It was a Tuesday afternoon, exactly 30 years ago this summer.

I and my friend and colleague Mac Swackhammer were in the Anchor Inn, in Little Current, on Manitoulin Island.

The day before we had worked long hours producing that week’s Manitoulin Expositor Newspaper; and because writing, designing and laying out the newspaper usually went late into the night, and because nothing important ever happened on Manitoulin on Tuesdays because the local reporter was too tired to report it, Tuesdays were mostly set aside for drinking.

Which is what we were doing.

Early into our day, a couple of big chaps in T-shirts walked by our table, each one hoisting up an end of an old pinball machine.

I asked what they were doing and they said bringing it to Sudbury to fix it up.

I asked how much they’d sell it for and I sort of recall them saying $200. Could have been $250. Either way, I asked if they’d deliver it to my place for that amount. I lived about a mile away. They agreed.

I never gave it a nanosecond thought.

I still have the Night Rider.

And I realized about three minutes ago that I’ve been flipping those flippers and shaking the machine and hoping for a free game or at least a bonus for longer than I’ve been married to my wife Helena.

The two are related.

Helena and I started dating back in the ‘80s, and I’m pretty sure she looked forward to visiting my place as much to play pinball as anything else.

She also liked my Yamaha Heritage Special bike but heck anybody’s boyfriend can have a black motorcycle; her boyfriend owned a 1970s-vintage analog two flipper-four-player pinball machine.

And the fact that the game’s motif is trucking is sheer providence. I had no way of knowing back then that I’d eventually be editor of Canada’s premier heavy-duty trucking magazine. I think the pinball machine knew something I didn’t.

Since that day in the Anchor, that pinball machine has followed us. From Manitoulin to Toronto.  And as we changed jobs, got married, bought a first then a second house, raised a family.  For two spells it lived in different basements; and then in a cottage.

When our kids were really little, they had to stand on an upside-down plastic milk carton to see the table and flip the flippers. I can’t say I'm a terrific pinball player, because I don’t think there is such a thing, any more than you can be a “good” rock paper scissors player.

A pinball game just happens.  Video games can’t replace pinball because when you play pinball, you don’t have to concentrate; you can socialize. Video games demand far more mental energy.

Pinball has one rule. Don’t tilt. Beyond that, anybody can play. It’s like the Esperanto of sports. Anybody can understand it.

I first played pinball in a little store in the west end of Sudbury called Pellis News.  At the back of the store, beside the rack of paperbacks and across from the ice-cream counter, stood the pinball machine. There was a sign on it that said you had to be 18 to play. The funny thing was, 16-year-olds were allowed to smoke in Pellis’s, but you had to be 18 to play pinball.  (There was an ashtray beside the pinball machine.)

My friend Trevor MacIntyre and I used to give the big guys a nickel so they’d let us stand beside the machine and play one flipper.  I guess that meant we weren’t technically breaking the rule.  But man did we feel cool.

That might be one of the biggest appeals of pinball, to this day. There’s something strangely illicit about pinball.  Something racy.
(Want proof? Check out my Night Rider on the Today’s Trucking Facebook page. And while you’re there, add your voice to the truck afficionados who think they know what kind of rig is depicted on the machine.)

But every pinball machine worth its bumpers has an alluring female form on it. Mine has the blonde truck stop waitress. This one, I’ve felt I’ve known for 30 years. I’ll have to ask the missus if she ever felt jealous.

The point is, if you spot me in a truck stop in your area, remember that even though I’m officially there to meet truckers and check the racks to make sure our beloved Today’s Trucking Magazine (and our sister publication Truck And Trailer) are on display, part of me is thinking that maybe, just maybe, my friend from Night Rider will be on duty and when she serves me a cup of coffee, she’ll give me a knowing wink.

She knew all along, she’ll say, that the journalist who owns the Night Rider Pinball Machine would one day be the editor of Canada’s best heavy duty trucking magazine. Women like her know everything.