Play Meter

© inman of t he month
Flipper McGee's
closet crammed
with pinballs
A Play Meter inteNiew
with Norm Calfin,
Michigan arcade operator
"It seems that so any lawmakers are in the dark
regarding this industry. I believe we as operators should
begin an awarness campaign to teach these lawmakers
how things really are ... "
In 1971, a young, recently married man sank
$3,000 into 10 pinball machines and exorbitant rent
for a Michigan coUege coffeehouse he planned to
turn into Michigan's first flipper-oriented arcade,
not knowing the day he opened for business
whether he would find himself in jail the same day
for violating the state's anti-pinbaU laws.
"AU of my friends thought I was crazy to invest
that much money in machines which could be
confiscated at any time and cause me to be jailed, "
Norm Calfin remembers with a grin.
Even the distributor he bought the games from
thought he was headed for trouble, but he shook
Calfin 's hand and told him he couldn't believe
anyone had enough guts to try to get flipper games
into Ann Arbor. "He told me there hadn't been any
since they confiscated some in the early '50's, "
Gal/in says.
But Calfin 's fears never manifested themselves
and today he either whoUy owns or partially owns
five other arcades and a route and is planning to
open two enclosed maU arcades in the near future
under the corporate names of Flipper McGee's and
Associated Amusements Inc. To make his success
even more ironic, the Michigan legislature is
expected this year to legalize free play on flipper
games.
Indeed, Norm Calfin had guts to try to opf:n a
pinball arcade in a state that outlawed pinball
decades ago and is just now coming to a realistic
position on the matter, but being a trifle pinball
crazy helped. As a child he lived next door to a
bowling alley and he and a friend would play some
"serious pinball" often and try to win free games.
But what really interested Calfin in the prospects
of owning pinball games was an evening he spent in
the late Sixties with a friend at Michigan State
University in Lansing. "I went up for the
weekend, "he explains, "and instead of going to the
usual theater, we went to a pizza shop which
happened to have several pinball games. After that
initial session, which lasted until 2 a.m., I became
very ivolved in the game. "
So involved, in fact, that Calfin began driving the
70 miles from his home to Lansing every weekend.
On his constant pinbaU treks he noticed that the
machines he played were kept busy by coUege
students who were as involved as he was.
"I began to theorize that if I and other college
friends whom I considered fairly intelligent would
go all that distance to play pinball, there must be a
market for this sort of operation near other coUege
campuses. " Calfin remembers.
The 1970 graduate of Wayne State University
decided to test his theory by trying to open an
arcade rather than plac-ing machines inside a
restaurant. There weren't any arcades in Michigan
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