes are quite noticeable such as the high-end graphics that are a staple in most of the pinball games like the new Elvira’s House of Horrors by Stern Pinball of Chicago, Illinois.
The photo above doesn’t do justice to the graphics or the machine. The visuals and audio in this machine are second to none. It was such a hit at the Pinball Expo that Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) was brought in for this event. Cassandra is still the beautiful woman that she has always been and it looks as if she has been able to control time itself as well as a couple of generations of testosterone.
Here she is with JoeyA at the Expo.
Elvira even signed a brochure for MARINES-FIND YOUR PLATOON, a Facebook Group with over 34,000 members.
You might remember Elvira from televison like this:
A visit to Chicago is something everyone should do at least once in their life, especially if you like pocket billiards. Chicago is the home of one of the oldest pocket billiard chalk manufacturers in the world, a company by the name of Tweeten Fibre Company. They also make some of the finest leather cue tips in the world, with famous brands like Elkmaster, Le Pro, Triumph, Blue Knight, Triangle, Silver King, Rocket Cue and Royal. Tweeten also manufactures the most popular chalk brands in the world made to exacting standards. You would be surprised at the brand names that Tweeten proudly manufactures. It not only includes arguably the most popular brand of cue chalk called MASTER & Triangle but many "private" brands.
The Tweeten factory is a huge factory with mechanical machines scattered throughout the plant manned by numerous employees. The manufacturing process of creating cue chalk or cue tips is a precise science and they guard their secrets quite well.
David Walters and I were quite fortunate in being allowed to tour the plant, and we are grateful to the owner of the company for granting us the privilege of seeing the insides of this enormously successful business. Tweeten does not sell retail. They have large wholesalers located all over the world who distribute their unique products, so don’t waste your time trying to buy anything direct. One of the things that David and I noticed is that both the chalk manufacturing and the cue tip manufacturing were very labor intensive despite the large numbers of machines cranking out these products one at a time. The machines are rather fast but very mechanical and employees watched over each of these machines with focused attention. In my early years, I worked in a plant that manufactured 80-column Hollerith cards, also called IBM punch cards and have an empathy for machines that do repetitive chores as well as the employees who run them. I didn’t ask how many units were produced each day because I didn’t want to put my host on the spot but from observation, I can say that a lot of high-quality chalk and cue tips are produced in this manufacturing facility each and every day.
Tweeten also has numerous pocket billiard accessories that they sell to the wholesalers, and some of them are unique products that you may have never heard of since their target audience are the national wholesalers. Below you will find some of their accessory items that they sell.
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