The Haunted Pinball Hanger

The Haunted Pinball Hanger

 The sanitation trucks don’t play melodies down his back street on the outskirts of Taichung for two reasons; first, his street has only a warehouse or two; no residents for public sanitation pick-up. Second, Hung doesn’t throw anything out, anyway. He doesn’t need to contract a private carter.

Hung’s Quonset hanger houses hundreds of hunkered heaps of electronic hoodoo that he is hard to sell or give away for cheap. He’s a mechanic (reconditioner?) and salesman (antique dealer?) of used arcade games. He calls it a warehouse but it’s just a place for worn out video games, pinball machines, and juke boxes that bars, pachinko, and bowling alleys have discarded.

He doesn’t sell his goods; he can’t sell them. He loves them too much to sell. They mean a lot to him. Each arcade game is from a time he’ll never forget, a time that will never return, from the prime of his life, all in his past. That’s why he wants too much money for them. His past is more valuable to him than his present or future.

When a buyer is attracted to his company by the flashy Website his adult daughter set up for him, she is there to answer in English; she wants him to get rid of some crap. (She wouldn’t dare call it crap to his face.) But no one can buy anything for him. It makes his wife crazy. She is tired of living in a room behind his office in the warehouse.

Let me not get too far into the story before I share with you Hung Well’s promising beginnings. It was a long, long time ago when Taiwan was under Martial Law and American servicemen stumbled drunken across the streets of Taipei’s Ba-De Lu district with its bars, clubs, and massage parlors. That’s where his story begins.

 Hung Well-Hung was born in Taipei in February, 1947, just a few days before the infamous 228 incident, a couple of blocks behind the Taipei railroad terminal. He was the first son of a Japanese-speaking Taiwanese father who did a brisk business in a clock and watch shop that washed money on the side. His mother, who kept up her Taiwanese dialect until the Japanese threatened to arrest her in1937, did the washing and pawning. She was sick of the bowing to the Japanese dogs and facing Emperor Hirohito on the Japanese mainland. She spit on every worthless Japanese-Taiwanese Yen coin that some poor fool tried to exchange for US currency. It wasn’t worth anything anymore since the Chinese of the Kuomintang devalued the currency into New Taiwan Dollars when they took over the island. It was still best to have U.S. currency in those troubled times after World War II. It has been the currency of choice to wash Taiwanese money into ever since. Father did a brisk business selling old Japanese watches to poor Chinese servicemen shanghaied into going to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek. It was better a Japanese dog than a Chinese pig but what could he do. He fixed up the time pieces and sold them cut-rate.

Hung was just a twelve-year-old student in 1959. He loved to go home and watch his father work in the back room of the shop a block between Taipei station and Yuan-Huan West Nanjing Road, at Zhong-Qing Road. His eight year old sister did homework, helped alert mom to customers in the store and, on shopping day, helped mom prepare dinner in the back of the house while Brother Hong Well watched the counter. In the little space near the stairwell, under a bright naked bulb, with eye-piece strapped to his head, Father sat motionless fixated to wind-up mechanisms in the dark windowless room. The technology magazines, many of them in English, like reading material in a barber shop, sat swept to one side on the bare, round chip-wood table that mother used to serve dinner upon.

Occasionally, an American serviceman would come in to sell U.S. dollars at a higher rate than Taiwan Bank would give him and buy a souvenir Japanese watch abandoned by the evicted imperialists. 

Hung took up gluing model airplanes together while his dad worked. Then, his father went from fixing watches to soldering transistors in shortwave radio amplifiers. Mother sold jade necklaces, bracelets and gold rings to the G.I’s with girlfriends, usually Taiwanese girlfriends. Occasionally a girlfriend back in the States was thought of by a homesick sailor who was heading back to Viet Nam on the next transport.

It was an entry to the Ta-Tung technical institute that the family celebrated in the Year of the Horse, 1966. Hung was nineteen and excited about the technological promise of Taiwan as it prepared to take back Mainland China. Hung would be there to lead the steed of horses charging back after Red China’s defeat.

