Jake Ryder-Johnson
The gumball machine was the center of the universe.
There was once a video store stashed in a small town in the middle of a rock in the water up on the left side of the Pacific Northwest.
From 1994-2006, Miriam Meyer paid me very well, and gave me access to thousands of movies (and a free, brand-new DVD player which still works despite my best efforts to overheat it), as long as I hung around Videoville.
There were buckets of slushy mocha granita at hand, mountains of free merch from movie studios anxious to get in good with every video store dude (and dudette) who might be the next Quinten Tarantino, and Bugsy Malone played on the store’s TV screens.
And up front by the door, sending out a siren song to every lil’ kid in town, was the giant gumball machine, offering entertainment and rock-hard tooth rattlers for a quarter a pop.
Slip your coin in the slot, and round and round the brightly colored ball would go as it travelled its path to your waiting hand.
Or, in the case of a lot of the wee ones, to be left in the slot, unclaimed.
They wanted to watch the gumball whizz around and around, and their abandoned candy waited to be snatched up by video store employees.
Out the back door we went, carrying golf clubs and tees, and we smacked the liberated gumballs at a fellow teenaged employee as he ran back and forth, daring us to hit him.
This was — for young’uns who don’t even know what a video store was, much less that one held down the building now housing Harada Physical Therapy — in a time before The Pizza Factory was plopped down.
These days, we’d bust some windows.
Back then it was all open fields and B.C. Wells screaming “Not the nads! Not my precious nads!!” as we aimed, ALWAYS, for his crotch with our tee shots.
No worries, though. He’s gone on to father multiple children, so it all worked out.
But why do I bring this up now?
Because back then, in between the quarters slipping into the slot, and gumballs crackin’ off people’s private parts, the gumball machine was also where you’d find Jake Ryder-Johnson holding court.
He was a high school kid, a musician, a dreamer, forever boppin’ along to a song only he could hear.
Jake was in a car accident with my sister one time, but they both walked away unhurt, and he returned to hangin’ out at Videoville, a sleepy smile on his face.
“I got something for you, Dave. One time thing,” he said.
And then Jake, drumming with his fingers on top of the gumball machine, played, perfectly, the theme song to Scooby-Doo.
It wasn’t the first time he knocked a musical moment out of the park, and not the last time, but it’s the one which has stuck with me, all these years later.
Jake was a little bit Matthew McConaughey, before we knew who McConaughey was, a little bit Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and a whole lot of just himself, unique in every way.
His life wasn’t always the easiest, and it’s been a bit since I last saw him in person, but he’s one of those dudes whose memory doesn’t fade.
Jake died unexpectedly a few weeks back, and that truly sucks.
But he’s always going to be part of my memories of my Videoville years, the one time in my life when my job didn’t seem like work at all.
I’m behind the counter trying to convince the world Bottle Rocket is a classic, the Reese’s Pieces are close by, an opera just kicked into gear on the TV’s (messin’ with the customers…), and Jake?
He’s drumming the theme to Scooby-Doo on the gumball machine, now and forever.
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