King Kool

Flippers dept.

The summer I went to Pinball camp was different, to say the least.

I had been to tennis camps, and done summer baseball and all that.

I wanted to try something different.

And I clearly wasn’t going to be able to beat Steve Sargent at pinball by hitting tennis balls all day.

A lot about Pinball camp was the same as any other summer camp.

My Mom sewed my name into my underwear. We told ghost stories at night. The food was so-so but since we were away from home we thought it was great.

You could pour your own pop, like you could mix Pepsi and Mountain Dew.

And unlimited ice cream!

But in most other ways, it was different than other camps.

Mainly in that we just played pinball.

First we had 45-minute pre-breakfast pinball.

Then after breakfast, we played pinball for two hours.

Then we had lunch, and forty-five minutes free after that.

Some of the other campers played pinball in their free time, which you could do.

I remember mostly just lying on couches in the lounge and staring.

I didn’t really know any of the other kids.

I was sort of hoping my sister might come to Pinball camp, but she was away at Tiddly Winks camp.

After post-lunch free time, we played pinball for two-and-a-half hours.

Then we washed up before dinner.

At, like, a tennis camp, you’d full-on shower before dinner.

But we didn’t sweat much, so we would just wash our hands.

After dinner, they would show movies in the lounge.

I think we watched “Tommy” about three times.

And some instructional videos.

They wanted us to be well-rounded, and gain proficiency on a lot of different pinball machines.

But I remember mostly playing this one, “King Kool.”

There was a King Kool at the candy and soda place in our town. Steve Sargent always beat me.

So I figured my time would be best spent by just playing King Kool.

So that’s all I did, for two weeks.

I played King Kool.

I got pretty good at King Kool.

In King Kool, the important thing is to get your specials lit. For that you have to get the ball to roll through all four suits, at the top.

You had to be adept at shooting the ball with the plunger. You had to have a light touch with the flippers, of which there were two sets of two. You needed to be able to nudge the cabinet but not tilt. And in a multiball situation, you wanted to keep the balls in play as long as possible.

There’s a lot of other things but I don’t want to bore you.

After Pinball camp, I couldn’t wait to go uptown with Steve.

I wanted to whip his ass at King Kool.

The first time back, I got my highest score ever.

I was feeling pretty good, and couldn’t wait to tell my folks how the money they’d spent on Pinball camp had been well worth it.

“Well worth it,” was the phrase I’d come up with.

But Steve beat me at King Kool.

We played two more times. He won both times.

After that, I wasn’t so interested in playing King Kool.

Maybe, I reasoned, I had burnt myself out on King Kool.

Maybe it’s better to be fresh, to come to the game with some excitement.

Some curiosity.

Whatever it was.

A few months later they took the King Kool game out and replaced it with a video game, “Gorgar.”

I got pretty good at Gorgar, but it wasn’t the same. I was more of a “flippers” guy than a video game guy.

And anyway. Steve always beat me at Gorgar.