Backcountry Notes

April 11, 2002.  As usual, names may have have been changed to protect the guilty.

The Norfolk neighborhood where we lived in the 1960s, called Ghent, was quite different then than it is now. When we moved in, it was early in the process of “gentrification.” The neighborhood had deteriorated and there were quite a few rental properties, including the house my parents bought, that were in need of renovation and repair. Ghent now is overrun with doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers, but in 1965 there were longshoremen and Navy Yard workers and auto mechanics. Drinking and fighting were more widely practiced than golf and tennis. My friends Dwight and Dickie were born and raised in this environment.

"Crusty’s" was a local pharmacy and teenager hangout. The name was short for “Crusty Old Bastard,” which is how we referred to the nice man who owned the pharmacy. He was a gruff sort but did have certain virtues, the main one being that he would sell cigarettes to a toddler. His pharmacy had a soda fountain and snack bar, and way in the back corner was an ancient pinball machine called The Ace Of Spades. This machine was an antique; the flippers often worked weakly, there were places where grooves were worn into the surface, the bumpers sometimes worked, sometimes did not, and Crusty insisted on keeping it jacked up to maximum pitch so the balls came downhill faster. No amount of complaining could get him to fix or replace The Ace Of Spades. You were lucky to win a free game once in a blue moon; I once won four and was ecstatic at the feat. The games were three for a quarter, and quarters didn’t come easy to us then, but we played anyway.

There is an old joke that Crusty obviously knew. A prospector out west was in town playing the roulette wheel at the local saloon when a greenhorn came up to him and told the prospector that he had observed the wheel and knew it was fixed. “I know it’s fixed,” said the prospector; “everybody knows its fixed.” The greenhorn asked him incredulously why he played a fixed wheel and the prospector replied, glaring at the greenhorn as if he were a total fool, “Why, hell, son, it’s the only wheel in town!” Crusty had the only pinball machine in the neighborhood, so . . . .

One morning we stopped into Crusty’s before going to school in order to enjoy that traditional Southern breakfast beverage, a Coca-cola. Dwight decided to tackle The Ace Of Spades and actually won two games. When it was time to go, he told us to go ahead and he’d catch up as soon as he lost the games. Later that day Dickie found me in the hall and said that Dwight had never shown up for classes. Fearing that something bad had happened, we went looking for him as soon as school let out.

He was at Crusty’s. Dwight had mastered The Ace Of Spades. He hadn’t left the machine for over six hours. Crusty had brought over a stool for him to sit on and there was an ashtray beside the machine piled high with butts. Coke cups overflowed the wastebasket. A lit cigarette was dangling from Dwight’s lips; his eyes were bloodshot; his hair was awry; but he had won hundreds of games. The machine’s game counter stood at 450. Four hundred and fifty games! No one had ever won as many as ten! “For a while I was playing with just one flipper,” Dwight informed us. “But I still won a few.” Dickie and I were in awe. As we watched, Dwight kept the pinball hopping, whacking against the bumpers, flashing lights, ringing bells, rolling up points. While one ball was still in play, he shot in a second, then a third, and kept them all dancing. He played like a man possessed, winning three more games before all the balls dropped off the board. “I’ve had enough,” he sighed. “Help me get up off this stool.”

I gave Dwight a boost and he stretched until he could move normally again. Meanwhile, Dickie hopped onto the stool and said, “I’m going to play this thing while it’s still hot!” Dwight and I stood at the lunch counter for a while talking and drinking Cokes. Dickie started cursing. He was losing; the counter was clicking down: 440; 439; 438 . . . . He cursed louder. From behind the counter, Crusty snickered. 437; 436 . . . . Dickie was so mad he was turning purple. He began swearing in unknown tongues. Was it possible to play 450 games on The Ace Of Spades and never win one back? We decided that it was and that it would be much, much safer to be someplace else when Dickie lost the last free game. We sidled out the door to the sound of Betelgeusian profanity.

Looking back on that day, from the remove of many years, I suspect that Crusty knew something we didn’t. Something like this: the best things in life are free, but that doesn’t mean they should come easy. I’d sure like to have a chance now to discuss life with that old pill-roller. By the way, he was crusty, but he wasn’t mean or unreasonable. In all the time we hung out at his place, he never put us down or got angry at us, such as when Dickie was cussing up a blue streak that day; and on those occasions when a couple of guys decided to duke it out, his only requirement was that they step outside. He never called the cops. He was a standup guy.