So far, with his special tools and lifelong mechanical talents, he has been able to repair and restore every single one, no matter how old or decrepit. It didn't matter if it was a Ding Dong, or a Hot Doggin, or a Fire Ball II, or a Strikes & Spares, or a Flash or a Wizard.

So far, there hasn't been a vintage pinball machine that can stump Joe Dietrich, 44, of Bismarck. He has worked on more than 100 of them - just a hobby when he isn't occupied being owner of Precision Small Engine, 301 S. Mandan St., where he and others nurse back to health battered and bruised lawn mowers, hedge clippers and such.

Dietrich, with his pinball repair skills - one of a very few, as far as he knows, who know how to repair vintage mechanical machines - can apparently make things all better even if he's not there.

A man from California somehow heard about his pinball skills and called him for help. When he related his machine's malfunction, Dietrich asked the man if the machine sounded like this, and began his imitation, something like: "Chi-chi-chi-chunk."

Yes, that was the sound, the exact sound - so then Dietrich was able to give the man a diagnosis.

Alas, this is just a hobby now, but he hopes in retirement he'll be able to acquire a large building and have under one roof all of his acquired vintage pinball machines - a kind of a museum setting.

"I like the challenge of fixing them and finding parts,"said Dietrich, who also considers the machines to be fine pieces of furniture and art.

Not that this is the only thing he does. He's also a photographer, a guitarist who teaches and a woodworker who made an oak china cabinet for the dining area. And other items: He saws off the Christmas tree trunk every year, dries it for a full year, and then creates a Christmas tree ornament from the stump. He has one for each year of his marriage to his high school sweetheart.

He said collecting pinball machines creates a storage problem.

"You can't just stick them in a closet,"he said.

He said alot of them weigh 350 pounds.

Now, there are only four machines in his basement; others are in storage and in his brother-in-law's four-stall garage.

"He was struck with the sickness, too,"Dietrich said with a laugh.

Brother-in-law Paul Bender's garage at times has had about 30 machines in it and no room for vehicles. But it has been a great place to hold children's birthday parties, Boy Scout gatherings and church youth club meetings.

"It's like an arcade," Joe Dietrich said.

Bender, 53, of Bismarck, said the craziest thing he has ever done for a pinball machine is to drive down on a whim to Sterling, Colo., to buy a wooden circa-1948 Yanks machine.

That's one of the machines now in storage. None are for sale.

"There are worse things he could be doing,"said Linda Dietrich, Joe Dietrich's wife of 24 years.

And she said the machines in their basement at times have helped to keep family and friends of all ages happily occupied during gatherings.

The game, which challenges the player to keep a ball in play for as long as possible to rack up points, can still be found in a couple of locations in Bismarck that Joe Dietrich knows of, including the Best Western Ramkota Hotel and the Carmike Cinemas movie theater. But he said there won't be any more new machines. It's his understanding that production of pinball machines, many of which were made in Chicago, ceased a couple of years ago. The biggest name, D. Gottlieb & Co., the firm that made his Buckaroo, quit in the 1990s.

His interest started when a customer about eight or more years ago asked him if he wanted to buy a pinball machine.

He thought his three kids might have fun playing with it.

"And then there was another and another, " he said.

His oldest, found in California, is a circa-1932 machine that has a walnut finish, glass top and thick legs, and lettering that advertises 10 balls for a nickel. He considers it more like fine furniture. But in that era, "not fine" is what some people thought about pinball machines, considered to be a form of gambling. Dietrich said he has seen photos from the 1940s of men smashing lines of pinball machines.

Most of his machines he found in North Dakota. The first machine he bought was a Buckaroo, the circa-1965 machine that Elton John played in the movie musical "Tommy,"and which started the pinball machine craze. The Buckaroo, of which only 2,600 were made, is easy to spot and identify. In the vertical back glass is a diorama. When the ball hits a certain spot, a mechanical horse can be seen placing a surprise kick to a tender area of a man facing in the other direction.

The machine next to it, the Wizard, was made because of the craze caused by "Tommy," and has an illustration of the movie's lead actress, Ann-Margret.

Both of those machines are mechanical, pre-computer-chip models. He said a top-flight mechanic taking his first look at the insides of one these - with its 10 miles of wiring and its set of points, something cars haven't had since 1975 - would probably "turn and walk away." Dietrich graduated from Bismarck State College's automotive technology program.

"You have to have a really good understanding of electricity,"he said.

Dietrich has been making money repairing engines and motors since neighbors discovered his natural skills when he was growing up on a farm south of Bismarck. He said it's easier being under the hood of the car than under one of these. The pinball machines are relatively deep and long. It's kind of like bending down into a half-lidded coffin.

He said he has put up to 100 hours of work on a machine. A lot of renovation work often focuses on the machine's playing field, the area that the ball rolls down. He's not done with a machine until it's just like the original - every single piece.

So, for example, the spinner, the about 2-by-2-inch piece of metal that the ball often passes under on its way to the field, often needs to be replaced. But a replacement spinner, with its unique graphic, often can't be found, so it needs to be reproduced. The saga of one such spinner situation had Dietrich searching for and finding another pinball machine aficionado on the Internet who was willing to scan the graphic on his spinner graphic and e-mail it to Dietrich, who then spent hours creating a new spinner. An example of one unique spinner:It has the graphic of a girl in a bikini on one side and a surfboard on the other, so when the ball goes through it looks like the girl is riding the surfboard.

Sometimes, he can find original replacement parts - but far away. He found some in Sydney, Australia, through the Internet. Dietrich said he has developed a friendship with the Australian who told Dietrich he plans to put in a hardwood floor in his house so his machines' bells and chimes resonate more.

The Dietrichs both talk about their pinball moments in movies. In addition to being concerned about good acting, cinematography and such, they also watch for pinball machine moments. Like in one of the "Superman" movies when Superman ends up throwing a bad guy into a pinball machine. Dietrich wanted to see the movie again just to see that scene one more time because the totaled machine was a Buckaroo, but a strange one. It had a digital read-out on it, something the old mechanical Buckaroos don't have. Something worth seeing again.

For Dietrich, the scene may been one of the movie's most tragic moments. The death of a Buckaroo.

"It was heartbreaking to see it smashed,"he said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@bismarcktribune.com.)