Once, the city served notice that six feet of storefront had to be scalped from the houses on their street. The family soldiered on through the dust and open drainage ditches and moved the shop back into the space formally occupied by Father’s workshop. Dad lost his room to tinker with watches and amplifiers and his son, Well-Hung, grew out of his model airplane fixation. He was a full-time student now at the Ta-Tung institute up Chung-Shan North Road. He mastered the fields adequately covered by academic textbooks and by detailed repair manuals. He moved on from the elementary facts about the engines in use during his day – automobile, aircraft, and Diesel and stripped the internal combustion engine of some of its more technical mysteries. He was moving on to the exciting field of electronics.

Tatung Institute of Technology, which was accredited as a four-year institute of technology in 1963, a few years before Hung entered. After classes at Tatung Institute, Hung stayed on campus talking with classmates about how they were going to make a million dollars one day. The private campus off Jung-Shan North Road was like a park; land that had belonged to the company founded by government officials. It was after an electronics class one day that he met his wife to be, Mei-Ling, a quiet girl from Taichung. She was studying marketing. They talked about their electric future with excitement.

     Hung walked home from the institute every day, sometimes stopping off at a coffee shop with Mei-Ling for a taste of American coffee in fine china. But, usually, he walked home alone along Chung-shan North Road and made a right at Ba-De Road behind the train station. He relished his walks home in the late afternoon amid the hustle and bustle of hundreds of buses running their noisy routes alongside taxis and YueLoong scooters, busy bus-girl ticket-punchers blowing their whistles and warning drivers as smoky buses rounded corners at break-neck speed. He saw uniformed American servicemen walking in twos and threes along the road, stopping in front of brightly painted store fronts with covered windows, soon to be illuminated by light bulb signs. He wondered what they were doing in there.  

He saw the young Taiwanese women approaching and entering the storefronts around five o’clock. Each time a door he passed was opened, he heard the music, local and western rock ‘n’ roll, wailing through the thick Taipei air. And Hung smelled the smell the air-conditioners pushed into the streets; sweaty drifts of alcoholic drinks and cigarette smoke pouring out onto the sweltering streets like curling fingers welcoming in tall American G.I’s with “R & R” cash to spend.

The Taipei Club and Bar District was located several blocks around the intersection of Chung-shan North Road and Min Chuan East/West Road. The Lin-Kou Club was the "Officers' Club" just below "MAAG" and "PX". The 63 Club ("Club 63") was above the Keelung River and MAAG Compound. The Navy Sea Dragon Club, shown as "R & R" on maps, also served as the Taipei "R&R" Center from January 1967 (when "R&Rs" to Taipei commenced) until 1972 when the "R&R" program ended toward the end of the Vietnam War.

The Flamingo Club, Florida Bakery, Suzie Wong Bar, OK Bar, and

The Oasis Hotel was up ahead on the left. The King's and Central Hotels illuminated the street in the distance. Wu-Chou's Massage Parlor’s blue vertical sign was partially visible above the red and white bus off to the right on the opposite side of the street. The Pillbox was on the corner across the street from the King's Hotel. The San Francisco Club and Prince Club were to the right of the Pillbox. Taipei's clubs were open late or all night daily except for a couple of weeks preceding the Lunar New Year when they closed early. All the Taiwan clubs were closed on Lunar New Year's Eve and for several days afterward during the 15-day observance and celebration of the holiday.  

Every bar and club had a jukebox. The 1970 Number One ("Ding Hau") and hit songs blared from every open door. Wurlitzer Jukeboxes and Bally pinball machines were a common fixture in Taipei Clubs and Bars in 1970/71 including the ABC Club, Prince Club, and King's Club.
     You could get five plays on a jukebox for 20 cents NT (5 cents U.S.) The China Night Club, Mona Lisa Club, Sharon Club, and (new) Flamingo Club, King's Hotel, King's Club, 77 Club, Pink Bar, and Monte Carlo Club all had jukeboxes. Eventually, after thousands of plays of soft-plastic pirated 45’s, those jukeboxes broke down. How many tilts could freeze a pinball machine?  Hung had an idea that he shared with Mai-Ling: Why not become a jukebox/pinball machine repairman? He knew all about electric circuits and Mei-Ling knew about marketing. They would start a business together!

