Before My Time
Part One
By Robert Rowland
I have written articles for this magazine in the past about my memories of the local
amusement arcades here in Mablethorpe in the 1960s, yet I've always wondered what
it would have been like a little earlier, in the 1950s. So I asked a good friend of mine
who was about at that time. His name is David Lascelles, and here's what really
happened:
The saga of the modified penny
As young lads living in a coastal resort in the 1950s, we spent rather a lot of our time
during the summer holidays succumbing to the attraction of the amusement arcades.
This was mainly in the years before the one-armed bandit era, but we were well
catered for by wall machines, pintables and a great variety of novelty machines:
Execution, Misers Last Moment, Headball and Ahrens Piledriver, plus cranes of
various types. You could print your name on aluminium strips and stop the train at the
station etc. Before the advent of super nudge, multi-shuffle and large jackpots, the
arcades lived up to their name, and were for amusement.
The biggest snag was, of course, having enough coins to play the machines, when
faced with six or seven weeks holiday. We were not in the big league when it came to
pocket money, because although it was only a tanner for a cheap cinema ticket,
and a bag of chips was anything from 3d upwards, to take those out of 1/6d (one
shilling and sixpence) or two bob, didn't leave much for playing the arcades. Of
course, we went beach combing, pop-bottling (taking empties back to cafes and sweet
shops) and mushrooming (when in season in September). We also went 'luggaging'
on Saturday mornings (cases on the barrow, Sir?). We sometimes got a few bob with a
long haul from the railway station to the caravan sites at the north end of the town.
These activities helped feed our enjoyment with the arcade machines, but not totally!
Through the seasons, we acquired certain techniques to help stretch out our coin
supplies. I will point out that this was in a milder age - it was technically wrong of
course, but at least it wasn't the grand scale looting that goes on today. We never
jemrnied machines open, drilled through cabinets or smashed anything. The other
factor was, anything we won usually went straight back into other machines, and we
generally went home broke - not every time, but usually! I point this out because
readers seeing all the admissions in one chapter might conclude that we ranked on a
par with Capone or Legs Diamond. Thus having set the scene ........ .
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