Dennis Sommers

When I became a good enough swimmer, Mother bought me a season swim pass so I wouldn’t watch Micky Mouse Club and other highly educational shows all day. She dropped me off at Kiddieland pool when it opened each day at noon, then picked me up at 5:00.

Occasionally there was reason to head home sooner – like if the pool had been drained and refilled with ice water after Jimmy Sidebottom barfed or unloaded something worse into the pool. It’s why I was always sure to have a dime in the secret pouch inside the waistline of my trunks. The routine under perilous conditions like these was to call home from the pool’s pay phone, listen for one ring tone then hang up to reclaim the dime. Mother heard the phone ring once – signaling my SOS message.

The ten-minute lag time until Mom would show up at the front gate was enough to invest ten cents into one of several pinball machines at the arcade. One time I found myself on a hot streak – and won two games. I couldn’t have been prouder if I’d won a blue ribbon at the goat rodeo. It’s not right to walk away from free games. That’s like leaving a mouthful of M&Ms in the bottom of the bag. Mother had to park the car and hunt me down in the arcade, finding me on tiptoes, mashing flipper buttons. I could tell she wasn’t pleased, but she only said, “Let’s go.”

I don’t remember Mother ever explaining why she didn’t like me playing pinball. Maybe she considered it some sort of gambling habit that would lead to an addiction … or theft leading to incarceration. It was mother’s dime, after all.

Years later I was frequently invited to a friend’s house on Fridays to spend the night. Steve’s parents played in a couples’ bowling league on those nights, and we tagged along to roll a line of two of our own then play pinball machines. I had plenty of coins by then, thanks to my paper route.

One Friday at the alley, a new baseball-themed pinball machine was waiting. Instead of flippers, it had a button atop the machine that, once pushed, expelled a ball out from under a trapdoor on the pitcher’s mound. Pulling a lever to the left caused the bat to swing. Once the swing element was figured out, the ball might occasionally be sent up the incline toward a “single, double, triple or out” hole. If luck shone down, it might even roll up one of three ramps to be launched into the upper deck for a homer.

Enough runs tallied before three outs netted a free game. I possessed neither the skill nor luck to earn one of those free games — as talent was in pitifully short supply in the 1950s. Hoping something other than skill or luck might work, I held the pitch button down and the swing lever in the “swing” position. The result was watching every sphere set sail up a ramp and out of the park. I felt like Roger Maris after hitting 61 homers in 1961 but never got an asterisk by my name or a picture in Sports Illustrated.

After months at the alley on Friday nights, I had mastered garden variety pinball machines. A favorite was Nine Ball Billiards — where striking bumpers or targets to sink all nine balls won a free game. I became pinball’s skinniest Minnesota Fats to ever set foot in a bowling alley.

How good was I? I had such a supple wrist before The Who ever met that deaf, dumb and blind kid. I could have become a pinball professional (jersey #87 like Travis Kelce) thrilling Annette Funicello as she sat up high in the owner’s box cheering me along with the rest of the Mouseketeers, all thanks to Mother’s one thin dime.

Dr. Dennis Sommers is a retired Minot orthodontist, violinist with the Minot Symphony and author of the book, “Retirement? You Can’t HANDLE the Truth!”