America positioned thousands of troops in Hong Kong and Taiwan, abruptly starting in 1954. At their peak, there were 4,539 American soldiers in Hong Kong in 1957, which were quickly drawn down to levels of 290 and then 26 over the next two years. The situation was similar in Taiwan, with a sudden buildup from 811 to 4,174 troops in 1954, peaking in 1958 at 19,000 and then stabilizing between 4,000 and 10,000 until 1977. All American forces were pulled out in 1979; a withdrawal that clearly began in 1973 after President Nixon’s diplomatic opening with the People’s Republic of China. With the departure of the troops, the clubs were in trouble, and so was Hung Well’s career.

     After 1979, it became more difficult for Hung Well to earn money. Instead of repairing jukeboxes, he started collected them. He’d go to closed-up clubs to take the broken music machines away. He brought them in a truck to an obscure warehouse down in Mu-cha. There they stayed in the darkened warehouse collecting dust. There his hair started turning gray. He thought he could make a living fixing and reselling but there were too many and not enough customers. He used parts from some machines to fix others. The entertainment industry moved into the future and Hung had to change with the times or be doomed.

TV video clubs began catering to teenage sub-culture. Hung jumped on the bandwagon.
     In 1988, MTV clubs offered a wide selection of films, state-of-the-art video equipment and privacy. Taiwan's MTV clubs were once considered just another fad in this society where variety is a way of life--but then, with more than a thousand clubs all over the island, they seemed to be there to stay. Hung would repair the VCR’s that broke down. Business was hopping again. Hong Well’s eyesight started faltering.

MTV, which has been redefined by Taiwan entrepreneurs as "Movies on TV" instead of the Western world's concept of "Music Television," had survived oft-heated public debate over the proliferation of alleged "pirated" foreign films; that the real or imagined threat to traditional Taiwanese values were the privacy these clubs offered to teenagers.

The controversy that first surrounded them had to do with the failure of many opportunistic operators to not bother to obtain proper business licenses to compete with traditional movie houses. U.S. movie makers complained that such commercial use of copyrighted films, whether pirated or not, were in violation of laws governing "public" viewing.

 Hung didn’t care about technicalities; he just wanted to repair the VCR’s and laser disc players, but Hung learned that no matter how fast you run, the devil is still on your ass.

The ROC Government Information Office, concerned about violations of international copyrights, had been cracking down for months on unlicensed MTV operators and confiscating "pirated" films being rented to patrons. But the clubs continued to blossom all over the dynamic, modernistic, metropolis because the teenagers like them.

Mr. K.T.Yang, assistant to the director of the Radio and Television
Department, said GIO had been mainly concentrating on seeing that the clubs did not violate copyright laws by handling pirated copies of tapes. He said that, at the moment, enforcement of regulations "was effective,” and that there was no danger the MTV industry would be shut down because of legal problems over the showing of pirated tapes, but he was wrong

Hung held on and hoped for the best. He had started collecting jukeboxes and pinball machines and now VCR’s and laser disc players from MTV clubs and bowling alleys in Taichung where the American air force had also left, and the teenagers were disappearing with intensifying crackdown on illegal MTV centers.

 Hung retreated and his white hair receded. He found an inexpensive out of the way place not far from the air-force base in Taichung and trucked all the abandoned entertainment machines there from Mu-Cha. He ended his lease there and moved his business office down to Taichung as well. Anyway, it was his wife’s hometown.

