After Judd Weinberg sold the company to Columbia, the place went downhill.
Wayne and Judd left the company the same day and walked out the front door at
the same time. But Wayne was kept on for an additional three years as a consultant,
so he could reach his 65-year retirement.
Wayne was one of the main inspirations
behind the idea of starting the National Pinball Museum. There is no succinct
historical record of the pinball industry, so after amassing more than 800 pinball
machines, I decided to interview him and glean any facts he recalls about his
time at Western Electric and D. Gottlieb & Company.
He now lives in Springfield, Missouri, and recently turned 91.
DS: Wayne, tell me a little about your family
history.
WN: I was born in Mason City, Iowa like my parents,
in 1919. When I was eight years old, my grandfather broke his hip, which in those
days was the kiss of death. The plan was that my family would go and take care
of him. Unfortunately, on that same day my father, who was an electrician, was
doing some work in a basement and was electrocuted. So both my father and my
grandfather died on the same day leaving my mother with my 10-year old sister
and me to take care of. My father had a $10,000.00 insurance policy which helped
us out quite a bit. So she moved us to Chicago where her sister was living and
that’s how “country boy” Wayne came to live in the big city. My mother invested
the money in the stock market and two years later she was wiped out in the crash
of ‘29.
DS: What
was your work experience like?
WN: I had to start working pretty early
on to help support my mom and sister. I was young, but ready for work, after
school of course. By age 12, I was making my way in the business
world selling newspapers. At the height of my entrepreneurial prowess I was running 100 newspapers a day
making an amazing $3.00 profit. My mother also worked and my sister took in and
watched over young women borders. The borders slept in our bedrooms, my sister
and mom slept in the living room, and I slept on the porch. I became the head
of the household at a very young age. I was a real go-getter. That said, I
lived a very different lifestyle from most people my age; working long hours
and coming home after everyone had eaten. I’d sit with my mother in the kitchen and discuss
the day’s events as I ate. I did just about everything from selling Christmas
trees during the holidays to selling newspapers with my own stand.
DS: What did
you do after your newspaper business?
WN: Well that reminds me of an interesting
story I’d like to tell you. During one really hot evening, my aunt was taking
a bath and got her limbs so tangled up that she couldn’t get out of the tub.
The women of the house came running to try and get her out of the tub, albeit
unsuccessfully. I called up to them and asked if I should get Mr. Ramstead to
help; a rather lecherous old man living on the floor below my aunt. They all
screamed in unison…”No!” To me it was a perfectly logical idea, considering he
was the only man in the area. It wasn’t a joke to me until I learned that men,
particularly lecherous old men, aren’t supposed to do such things.
Well, Ramstead
had a son, Raymond, who went to a school called Crane Technical High School,
where he studied mechanical drawing. One day Ray came home from school and showed
me some of his drawings. I was so impressed with them that when I was old enough,
I went to the same school just so I could learn to draw like Raymond. I learned
to do mechanical drawings, and when I’d finished with that, I moved on to doing
architectural drawings.
It’s funny when you think about it, but if my aunt hadn’t
gotten stuck in that tub I might never have met Mr. Ramstead, and if I hadn’t
met him I’d might never have met his son. And if I hadn’t met his son I might
have never seen his drawings, I might never have gone to his school, never learned
to do mechanical drawing, and might never have ended up designing pinball games.
DS: Well then how did you actually get into the pinball business?
WN: This might be a bit long-winded but here
I go. While I had my newspaper stand, I’d watch people going in and out of a
butcher shop across the street. While on a short break one day, I went into the
shop and started talking with some of the men who worked there. They told me
they made a pretty good living and that was all I needed to know. I told them
if an opening ever came up to please let me know.
So after pestering them day after day, I finally got a job
and gave up my newspaper business. I showed up on my first day and worked like
the dickens. The next day my boss came in and said there was some work that had to
be done on the store and that there would be no work for us for the next few
days. He assured me that as soon as the work was done I could come back and resume
my job. Well I wasn’t too happy about that, so I looked for a new job in the
newspaper. I found an ad for a mechanical artist. It gave the location and said
to bring some sample drawings.
The next day I walked into the offices of Western Electric
and into the office of the owner, Mr. Jimmy Johnson. I showed him my samples
and then he asked me to draw something right on the spot. No sooner had I finished
than he offered me the job. I thought I was only going in for an interview. What
a surprise! I said yes and worked there for the next 3 years. The butcher wasn’t
too happy when I broke the news to him, but that’s how it goes. Anyway, that’s
how I ended up in the pinball industry instead of the butcher shop.
DS: What was it like working at Western Electric and for Jimmy Johnson?
