The Prize Bull

I've been in storage for almost a quarter-century inside this dusty warehouse. To my left is a pinball machine manufactured by D. Gottlieb & Co. The glass top is cracked, and I'm sure most of the buzzers and lights haven't worked since Reagan was in office. To my right is a rusty 1959 Seeburg jukebox, and if I could flip through the playlist, I know there'd be the old standbys like Rock Around the Clock, Don't Be Cruel, and The Yellow Rose of Texas. I remember those songs spilling out of the soda shop that was right across the street from me.

And, of course, that street was called Main Street. The name of the town doesn't matter so much - it could have been any small town in America. They call me El Toro, and I'm a coin-operated kiddie ride. I stood right outside in front of the Woolworths for years. You should have seen me back then when my paint was new and my motor and gears whirred like a Swiss watch. I was cast from aluminum, suspended in mid-leap with my chin tucked and my horns pointed straight ahead.

To the kids I was more than just a mechanical novelty. I represented some great struggle between man and beast, between an expanding civilization and an untamed wilderness. The buckaroos lined up by the dozen, each clutching a dime they'd trade for a chance to conquer the raging bull. You could see the wonder in their eyes. During that sixty-second ride, a little boy in a cowboy hat momentarily transformed into Jim Bowie or Kit Carson. A little girl in pigtails became, say, Annie Oakley or Calamity Jane.

It was a simpler time in America back then. Our mythos sprang from the hallowed grounds of Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, and the beaches of Normandy. We trusted our politicians, we knew our enemies, we had heroes and we loved them. The economy was booming, and the kids kept lining up with their shiny dimes. I turned a tidy profit, and it seemed like it would last forever.

But that premonition I had about permanence turned out to be less like granite and a lot more like a sandbar shifting in muddy currents. The music got louder, the skirts got shorter. We were embroiled in another war, this one in Southeast Asia. The reasons behind it seemed unclear; everything got a little murkier.

Then they opened up an arcade down the street, and that started to cut into my business a little. I was still attracting a crowd, but the maintenance calls for my upkeep were getting more frequent. The manager at the Woolworths once told the service technician, "El Toro's barely pulling his weight anymore. You know, Roy, I should probably just put him out to pasture, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Not yet, anyways."

Roy had taken the cigar out of his mouth long enough to reply, "Yeah, you always were an old softy. Looks like the timer assembly is all shot to hell. We're gonna have to replace that."

To make matters worse, a group of surly teenagers pelted me with rocks one Saturday night, chipping my paint and leaving a little dent on top of my head. The manager at the Woolworths finally had enough with all the hassles, and he just gave me to the owner of the arcade down the street.

At first, things were okay. I was inside, out of the elements, and I found my niche soon enough. The older kids could ditch a younger brother or sister with El Toro here. It would get them out of their hair long enough to play a game of Skee Ball or test their aim at the rifle gallery. I wasn't the main attraction anymore, but it was a living at least.

One day they wheeled in a new game called, Space Invaders. The manager said it had something called a microprocessor somewhere inside. Then came Pac-Man, Asteroids, Frogger, and Q*bert. These new games cast some kind of strange spell over the kids. I hadn't seen anything like that before. It was like they were in a trance - like zombies feeding quarters into those machines until their pockets were empty. And even then they'd hang around just to watch the other kids play. I knew something had changed in the world, like opening up Pandora's box.

My electric motor seized around the time Tetris came out. The manager at the arcade made a few calls, but Roy was retired by then, and the younger techs weren't interested in messing with something that didn't have a microprocessor. Somebody hung an "Out of Order" tag around my neck, and there I sat, collecting dust for months before anyone had the decency to move me to the storage room in back.

I languished in that back room for a while. Years probably, but it's hard to keep track. The blips and bleeps from those infernal video games gradually started to relent. The crowds had tapered off to almost nothing. Then, one day, there were no sounds at all. Just a few photons from a flickering fluorescent lightbulb squeezed through the crack at the bottom of the door. And even that went dark eventually, and I could only wonder what had become of the world outside.

