The last few days of 2018 felt emotionally satisfying and productive. This brought on a sense of awareness of the changes looming ahead. The only constant in life is change for some reason, I think I may have said this before.
Christmas eve was spent with my 14 year old and his grandma. She was nursing a virus and a cold which had started on the 23rd, so the evening of the 24th was cut short after exchanging a few gifts and sharing some food. We left her around 10PM to get some rest and I let Louis-Daniel drive my Camry in the empty parking lot at the Provigo. One of the ignition coils was beginning to fail, I could feel it, but the car kept buckling forward regardless. I drove it back carefully to my studio and we took it easy until Christmas morning and Louis and I talked alot about life. On Christmas morning I gave him the cactus lamp he wanted and he gave me a miniature pinball machine which made me realize that he has finally accepted the fact that pinball machines are not just what consumed most of my attention during his early years while on Pitt street. They had also allowed me to earn a living, support a small family, help launch the North Star project and provide him with a good education while managing to not compromise the wild person I was at the time. I think he understands this better now via this gift. He didn't like pinball from about 6 to 12 and would turn away from them when I would work, play or talk with friends about pinball. Big Dave made me aware of the latter condition while watching Louis's expressions when we were around pins.
Christmas day he went off to the other side of his family and I tried to figure out where I was going to get an ignition coil on boxing day. Once the stores opened at 1pm I took the bus to the Canadian Tire in Verdun, but they had none in stock, Back home I called all the auto parts stores I could find in the area but they were all closed. I had to get the car running properly by the next day when Louis and I would head to Toronto for a father and son road trip to see stuff and assist the Warlock in his pinball endeavors. So I called “tonysaprano” on MAACA (Dan in real life) and asked if he had any coils, he is usually the one to ask me that question. Turns out that he had a bag of various Toyota ignition coils in his parts junk. I gave him the part number and he said that he would check for that sku and bring them over after a wake he was attending for a friend's father, not sure if any of them were good he told me. Thank fate for friends, and thank fate for weirdness as well. After the wake he called me and said that there was movement inside a NAPA auto parts location across the street from the funeral home in Lachine and did I want him to pick up a DSO 673-1307. I said yes, and I silently thanked the deceased & Napa. Dan made his way to Ile-des-Seules and I changed cylinder 2's ignition coil in a snap. Back on the road, I head out to the North Star to take care of a cocktail pinball that had turned into a piece of art. We had this Allied Leisure cocktail table called Eros 1 which turned out to be a real lemon for operation in our first year (2016) so Jte had it painted by an artist friend and asked JameSchid to turn it into a real cool animated sit down drinking table for our patrons. Problem was that this thing still had a coin door on it and that would cause our clients to think that it was operational. It would also have confused the la Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux when their vice squad would wonder into the bar occasionally to check tax labels on bottles of booze and vignettes on our coin operated devices. I don't like unnecessary trouble, so we removed the coin door and will eventually print “FOR ARTS SAKE ONLY” on the wooden door crossbar, I pretty certain that the inspectors can read English.
So on the 27th Louis and I left for Toronto with a pit stop in Cornwall to deliver an Alouette parts order to an operator friend and then drove on to Brockville and stayed overnight at my brother's place where red wine, hearty soup and inspiring conversation lay in wait along with a couple of Fawlty Towers episodes. We played OXO after watching John Cleese stress out so much that we had to take a break as a form of stress relief from watching him battle the way things are. He usually loses.
In the morning we took off for Toronto.
Louis was born in Brampton in January 2004 and it took some time before his mother and I admitted this to him. Spending the first 15 months of his life in Georgetown in a peaceful setting was a great start and he had never been back. I wanted to show him where he came into consciousness, but before arriving he was subject to the immensity of those 12 lanes of speeding metal which makes up the 401. He found the volume of it all exciting and energizing as we head for the Bluffs where the Warlock would meet us. The Bluffs pinball warehouse reminded him of Pitt street he said and he felt right at home. Scott and I fixed Snow Derby, Buccaneer, Argosy, Cleaopatra (EM), OXO, and failed on Wiggler and Firepower while Louis explored this place with wonder. We then headed to P1AG on Viscount road near the Pearson airport to hook up with Doug Baird as well as some of my old co-workers and long time industry friends who were at work that friday. Also briefly saw Drano driving away from the place with some parts as we pulled in. Scott, Louis and I then head off to downtown Toronto to the Pint, a Public House where Warlock operates over 33 games in a 900 person capacity pub. Louis had never been to a bar (except for the North Star when it is closed) since in Quebec you have to be 18 up even if you are accompanied by adults, but here he hung out with us had squid and poutine and tested the games we fixed after Scott and I attended to this wonderful herd of machines. Got the Super Chexx working along with Sky Jump, Wizard, Jungle Queen, Alien Poker and failed at Solar City. We took a walk downtown so Louis could grasp the immensity of the city and its landmarks. He thanked us for showing him the downtown surroundings.