In 1995, a fire at Wei-Er-Kang KTV Restaurant in Taichung marked the end of the KTV era. Hung Well had sold many reconditioned karaoke machines to clubs like that all over town. Sixty-four people died in that blaze. Well Hung felt partly responsible and was devastated by the sad news. An investigation revealed that the restaurant violated the Urban Planning Act and opened without applying for a proper license as had most others. Emergency exits were blocked. The city government and fire department had the club pass 21 safety inspections.

After a fire killed dozens of young people in an MTV in Taichung, the government really cracked down. Dozens of entertainment centers closed with their arcade games in disrepair. Hung’s collection grew; his warehouse haunted with arcane American arcade machines.

Before long, a new entertainment, called computer video games, was taking over the market. Hung didn’t know how to repair computers and had to pass on the new industry. He became a dinosaur stuck in past technology. He was left out to dry with a warehouse full of broken machines. His hair grew thin as his income shrank.

Hung was getting old. His back hurt from lugging machines and he was losing money ever month. At least the warehouse was his, bought cheaply when the market price was low. He couldn’t go around town schlepping juke boxes and pinball machines any more. No one called to have their machines repaired. Instead, like a lepidopterist collects butterflies, Hung collected arcade games. 

Then, one day at the turn of the century, Hung Well saw an ad in the Taiwan newspaper from an American arcade game company looking for sales reps in Taiwan. Mr. and Mrs. Hung Well would become importers.

      It was 2012 when I moved to Taichung. I was looking for a jukebox or pinball machine for my new condo. I took a bike ride one morning and was able to find SAX, the company that imported and serviced jukeboxes and pinball machines. I couldn’t find the address on MapQuest but Google Taiwan showed it on their street map of Da-Ya.

Address: 台中市大雅區車身南路524巷18號   Tel: 886-4-2374-2438 Fax:886-4-2490-1235  Email: sax.pc@msa.hinet.net

      I took a chance and rode there on my bike without calling.  I rode along the Han River bike trail to the Tan-Zih Bridge and through the old grade-level railroad crossing near my wife’s old home, then down Tan-Xing Road past my eyeglass store. After finding the warehouse down a nondescript lane, I rang the door bell of the seemingly closed office.

 A man in his sixties came to the door followed by an elderly matron; his wife. They let me in. Right there, I saw a brand new Avengers pinball machine and a used Rowe CD juke box from the ‘80’s. We sat in the office and Mrs. Hung made me a cup of coffee. I told him I was interested in buying the AC/DC Pinball Machine I saw on the website. Also, I was interested in buying a CD or 45 juke box. Our conversation, in Mandarin, could go just so far. He told me his daughters had gone to school in America and spoke English. Edsel was in Taiwan now and could be contacted. He gave me her business card. I had to call my wife at home to speak with Mr. Hung and get more information.

He told my wife that they wouldn’t be getting more shipments of pinball machines for another nine months, however he had sold one six months ago to a man in southern Taiwan who wanted to re-sell it. It was 180,000NT ($6000us) new but I could get it used for 165,000 ($5,500us). He said he would call the man and ask him if the pinball machine was still for sale and call me back. He then showed me the used Rowe CD jukebox.

 The jukebox still had the old song title labels. Three decorative revolving CD’s in the top chamber needed a new motor to get them to spin. He plugged the machine in and the lights went on but I heard no music from the three large speakers. He would fix that. He said the juke box would be re-conditioned and would be much cheaper than the almost new AC/DC pinball machine. My dream was to get both of them for under $6,000. I told my wife that she could make it my 60^th birthday present. It would be cheaper than buying me a Jaguar.

I took another long bike ride to Da-Ya to the SAX warehouse the next week to hear the Rowe jukebox. The jukebox sounded good but Mr. Hung couldn’t figure out how to erase years of song memory punched in by patrons years ago, still to be played in the ‘favorites’ queue. He walked away slowly and then returned with an English language manual. With his daughter’s help, he saw that by pressing ‘reset’ and ‘8’ the memory could be cleared. A number of things needed to be repaired inside the jukebox, it was plain to see, and a lot of cleaning and painting on the outside had to be done, but for $2,000, it was ridiculous!  I’d give him $1000 if it were in working order and he included servicing as long as I owned the machine; I’d buy the parts but I’d only take the jukebox if it was under $1000. I didn’t need to buy it; I saw the same Rowe jukebox on e-bay, in better condition, for $800. I would show him the ad if he insisted on two grand.

