PART DEUX
This piece is a solid Profile, so it focuses on one character from the gang, enjoy!
With a firm primitive handshake, we introduced one another and immediately flocked to the pinball game, Monster Bash. John Wray, also known as Tilt is one of the Founding Fathers of the Crazy Flipper Fingers pinball gang in Portland. “So, what do you want to know?” asked John while he placed four quarters in the machine and began his game. Wray plays like a henchman casually focused on his game while ranting about pinball.
He has a dense frayed beard, thick rimmed glasses, a shaved head and an array of tattoos among his arms. As he talks, his raspy voice increases in tone while he lets out roars of laughter At 36 years old, Wray has been tilting pinball games since an early age starting out in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is outspoken and seems to find thrills in telling stories. Before I could start note taking, John was spewing stories out like a coin machine does quarters.
He explains the essence of pinball, the satisfaction that occurs and why CFF is the best. He delves into tournaments he has competed in, saying that he won so many, “One time I paid my rent off.” His eagerness shows on his face as he plunges the silver ball down the board.
There are no other games at the Vern, just six pinball machines. He lashes out in hostility about video games for a second, how they tend to replace pinball games due to their financial success and then shows his allegiance to pinball by proudly announcing how he strictly adheres to pinball only with a tone of gusto. “Fuck video games, I only play pinball!” Wray says. He has a huge bitterness toward video games, specifically the golf and hunting games featured in numerous bars around Portland.
A week ago, the CFF had their bi-weekly meeting at the Goodfoot where I would find myself amidst a sea of black tees with CFF logos, wild chants, and an all out pinball competition among members. On the tables were a variety of beer bottles, glasses and a massive mountain of quarters. John told me that members and prospects are required to bring 10 dollars worth of quarters to the meeting, adding up to an overwhelming amount of $200-plus from the entire gang. The sight was epic and seemed to be guarded by one female member, Slammer, who mocked me as I grabbed a few coins. “What do you think you‘re doing?” she asked. “They told me it was cool,” I said.
John made sure I was introduced to each member, and slowly but surely, I met an assortment of pinball zealots with cheers galore. By the end of the night, the mountain of coins had been reduced to a pathetic amount of pocket change. Every 30 minutes or so, John would abruptly erupt in a loud banter yelling, “CFF . . .” then the entire gang would join in unity and ferociously call back, “Til’ death.”
It was like being at a ball game where chants are thrown around endlessly. Members certainly hold Wray in high regard and admiration, in fact they look to him for advice on CFF issues and future undertakings. However, he doesn’t claim to be a leader of any sort. “I’m not the president or the leader of CFF, just another member,” he says with sincerity.
Members brought me into the gaming frenzy with heavy arms and comraderie. John was gazing about his gang with a grin and a glass of beer in his hand. “You’ve never seen me drunk have you?” John said with a smirk and hint of satisfaction. He looked content among his crew and gallivanted around to each member to tell stories or to lend enthusiasm.
One significant component of a CFF meeting is that their location have at least four pinball games. John told me how some bar owners would ask him what it takes for CFF to host a meeting at their spot. He simply replied, four machines will do. The Ship Ahoy did just that, and within a few weeks, they got four machines, and CFF started meeting there on a regular basis. Wray has clout in Portland. When CFF holds a meeting, they provide a lucrative business for the bar and pinball owners, while the gang unleashes a flurry of pinball passion. Any bar that doesn’t have four games, and the CFF won’t have their meeting their.
A charismatic pinball aficionado
Not only does he cook for the Vern, he bartends at Billy Rays over the weekend where he is the commander-in-chief amidst punks, metal heads, and locals. John is quite the avid fan of metal, thrash, and buttrock. He has the bar television tuned to the exclusive show, Metal Mania that only plays 70s and 80s metal, from Kiss and Slaughter, to Judas Priest and Dokken. Customers are smoking like a chimney, some are shooting dice, while others pound pints of PBR, all the while Wray keeps cool joking around and singing along. That it until a customer orders food.
