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Coin Slot

Issue: 1980 October 068

Coin Slot Magazine - #068 - 1980 - October [International Arcade Museum]
We'd
Like
You
To
Meet
Dick
Bueschel
by Rosanna Harris
Has the question
ever crossed your mind, "How
When the paper route money could swing it, Dick and
does someone become an expert?" It crossed
his friends would go to a classy movie theater, The Lamar,
ours and we decided to go to the source and find
on Lake Street in Oak Park. They would pass a big square-
out. We've talked extensively with Dick Bueschel.
block house at Pleasant and Home and wonder at all the
He is recognized as a top expert in the field of antique slot
people coming and going. Years later he would come to
machines, but we also discovered that he is a recognized
find out that it was Mills' House.
expert in other fields as well.
Dick, it seems, was born into slot machines because he
was raised on the west side of Chicago. "It was a strange
and wonderful section of the city called 'Austin'; it had
been a small town, but when Chicago grew and grew in the
1890's the town of Austin was engulfed." Before that it had
been a showplace along with the neighboring town of Oak
Park. Although it became an "old" section of Chicago in
the twenties and thirties, the residents believed that it was
still the small town it had once been.
Dick, in fact, was born December 26, 1926 (Mao Tse
Tung was also born on December 26— a fact of no
particular relevance.). It was a time when children began
.com
m
:
u
work early in their life and m
Dick was no
exception. He
us all e over
fro route
started his career with
a paper -
Austin. "I
m
d
e
e
d Some c of a my
d
a
started at 5:30 l A.M.
customers
were.
. . Tom
o
r
n Pine,
.a old
ow North
w
NNatling D on
man Mortimer Mills with his
w
//w the street from Merrick Park (well
garden right
tp: across
t
h
known for its Indian trail marker elms; still there when I
was a kid) and a much younger Bert Mills on west
Washington."
OCTOBER, 1980
© The International Arcade Museum
From the paper route Dick graduated to machine shops
and then to a hobby shop where he learned to build model
airplanes for collecting enthusiasts. One avid collector,
having over 100 models in his collection, later donated his
collection to the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
During the war years Chicago (and its western suburbs)
was coin machine nirvana. The Jennings plant was batting
out scab SILVER CHIEF and BRONZE CHIEF Bell
machines. Mills built plant #3 for war work, while on west
Fulton at the Watling Plant the lights were on night and
day. The largest employer in the area was Mills and to the
young
Dick Bueschel
it seemed that everyone in his
neighborhood either worked for Mills or had a relative who
did. Even so it didn't really seem to be such a "big deal."
The summer of 1944 found Dick and a few of his buddies
biking around Lake Michigan. At the end of two weeks
they were flat broke and took any work available which
Continued on page 8
THE COIN SLOT — 7
http://www.arcade-museum.com/
Coin Slot Magazine - #068 - 1980 - October [International Arcade Museum]
Meet
Dick Bueschel
Continued from page 7
happened to be waiting tables at a summer resort. The first
evening the owner asked the group if any of them knew
Mills' Novelty Company Plant No. 1 in Chicago.
something about slot machines. Not being overly shy,
Dick piped up and said he was an expert. As in stories of
old, our young man was left to do his work alone in the
waning hours on a machine he had never seen before. His
only credentials were delivering papers to the manufac
turers of those machines. "Needless to say, I was up all
night the first night, and the second night in a row. But as I
took the machine apart, slid out the mech and began to
fiddle with it I learned that (as old slot experts will say) The
machine will take care of you.' It wasn't simple to be sure,
new machine that the chief engineers were working on.
They invited Dick to take a look—into the hallowed halls of
Mills. (Again his life is crisscrossed by slot machines.)
Dick recalls going into the Mills factory, "The Philippine
Mahogany corridor, the Art Deco wall lamps, the circular
reception desk that looked like a Show Biz ticket office and
the always smiling people. Bob (I forget his last name) was
very proud of what he was working on and showed me. It
was a large slot machine with a high back and top that
looked
completely
unlike
the
old
WAR
EAGLE
I
remembered from my summer resort days. Bob said that
they had just brought it out as something called the
JEWEL and that they thought it just might be the best thing
that ever happened to them. Bob was deep at work on a
bunch of varieties of the same machine that were going to
be
introduced
the
next
year.
These
were
the
first
Hightops."
Mills SILENT (Wr Eagle) Bell Machine
but it was logical. Piece by piece, part by part, I watched
the systems operate and saw what went where. By six the
next morning I had it humming and was counting symbols
and calculating odds. When the old man came in and saw it
running he glowed and said 'Hey, you really DO know
these things.' For the rest of the summer I was the 'Slot
om
m.c
Boss' for that old WAR EAGLE and got my pin money as
:
rom -museu
f
d
e more
Force (based in Germany),
ade college, marriage, work
oad finally
l
c
r
n
a
as an engineer
and
a
w. career in advertising in the
Dow //ww field.
specialized industrial
:
While working
http as a design engineer in the4100 block on
my 5% share of the take."
Then followed a year of City College, a stint in the Air
Mills Hightop JEWEL Bell Machine
Dick was very impressed by the Mills factory as he daily
watched truck after truck pull away from their loading
dock. "Whatever that slot machine was, I thought, it was
certainly successful." A change of jobs took him away
from the source of all those machines.
west Fullerton Avenue in Chicago, Dick chanced to meet
two design draftsmen who worked in the big factory next
door. They were "detailers" making parts drawing for a
— THE COIN SLOT
© 8 The
International Arcade Museum
Continued in the November Issue.
OCTOBER, 1980
http://www.arcade-museum.com/

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