80,000 ($2,666us) is what Hung wanted for the jukebox. He had told my wife he wanted it for $2,000us (60,000NT) and I was ready to pay, but he changed his mind. I told him I was not willing to pay more than 50,000NT ($1,666us) for it. I may have to say goodbye to it. I would invest in nice speakers instead and use the iPod which had all my CD’s. He saved me the trouble of shipping one thousand CD’s from Brooklyn. The jukebox only held one hundred at a time.

I didn’t hear from Edsel Hung the next day after I sent her an e-mail refusing to pay $2,600 for a refurbished twenty-year-old bowling alley juke box with three hundred thousand plays. The machine could die at any time and would be a waste of money without a commitment by Hung to include parts and repairs for at least a year. He’d sell it to me as-is, for $2,000 but it wasn’t worth it without a warranty. He had to change the motor for the revolving discs on top and the rubber washer he showed me under the CD player for it to be worth $2000us. I could get a motor myself, paint and clean up the rest for $1,000. I would have to let it pass. Perhaps I could find my own juke box in a bowling alley in Taiwan somewhere.

Two days later, there was no response from Mr. Hung. I could kiss the juke box goodbye because I didn’t want to pay $2600us for it refurbished and he wouldn’t let me touch it for under $2,000 which he was ready to sell it for, with no servicing or parts. You know what? I didn’t need it. I had a CD player to play my CD’s, and a turntable to play my 45’s and what’s left of my albums. I had an iPod with 26,000 songs and another MP3 player with more music. If Mr. Hung agreed to $1000-1500 as it was, I’d say okay. For $2,000 he had to fix the rotating decorative CD’s on top and the rubber washer he said needed to be replaced. He had to give me a one year service contract with parts included, as I said in my last and final offer:

“If the 1994 Rowe jukebox is in good playing condition, with all motors working properly, without being refurbished, it is within my affordable range, 50,000-60,000NT ($1,666-2,000us). Please indicate exactly what parts will be replaced. For example, your dad said a new motor was needed to spin the three CD discs on top and a rubber washer was needed to balance the playback mechanism. It must be in working order with a guarantee for labor and parts one year, and labor alone (parts excluded) for two to five years.”

 Mr. Hung Well was going to have another arcade game in his dusty dark warehouse. His daughter and wife would be left to throw his junk away one day. They could call me then. Hung could have made a fair deal with me to get the jukebox off his hands. The music never left me.

After a month, my wife got a phone call from Mr. Hung. He acted like he didn’t get my last e-mail I had sent to his daughter with my refined final offer. My wife called him back yesterday and repeated my offer. He told her he would think about it. After a month, I’d gotten used to not having a jukebox but it has piqued my interest again. I had seen two model Rowe jukeboxes on e-bay the night before for around $700 before shipping, not knowing the condition. The jukebox here in Taichung played and I’d heard it. There may be no other jukeboxes in Taiwan for sale. It would be ridiculous to ship a 400 lb jukebox here from the States. Under $2000 would be still look good in the enclosed patio with shipping and servicing included in the price. I hoped Mr. Hung would see it my way.

Mr. Hung hadn’t finished thinking about selling me the jukebox for under 60,000. He said he’d think about it. Our land line is at our new home and any message would be received there.

Mr. Hung from the jukebox/pinball place has ‘been thinking’ about my final offer for the Rowe jukebox since my wife called him back months ago. He’s going to be thinking about it for a long time as he ponders all the haunted arcade machines he hasn’t sold in his warehouse. If I don’t hear from him by the weekend, I will put it out of my mind again.