“Motherfuckers and your fucking food,” he yells at a customer. Wray portrays a deep animosity toward having to fix food. It’s as if a pinball game goes dead during mid-play. He turns in spite and begins fixing a platter of nachos while mumbling obscenities and turning to me with a wild look of earnestness in his eyes.
While Wray prepares order after order of hotdogs and nachos, I go upstairs to play a round of pinball. Turns out, the machine Monster Mash shuts down during ball one without even allowing me to sigh. I go downstairs to alert John of the concern, and on the drop of a dime he grabs the phone at midnight, dials a pinball machine operator, and leaves a message explaining what happened on a machine. Wray seems content about the phone call and explains how him and CFF call operators all the time to report down machines. He expects it will get looked at in the next day or so.
Within a few minutes, the toaster oven begins to ringing and John hurries over to handle the hot buffet of melted cheese, jalapenos and a mound of chips with other necessary condiments. All the while his patience is growing thin due to some depressing emo band that has been blaring from the jukebox for the past hour, putting a major damper on the mood of John. It felt like the dead of winter with suicide rants on the forefront of the bar. He leans in close to me and says with a smile, “What’s the difference between an emo kid and a pizza? A pizza won’t cut itself.”
Wray is a joker, a keen story teller who can deliver jokes by the minute if necessary, or carry on fascinating stories that involve all sorts of absurd themes. He begins one dramatic story with enthusiasm that took place in his hometown, entitled “the night I was fucked.” Wray bluntly explains how he had just gotten pulled over late one evening.
“I had in my possession, a fuckin’ half-ounce of pot I had just got. I was shitface drunk. I had a 10-strip of LSD in the fuckin’ daily planner thing, in my book bag with every, every sketch book that I had with all graffiti shit. With every illegal piece I ever painted was documented in there somewhere. I had between 30 and 40 cans of spray paint in my fuckin’ van. My sketchbook had Fort Wayne Police stickers on them. I worked at a screen printing place that printed those stickers . . . I’m fucked, I’m like oh my God! I had a pipe, I had fuckin’ papers on me in my jacket, oh and I had another 10-strip in tinfoil in the pocket of my jacket, I’m fucked! Oh my god I’m fucked, I’m fucked, I’m so fucked . . . (the cop) finds the half-ounce of brick weed in my pocket, hauls over his partner . . . And then he finds the pipe. He dumps it out of the bag and is like, ‘grind that up real good’, smashes the pipe . . . He’s like, ‘you know why we pulled you over?’ no idea, ‘shots were fired in the area and you like a suspicious vehicle.’”
The tale continues even further escalating with Wray in the back of a cop car weaseling the tinfoil 10-strip from his pocket to stash it in his shoe while the cops searched his suspicious van. He was certain he was going to jail when the cops started reading Wray his rights. Turns out they had wrongly identified Wray as a faux pizza delivery robber so the K-9 unit was called out. The K-9 unit cop happened to know Wray, vouched for him as a real pizza delivery man and they let Wray go just like that.
He told another story about how his pinball craze developed at Bakers donut shop in Fort Wayne Indiana. It was here that John and his friends would buy 45 cent coffee with free refills and stock up on prized donuts while slinging quarters and pushing flippers. “They knew how to make my favorite donut,” said Wray with admiration.
Wray is more than the co-founder of CFF, he’s an avid pinball player who admires his members like they’re family and appreciates the time they spend together. He joins them in solidarity throwing chants out into the air like an umpire. “CFF . . . Til’ death!” Lined against the wall are a sea of CFF members shaking machines, sharing laughs and drinking beer. Each machine is flanked with black-clad pinball zealots bearing the CFF logo designed by Wray. He steps back up to No Fear with a grizzly bear stance while a cigarette smoke trickles up his face. This is his love, pinball, CFF and camaraderie.
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