Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
STOCKTON, California — Take one step into Warren Treacher's Davis home and you can see he likes to collect things.
"I've always been into the Western art and Native American art," said Treacher, pulling a basket out of the cabinet behind him. "I bought my first one, for three bucks at a garage sale in the '60s. And it's a Paiute in the Sierras."
It's the canary yellow and red contraption in the center of his office that catches everyone's eye.
"When we play poker, then, you know, I always make sure that we have some quarters on the table," said Treacher, reaching for a quarter.
That little disc of silver is going into a 1936 Mills Novelty Company War Eagle slot machine. As Treacher puts the quarter into the machine he tells us "the odds of getting three bells are one in 64,000."
The odds of his getting anything when he first bought the machine, though, were slim.
"The handle had snapped off, it was poorly packed," Treacher recounted. "I mean, you can see how heavy they are. And he shipped in a cardboard box."
Which begs the question, how do you find someone to fix a 1930s slot machine?
"I purchased a machine back in, 2000, about 2015. And, it was in Sacramento," Brad Jasinsky said, recounting his first machine. He knew that owning slots wasn't for the faint of heart.
By California law, you can have a slot machine in your house but it has to be at least 25 years old. Jasinsky knows something that old can cost you.
"Yeah, it's an expensive hobby," he said. "The machines, they range in price for sure. You know, they go from $2,500. I think, at times up to like $10,000, $12,000."
Jasinsky and Treacher both had that same dilemma.
"I needed repair," said Jasinsky. "And at the time I asked the fella, I said, 'You know anybody who can do repairs?'"
Treacher puts it more bluntly. "I would bet dollars to donuts there's only maybe two or three other guys in the whole country," he said.
Inside a white brick building on Fremont Street, not far from the overpass of Interstate 5, sits one of those two or three guys.
"Everybody likes vice," said Steve Squires. He's the Squires of "Squires and Corrie."
You could say vice is his business.
"Run the gamut. Gambling slot machines, girls, boys for that matter, you just go down the line, all the things that your mother told you not to do when you were growing up," he counts off on his fingers describing people's love of gambling.
Make no mistake, he doesn't gamble himself, he fixes the machines to let others try to test their luck.
"I love it, I love it. The more complicated they are the better. I like to work on the ones in the worst shape, the better. I like to work on them," Squires said.
Squires and Corrie is one of the few places in the world that can work on antique slot machines. He's been repairing the contraptions since he was a teenager in Indiana.
For decades, every wheel, gear, and piece of glass resided in the Squires and Corrie offices in San Mateo.
"A developer bought all of the buildings," said Squires. "All of them. In downtown San Mateo between third and fourth."
So at age 84, after 45 years in one spot, Steve Squires was on the move.
"This is the mechanical machine parts," Squires pointed out in a tour of the second floor of his building. Floor to ceiling the place is filled with parts.
Still, Squires needed some organization. Enter Ray Wilson.
"When I first got here, he had all this glass," Wilson said. "That was on pallets, you know, and it was, bundled up and he said he wanted these cabinets built."
Wilson was hired to remodel the building but he's quickly become the go-to man to help keep the shop in order.
This is all a bit of a change for the octogenarian. Squires has always been the one constant at his company. His partner, the Corrie in Squires and Corrie, passed away.
"I've had guys work with me, 40, 45 years," Squires said. He's had trouble finding someone to mentor, passing on his crucial knowledge.
It isn't like he hasn't been looking. Squires has put the business up for sale, but there are caveats. He wants someone to apprentice with him.
"I would like to work here," Squires said. "On a part-time basis until I pass away." He adds "plus, I get tired. It's not like I'm 60 years old. I, I get tired."
As such, he's also added Cathy Gunter.
"He's been trying to show me and I think I'm picking it up pretty quick," she said from behind a metal buffer she was operating. Squires was showing her some of his skills so that she could pick up some of that load.
"He can take a machine, take it totally apart and put it back together one piece at a time and make it function and function well," she said.
It's something she hopes, someday, to do herself.
"I don't know that he will be able to retire because this is his life," Gunter said.
Still, Squires manages to spend his days with a constant companion. It's not a one-armed bandit, it's a Cockatoo named Maggie. She's been with him for 43 years. The two keep vigil over these mechanical marvels entrusted to him by people like Treacher and Jasinsky.
