Rain is possible in Buzzland today. It’s been a while. The clouds are out of practice.
Obligatory nod to distant history which means practically nothing to most folks today, but reminds us we walk on well-trodden ground: On this day in 1775, Alexander Henry became the first Englishman to sail up Pigeon River to Partridge Bay, where he met up with pickled pepper purveyor Peter “Pete” Piper, perhaps. (Actually, one of his companions was Peter Pond. A peddler, by trade.) Henry may have been an Englishman, but he was born in New Jersey, which was British territory. He had a quite a long and varied commercial career, and expired at the age of 85 in Montreal. A punishingly detailed bio can be found here, if you’re in the mood.
On this day in 1939 the streetcars ended their run in Duluth. They were replaced by electric trolley busses, which drew power from overhead lines. People have great nostalgia for the old trolleys, and you can understand why; simpler times, cheap mass transit, homely old cars clattering down the street, Judy Garland in the back belting out a song, that sort of thing. But our memories usually airbrush out the wires. This ancient cartoon from a bygone St. Anthony paper summed up the common fear: electricity stalked the city like a wild beast, waiting to pounce.
Every major intersection had a web of wires overhead. When they came down and the old trolleys were replaced by sleek new buses and the intersections no longer had a lattice of wires stretched overhead, it must have seemed like progress. Thanks to pro-trolley / anti-freeway documentaries, we tend to think that busses were forced on an unwilling people, with a few brave souls standing in front of the first evil diesel machine like the protestor in Tiananmen Square, but I suspect people liked them. Me, I still like the streetcars. I wish I’d been around to see them. And I’m glad I never have to sit behind one in traffic as it stops to pick up passengers.
An old Duluth streetcar can be seen here. Built in St. Paul on Snelling; weighed 19 tons.
“Usually, the barfing at the Basilica Block Party happens more toward the end of the night.” So begins Strib critic Chris R.'s account of the annual bash. Anyone attend? There’s something about the event that always makes me think of the “relevant” and “with-it” pastor we got in the late 60s at our church in Fargo. He had sideburns and a Richard-Chamberlain vibe and introduced acoustic guitars into the service and preached against the war. He lasted about a year. He would have supported a beer bash on the front lawn of the church, if he could go around and counsel people against excess. Praise the Lord and pass the admonition.
Today’s holiday: Video Games Day! I remember playing Pong at my cousins’ house, long long ago. It wasn’t the first video game – “Tennis for Two” had that honor, but you had to be a real wirehead to play it. The video game revolution didn’t start until Space Invaders appeared, and that changed everything. I was pretty good; I was better at Asteroids, and very good at Centipede. But not as good as ZAK or WAG, the two foes who had inhuman skills. Whenever I’d get the high score, it would be pushed down a few places by ZAK or WAG a day later. ZAK I knew – he was the old boyfriend of a girl I was dating, which really rubbed it in, and WAG – well, he said nothing to anyone, didn’t hang around the machines and drink coffee and smoke and discuss the world like the rest of us. He came in alone. He didn’t ask for change at the bar; he brought his own quarters. He never said hello. He just played. Eventually we learned his secret: two-finger button tapping. We were contemptuous; it seemed like cheating, somehow. “Wag bullets,” we called them. I found myself using the two-finger technique at Chuck E. Cheese's the other day, and thought: wag bullets. Well, no shame in learning from the masters.
Wonder where he is today. No doubt he fell to another kid, someone with quicker skills; there's always a faster hand coming up behind you. Maybe he hung it up before his talent failed. Maybe he’s sitting in front of a TV playing a cracked gold master of Halo 3 right now. He probably has no idea what a legend he was, and what an impression he made. Why, we'd unplug the machine nightly to reset the scores, give a guy a fighting chance. But he'd be back the next day. You'd hit the arcade after class, line your quarters on the bottom of the scren, settle in, check the high scores:
1......160,950 WAG
Dang.
Video games killed pinball. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what happened. It’s possible we would have considered it a fair trade, if we’d known that the beep-bleep-wokka-wokka low-res games we loved would give rise to next-gen adventures like Quake 4 and Doom 3 and Gears of War and the rest of the FPS twitch-fests, but there are days I’d give up every game I have for an Eight-Ball Deluxe in the basement. Any games you remember? Any arcade memories you’d like to share?
Bringing the nostalgia home...
I came a bit too late for the arcade classics (If I had a time machine, I'm pretty sure one of my first trips would be to go find a putt-putt golf circa 1985,) but I misspent more than my fair share of youth in the arcade, with my memories being primarily of games like Bubble Bobble, Final Fight, Raiden and Gradius (I never was any good at Street Fighter II though, so I didn't play that much.) I actually got quite good at pinball before it virtually disappeared with the shuttering of Williams' pinball division, and since then the arcades are pretty much gone around here. You'd be hard pressed to even find a pizza place with coin-ops here anymore.
On the other hand, one of my first purchases when I got out of my parents' house and into my own place was an arcade cabinet, which currently houses some Japanese shooter I suspect nobody here has ever heard of, but allows me to go back and play some of my arcade favorites without bothering with quarters. I'd love to get a Centipede machine though, or a Twilight Zone pinball table (for that matter, I'll agree that an Eight Ball Deluxe would be a nice choice too, as would an F-14 Tomcat or High Speed.)