WN: Jimmy Johnson was a strapping man, a former college football player, about
six-and-a-half feet tall. And, as I was to find out, he was a tough nut to crack.
His office was up on the second floor along with the secretaries and engineers.
That’s where I ended up working too. Way in the back of that floor there was
a fully stocked bar, and with all the people that came in to see Jimmy it was
just about non-stop drinking every day. They’d come in and he’d start schmoozing
and before long they’d buy some of his games.
He had a wonderfully happy demeanor
when the customers were visiting; I only wish it was that way for the rest of
us. He was, as I said, a tough nut, a miserable nasty man
and impossible to get along with. Fridays were payday and the employees had an
armored car come by to cash their checks. They were all afraid that if they waited
till Monday there wouldn’t be enough money in the bank to cover them. Jimmy could never seem to
hold onto any money and the business eventually went belly up. He moved down
to Texas and opened an amusement park.
Harry Mabs, the inventor of the pinball
flipper, was the chief designer at Western Electric when I came to work for them. I had a very good relationship with Harry, even though he was old enough to be
my father. Harry had a son my age named Bud. He was real problem kid and Harry
asked me to keep an eye on him as much as I could. He knew I was a good up-standing
kid and hoped I could have some positive influence on Bud. On one of many occasions
Bud and I, and a number of other young workers, were assigned to assemble plungers
for the games. Putting a plunger together required sliding a piece of plastic
onto a rod, then a beefy spring, a washer, and a cotter pin pushed through a
hole in the shaft to keep all the parts in place. Bud had
the great idea to launch washers at the secretaries using the spring on the plunger
shafts as the means of propulsion. When Jimmy caught wind of what Bud was doing, he didn’t see the
humor in it and all of us were reprimanded.
Jimmy had some very talented designers
at the company; one in particular was Amel Goodmar. He created an amazing coin-operated
crap table called Monty Carlo, but it was so complicated and broke down so often
that Jimmy only produced one of them. It had a beautiful wooden cabinet about
36 inches long and 24 inches wide and was lined in green felt. At the top, an
illuminated hand would shake a cup and roll “lit” dice onto the play field revealing
different numeric combinations. If you got a 7 or 11 you won and the machine
paid out, but if you rolled snake eyes or boxcars you’d lose. It was an absolutely
amazing game.
Along with the bar in the back, there was an ongoing crap game
in the latrine every day. Jimmy would walk into the bathroom sometimes and say,
“if I catch any of you guys with your pants up, you’re fired.” The place was
crazy.
My last day at Western came about when I told Jimmy I really needed a
raise. He’d promised me one for a long time but never made good on it; he just
kept putting me off. I watched as he hired new people and started them with more
money than I was getting. They were rookies and I’d been there a lot longer and
it was getting to me. I finally told him if I didn’t get the raise I was going
to quit. Jimmy, the tough nut, said “no,” and I walked out.
I hopped on a bus
heading towards the GENCO Company, but when I got off, instead of walking towards
GENCO, I headed off in the other direction towards D. Gottlieb & Co. I remembered
that Harry Mabs was working for Gottlieb so I thought I’d take a chance on applying
for a job as well. I walked in and asked if they needed anyone with my background.
I got the job and a 10 cent per hour raise to boot. I started immediately. My
job was testing pinball game boards.
I worked overtime that day…well into the
night. When I finally got home I found Jimmy Johnson’s Lincoln Continental parked
outside of my apartment building. He got out and said he wanted to talk to me.
I told him if he wanted to talk he should come up to my apartment. Once
inside he told me I just had to come back to work for him tomorrow. I told him
that I couldn’t do that; I was working for Gottlieb now and wasn’t going to leave. My
mother happened to be in the room at the time and she told Jimmy not to worry,
that I’d be back at his place in the morning. I got pretty insistent at that
point and said I wouldn’t be back.
The next morning I went to Gottlieb. I didn’t tell Mr. Gottlieb
(Dave) what happened with Jimmy, but during that day Johnson came into Dave’s
office and demanded that he fire me. Now Jimmy was 6’5” and Dave was just 5’6”.
Physically Dave was no match for Jimmy but he never backed down. He said, “as
long as I’m here, Wayne will always have a job.”
So within 24 hours, I quit
my job at Western Electric, got hired by Gottlieb, worked an overtime shift,
got home to have Johnson threaten me, and went to work the next day to find him
trying to have me fired. That’s what it was like working for Jimmy Johnson.
That concludes Part 1 of my interview with Wayne Neyens. Part 2 will explore
what it was like when Wayne worked for Dave Gottlieb at D. Gottlieb & Company.
It will be coming soon to an email-box near you.