After playing his first pinball game as a child in his aunt’s basement, Patrick Stafford decided that one day he wanted a machine of his own.
“It was really old,” he said of the game called Central Park. “It was probably a 50s pinball machine, but we used to take the glass off of it and we'd play around trying to get the balls to work in it.”
It wouldn’t be until years later that the Casper man finally purchased one, but it has led to more than 20 years of giving old and broken machines new life.
“It’s a labor of love,” he said. “Everybody's like, ‘You must make a lot of money at it.’ No, I don't, but there's nobody in Wyoming that fixes stuff like this. It’s cool to bring life into them because many of them sit for a long time.”
A Love Of Fixing
Stafford has enjoyed tinkering with electronics from a young age, often taking things apart to see how they work.
“I've never been afraid to open something up and look at it,” he said. “Growing up in Wyoming in the country you needed to be able to fix stuff.”
Eventually he started fixing Atari 2600s and then transitioned to restoring upright arcade games. About four years later in 2003 a friend told him about two broken pinball machines that were for sale — Jurassic Park and Lethal Weapon 3 — and Stafford decided to buy them.
The Jurassic Park game was a re-import, meaning it had originally been sent and played outside the U.S.
“So when I first got it, it didn't even speak English, I think it was Spanish,” he said. “I got it working quite fast, probably within a week or so.”
Lethal Weapon 3 proved to be more of a challenge and took Stafford two years of trial and error to complete.
“That's probably the longest it ever took on one but I learned a ton from doing that,” he said. “There's a lot of information now, but back then there wasn't a lot of information on how to fix them. So you just had to muddle through things and figure it out.”
Those two machines led to a new hobby for the Casper firefighter. He began to not only look for machines to buy and fix up, but also for games to repair to help others.
“You can usually fix anything, if you just take a look at it and figure out what's wrong,” he said. “It's finding the right parts to fix things. I think that just fixing things in general, has always been one of my favorite things to do. When you’re a fireman, you can't fix everything at work so it's kind of nice to come home and work on things.”
Right, Patrick Stafford with Jurassic Park, the first pinball machine he purchased and fixed more than 20 years ago. He's now fixed hundreds of pinball machines. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford) 
A pinball machine that Stafford bought to restore and rebuild, covered in grime. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford) 
Stafford cleaned the machine, checked the board and updated the lights during his restoration of the game. He does like to leave some of the bumps on knicks on the outside that add personality. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford)
Staying Busy
A member of the Casper Fire Department for more than 20 years, Stafford likes to stay busy outside of work. He’s also a country musician who released his latest album last summer. He said his two main hobbies crossover as he named his first album Full Tilt, also a pinball game.
“I'm usually supposed to be doing something else when I'm doing pinball machines,” he joked. “I stay pretty busy, and in a lot of the other little things that I do, they all kind of blend and pay for each other.”
Fixing the machines was also a way to bond with his sons Conner and Colin.
“All these years my boys have been my testers,” he said. “So when I get one fixed, I'd let them play it, and if they’d find anything wrong, then I just continue to fix it until everything checks out and it's all good.”
Stafford has worked on hundreds of machines – from simple problems like a stuck switch to total rebuilds. One of the things that can make restoring pinball machines so difficult is the fact that often parts are not interchangeable from machine to machine and have to be salvaged from the same game or brand.
“So if you have a pinball machine that's not working and has got a bad part, you'll have to sit on it for a while and keep watching the forums and stuff until you can find somebody that's parting out a different machine to fix it,” he said.
Each new game he has brought home and repaired is like a manual for each specific brand, he said, so he’s learned secrets along the way that make things easier.
When Stafford gets a new machine, he'll take everything apart, wax the playfield, put new rubber rings on and go through and clean all the switches. He often replaces the more than 40 bulbs in the machines as well so they don’t burn as hot.
“The pictures on the glass are screened on so if they have too much heat on them, after a while all that paint will peel off,” he said.
Damage to the games can come from a variety of sources including fried electronics, dirt and build up, and the wear and tear that comes with age.
“A lot of these games, I don't know if they were meant to last as long as they have, especially the electronics,” he said.
He has dealt with a variety of electrical issues including boards damaged by acid from the backup batteries, which he describes as a cancer that ruins the whole board. Cigarette smoke over the years also causes grime to build up on the playfield, but there are special waxes to remove it. If the sides of a machine are completely beat up, the stenciling on the outside can be replaced.