We got back to Bluffs and crashed out in the warehouse on couches, just like we use to on Pitt street, Louis said that it was a great day.
On the 29th there was a tournament planned at Bluffs. Around 9AM, Chris and Scott showed up to prepare machines and the venue. We missed them by about 15 minutes. Louis-Daniel and I had already left for Halton Hills and the Niagara Escarpment. I wanted to show him where his life had started. We stopped by the house he learned to crawl and walk in and then drove to a park in Glenn Williams where the credit river snakes down from Northern Ontario and under the concrete mass of the big city making its way to Lake Ontario. Louis didn't believe me when I told him that large and powerful salmon swim up this river in spring and that fishing can be practised here. Some of the fish that were tagged as farmed salmon you could catch, and the others you were obliged to release. Signs by the river detailed this and he finally believed my fish story about a 2 footer I caught and released before he was born. Back then, his mother and I along with a few close friends had a make shift baptism ceremony for him one beautiful summer day in 2004 by the river bank. Now fourteen years later he stood where we had soaked the bugger in the river as we hoped that the future would be good for him and all the others who give a shit about life.
We drove on to the old Main Street in Georgetown and I showed him some of the shops and restaurants we often frequented as we drove past the old McGibbon Hotel which to my disappointment is being refaced for the upcoming hipster market instead of restoring it to its historical look. It was the coolest beat up hotel I had ever seen with a wooden floored tavern which smelled of tobacco and beer on the first floor. It had an old shuffleboard in the corner and a small stage for local bands to play on Saturday nights. I liked this place very much back in the early 2000's when I started my contract at Microplayground which then became Hip Coin. We also drove past the only French Catholic church where we were allowed to speak that language once inside without getting any nasty looks. Also showed him the abandoned old paper mill from the turn of the century (19th to 20th) behind our house build near the credit river for power. Plans to develop it into a commercial venue before we left in 2005 fell through and it still sits fenced off. I had snuck in there with my buddy Steve on weekend back in the day and took pictures of the abandoned and graffitied structures that were left standing after a couple of fires. We then went to an antique store in Glenn Williams where the owner recognized me from 15 years ago. He is a Montrealer at heart who moved here during the exodus of the early 80's and he told me how much he missed Montreal and what a great city it still is each time he visits. Louis bought some old baseball cards off the man.
We then made our way to the Church of the Silverball and hooked up with Doug of P1AG once again for some heart felt conversations about the lies which fuel the corporate world, the pinball faith which we are barely hanging on to and talked about the old men we are becoming and what we should do with that. Louis played a couple of DMD and Bad Cats (he has two at home, cats, not pins) while Doug and I looked over an old Bally lamp driver test fixture they had found buried in the endless racks of stuff at the Church. This thing even had part numbers, which reassured me immensely.
Will CPR ever reproduce this backglass? Fat chance, no market for these. Sort of looks like a mini bingo backglass if you don't know what the Q's and the U's stand for. well, the U's could be the cards and the Q's could be the holes I guess.
We left that Church and head back to Bluffs where the tournament had started. We exchanged warm greetings with Brewmanager, more of the Bluffs crew and some folks from the Ottawa gang (MCS and Craig) who came to compete. We gathered up our belongings, had samosas and ice tea and said our goodbyes as best as we could in such a large crowd (40+) We made our way back to the 401 and headed east to Brockville for the night in order to break up the trip and see my brother and his family once again.
Two things that amazed me over those couple of days. First, Louis-Daniel's fascination and wonder at seeing this place where he came to be, and second, that he noticed the large amount of businesses squeezed together in mini-malls which all seemed mismatched next to eachother somehow in various burbs of Toronto, A Dairy Queen next to a dentist's office, a car garage next to a fancy restaurant, a pet food store and a spa on either side of the two. A sushi place next to an exterminator etc, etc etc. "Shanty town" I exclaimed as he laughed even though he doesn't know what that means, but he did insist on taking the picture below and had me do a u-turn on Kingston Road (more appropriately old highway 2) so he could snap it for his friends back home. So this was taken on the old Trans-Canada highway # 2 where Jamaicans and the Chinese cook together in the same kitchen, see there is hope for a future, especially along the old highways.
