Nickel Tech Support

My father has a nickel slot machine from the 1920s in their house.   It has a long history with our family, starting when I was about the age of my children when my father found it at a yard sale.

The machine was in pieces and a long way from being functional again.  My father worked on it for a long while, figuring out how the pieces all worked together to make the reels spin.  In the end, he got it working.  It's a testament to his skill and ingenuity.  There was no YouTube to look up how to's on.  He had to go it all alone.

I was impressed it worked at all.  It was such a mass of metal, springs, hinges, and grooves and somehow, when everything was just right, it accepted nickels and rolled the reels for you.  But it broke a lot too.  It had a tolerance that could easily be overwhelmed by youths pumping nickels into the top.

Over the years I got so I could fix any problem introduced by playing it.   I suppose these were an early form of software, "bugs". I had to chase down the errors which in this case were nickles run amok in the machine, fallen into the inner workings and causing troubles.

I hadn't thought about debugging the slot machine until today when my mother called and told me about a story of some visitors who got the slot machine stuck.

My father and I talked over the phone as he jangled the machine around, trying to remember common issues and ways we got them working again.   I was surprised how much I remembered about the machine just from talking to my father.   I wanted to be there, to touch the machine.   I'm sure I would have remembered more.   I could almost smell the oil and feel the parts moving in my hands.

My father and I didn't figure it out over the phone.   Hopefully, he got it working after we hung up.   He had remembered more about it than I had.  Next time I go to the mountains I'll have to play the slot machine again.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been into all things Zelda lately.   He's gotten my husband and me into it from a memories standpoint.   We found old Zelda games in the attic and my son brought them up on the console downstairs.   Then, tonight after my son was asleep, I found my husband playing on the Switch, but playing an old game of Zelda they'd recently updated.  

The TIny Gitl ChrocinclesL:  My daughter listened to multiple audio books today on her day off from school while we had hurricane rains (we're on the edge of the hurricane Dorian.). Tomorrow she may well listen to several more books.   I returned books to the library for the blind today in person.   I had them change her preference to uncontracted braille so that she won't be frustrated reading the books they send.