When he does a complete teardown, Stafford works from the bottom up, from new stencils to electronics to painting. Most of the time though he tries to keep the games as original as possible, including leaving a few knicks and dings that give them character.
“There’s something about having a machine that's got a little bit of love on the outside of it,” he said. “I enjoy that.”
Pinball machines were invented in the 1930s, but they were initially more of a gambling game similar to bingo. Stafford said the oldest type he’s worked on is a woodrail pinball game. The games were made in the 1940s and 50s and the outside was made of wood, not metal.
“Whenever I see those, there are usually lots and lots of switches,” he said. “Those are all mechanical so there won't be any circuit boards or anything on those.”
And while Stafford does his best to restore each pinball game to its former glory, sometimes they’re so far gone they can’t be fixed. It is then turned into a parts machine, some of which he uses himself or trades for parts he needs for other games.
Everyone Knows His Name
Stafford doesn’t advertise that he fixes the machines, but people find him by word of mouth and through referrals, including from Dave’s Darts ’n Billiards in Casper.
He tries not to work on too many at once as there’s only so much space in his garage workshop. Currently there are six pinball machines in the queue.
When he first started working on the games in the early 2000s, information wasn’t widely available, so Stafford had to source parts himself. He found some on eBay or at Radio Shack. One of his go-tos in Casper was the now-closed Fleming Supply, which “had everything to do with electronics.”
“I would walk into Fleming, and it was kind of like Norm on Cheers,” he said. “I'd walk in, and they'd be like, ‘Well, you know where it is in the back. So I would go into the back, and I would spend time finding my parts.”
Stafford has learned where all the games specialists are throughout the United States and said Steve Young’s Pinball Resource has been invaluable. And as technology has evolved, forums and YouTube have been a big help as well.
“I tell the new kids that come to work with their big cell phones that for the first six years of being a fireman, I never had a cell phone,” he said. “Now you can get on YouTube, and if you've got something that's broken on your pinball machine, somebody else has had that problem.”
Most of the games he comes across, he fixes and returns it to the owner or sells to fund his hobby. There are a few games though that he hasn’t been able to part with including his first – Jurassic Park. He also has an upright version of Tron, as well as his favorite, a 1983 Star Wars upright game.
“The 1983 Star Wars was the one that I always looked for,” he said. “You have the ones that you fall in love with, but I try not to fall in love with all of them. My wife (Shireen) is like the most understanding woman of all time. She's a teacher, and she teaches pre-kindergarten so she's used to dealing with people that are on my level.”
Stafford said he would like to find a newer Guardians of the Galaxy game because he and his family enjoyed the soundtrack to the movie, and it makes him happy to hear the songs on a game. For the most part though he likes the quality of the older machines and the obvious pride that went into making them.
“So much of the artwork on old pinball machines is silk screen,” he said. “I think that's kind of why I like it so much, because the older ones are so well put together.”
Stafford says he loves learning the stories behind the machines and recently repaired one for U.S. Sen. John Barrasso. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford) 
Patrick Stafford has fixed hundreds of pinball machines through the years. He works on the machines in his garage. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford) 
Through the years, Patrick Stafford has done a variety of repairs on pinball machines, from simple fixes like a broken switch to a complete rebuild. (Courtesy Patrick Stafford)
Learning Their Stories
One of the things Stafford enjoys most about the games is the stories behind them. He recalled that after purchasing an upright version of Space Zap at a garage sale, he got a call from a man who had hoped to buy it back for his mother. The game had belonged to her father and had been sold before she’d had a chance to make an offer herself.
“It was a really cool game, but I sold it back to him and it was a neat thing for her,” he said. “I love stories like that. I love pinball machines that are in the basement that belonged to their dad and don't work anymore. If you can bring them back to life, then they don't have to be thrown out and the next generation can enjoy them.”
Not long ago he fixed a pinball game for U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, and most recently he helped an older lady fix a machine that was given to her by her fiancé. She didn’t end up marrying the guy, but she still had the game in her dining room.
“Fixing pinball machines takes you to places that you would never expect,” he said. “And they usually have a really good story of where they picked it up.”
He said the games often invoke a sense of nostalgia for people, with the lights and sounds reminiscent of the arcades many grew up playing games in, something he also enjoyed while growing up in Buffalo.
“There was something to be said for just going to play games,” he said. “Now everybody has a console in their house.”
And while he wouldn’t describe himself as a star, Stafford said he’s a decent pinball player.
“I do alright,” he said. “I like the older games, like from the late ’70s and mid-’80s. They built so many incredible games with drop targets. And targets you could hit.”