My answer came in the form of two burly guys stuffed into coveralls that sported the logo "Arnold's Repossession Agency." One of them had a ponytail, the other a mustache.

"It's that damned mega mall they built right off the new freeway exit. Just about killed this little town," Ponytail Guy said.

"Yeah, yeah. You're breaking my heart," Mustache Guy said. "What the hell is this bull-looking thing?" he said as he pointed at me incredulously. "I don't see nothing like that on the list."

"Probably just an oversight," Ponytail Guy reasoned. "Might as well put it on the truck with everything else."

So, I was carted away and labeled “Coin-Operated Machine Ride (Damaged/Inoperable)." The repossession agency auctioned me off for pennies on the dollar to a company called Vinny's Vintage Emporium. It turned out the emporium was really just a drafty warehouse in Wabash, Indiana. They got a serial number off my defunct motor and determined I belonged in the 1950's section.

There were rumors about a team of restoration artists who had the tools and the know-how to bring everybody back to their former glory. But after a while, I realized those were just rumors. You gotta wonder if Vinny's Vintage Emporium is really just some kind of tax shelter or money-laundering racket. I've been sitting here between the broken Gottlieb pinball machine and the rusty Seeburg jukebox, and not much has changed in nearly twenty-five years.

But there's been more activity lately. Vinny hired some guys - they've been moving a lot of stuff around. Someone's got an engine from a 1955 Ford Fairlane up on the forklift. A lava lamp in the 1960's section across the aisle told me they're clearing the place out. Says they're gonna level the warehouse and sell the land to a developer. Probably for a casino.

Maybe they'll take me to the scrap yard. I'm sure they could get a couple bucks for my cast aluminum body, but it probably wouldn't even pay for the labor and gas it'd take to haul me over there. Maybe there's a landfill nearby. Who knows?

"Hey, Bruce, Eddy," Vinny calls out in a voice that's been weathered by a lifetime of cigar smoke and bourbon. "Let's get El Toro here loaded up in my van. Use the refrigerator dolly - he's plenty heavy."

"What are you gonna do with this old thing?" Eddy asks.

"I've got a booth at the flea market. I'm gonna sell him there. You two are riding out with me. "

"I don't know, boss. What if no one buys it?" Bruce says. "Then we got to lug it all the way back again."

"Someone's gonna buy it. This is a genuine article of good old-fashioned Americana," Vinny says.

"Looks like old-fashioned junk to me," Eddy says.

"Listen, you two. I didn't hire you for your opinions. I hired you to move heavy things. Now get going."

The flea market has mostly cleared out, but there are a few stragglers. It's one of those summer days when you almost need gills to breathe, and the cloudless sky burns like a cerulean fever that just won't break. An old-timer wearing a Vietnam veteran baseball hat ambles up to Vinny's booth.

"How much for the bull?" he asks.

"I'm lookin' for three hundred," Vinny says.

"Does it run?"

"Needs a motor…and probably a starter capacitor."

"I could do two hundred if your guys here could get it in the bed of my truck for me."

"You planning on restoring it?" Vinny asks.

"You bet. I'm gonna rewire it, sandblast the body back down to bare aluminum, and repaint it. The whole nine yards."

"You're a bit of a tinkerer, aren't you, mister?"

"Yeah, well, I try to stay busy these days. You know, they had one just like it right outside the Woolworths in the little town where I grew up. Brings back memories."

Vinny dabs at his brow with a red bandana and finally says, "Alright, two hundred it is. And my guys will load it onto your truck."

"You got yourself a deal, mister," the old-timer says, and they shake on it.

It's a cold autumn Saturday when the old-timer puts the finishing touches on El Toro. The leaves seem to know their days are numbered. They riot against impending winter, brilliant scarlet and gold whooshing in the swirling winds. It is their last stand.

The old-timer lifts his five-year-old granddaughter and sets her down on the back of El Toro. "Hold on tight," he says as he drops a dime into the slot. A tiny metallic clang reports from within the otherwise empty coin box, and El Toro is off.

The girl laughs wildly, her eyes full of joy and wonder. "I love him, Grandpa," she says. "I love El Toro."