OLD ORCHARD BEACH — In a room full of flashing lights, electronic sound effects and rambunctious children, Grandma sits serenely, as she has for decades at the Palace Playland arcade. Give her a quarter, and she’ll give you a fortune card.
She may be a bit dusty, and some may say the fur stole she wears around her shoulders is out of style, but cut her some slack, she’s more than 80 years old.
The Grandmother’s Predictions fortune teller machine, also known as Cleveland Grandma or Cleveland Grandmother or Gent Grandma, was made from 1929-32 by the William Gent Vending Company in the Cleveland, Ohio area, according to Clay Harrell, a pinball and non-video arcade game collector from Michigan, who runs the pinball repair website pinrepair.com.
Grandma is a wax bust of a gray-haired woman decked out in lace and other finery, housed in a wood and glass cabinet. She wears a bracelet with a single charm, a metal disk with the words “to Grandma from the boys” etched into it.
Put a quarter in the slot below, and Grandma comes to life, her chest rising and falling with what appears to be a breath, a hand sweeps over a line of cards.
The machine spits out a card with a fortune and a listing of lucky numbers. Don’t like the fortune? “Drop another coin in slot, and I will tell more,” reads the bottom of the card.
Although Grandma may have been at the cutting edge of game technology when first created, it’s hard to compete with the video, action and trivia games that surround her today.
“It’s not a big money maker,” said Palace Playland owner Joel Golder.
Still, out of nostalgia, Golder keeps her around. There are people who have been coming to Old Orchard Beach for many years, and remember Grandma from years past, said Golder.
“It’s a conversation piece,” he said.
Pam Turlow, an Illinois voice-over artist and amusement park enthusiast, is the author of “The Cotton Candy Road Trip,” a book she wrote after visiting more than 40 amusement parks nationwide. She spoke fondly of vintage fortune teller machines in an email.
“There’s something about watching the mechanisms of these great, old automatons create that distinct spooky personality, the way they pass their hand over the tarot cards or crystal ball, and then that little ”˜beat’ of quiet expectancy before the fortune card is offered to the waiting querent that is truly magical and made it a necessity to seek these fortune tellers out at every vintage park I’ve ever visited,” said Turlow.
Turlow said she closely followed the story of a Grandmother’s Predictions machine at Coney Island that was restored after flood damage from Superstorm Sandy and set up for operation on Mother’s Day 2013.
— Staff Writer Liz Gotthelf can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 325 or [email protected].
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