The Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch Life Stories Column: Jukebox Repairman Won’t Let Music Die
By Matthew Marx, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
May 8–Aspirations of pinball wizardry transformed Enos Crum into a jukebox hero.
Crum, 64, and his business partner, Gary Cope, 60, run C &C Electronics, a shop that specializes in repairing and restoring classic jukeboxes.
Their North Side warehouse resembles a rock ‘n’ roll museum. It is lined with coinoperated, push-button monuments of chrome and neon. But these dinosaurs, which dwarf an iPod, live again.
Always good with gizmos, Crum, of Obetz, had no experience with jukeboxes. Then one Saturday in the early 1970s, he went shopping for a pinball machine to put in his basement.
He walked into Mickey Anthony, a store that sold vending machines, arcade games and jukeboxes in the Short North area. Crum took one look at a pinball machine and got “sticker shock” when he saw the $1,400 price tag.
“I couldn’t afford it. I was making $3 per hour” as a mechanic for Lazarus, Crum said. “I went up to Mr. Anthony and asked if he had a broken one in the back. I figured I could buy it for less, then fix it up.
“He got in my face and yelled, ‘What makes you think you can fix something that we can’t?’ ” Crum said. Crum yelled back, “I can fix any ‘blankety-blank’ ever made if I have good parts! “
Anthony offered him a discount on a pinball machine if he could fix a broken Wurlitzer jukebox.
Crum quickly learned why the discount was offered.
“Wurlitzers are the worst,” Crum said, describing how the discs are stored vertically until a song is selected, then they are flipped into a horizontal position to be played.
Wurlitzers have a lot of moving parts that can snap or jam. Whatever the problem, Anthony’s staff had spent months trying to repair that jukebox.
Then Crum sat down to work on it. Store mechanics heckled him.
He fixed it in two hours.
“I called over Mr. Anthony. He says, ‘Guess you can fix anything.’ “
Anthony gave Crum a pinball machine from his sales floor and the Wurlitzer.
“He said, ‘I’ll see you next Saturday, you can rebuild Wurlitzers for me,’ ” Crum said.
He stayed on at Lazarus and fixed jukeboxes on the side.
By the time Mickey Anthony died in 1996, Crum had repaired hundreds of jukeboxes.
“Most electronic stuff you fix by repetition,” he said.
Along the way, Crum married, then divorced. He also met Cope, of Pataskala, a fellow “Mr. Fix-it” who shared his affinity for jukeboxes.
In 1991, they started C &C Electronics, taking over an old business in Johnstown. They relocated to Columbus soon after.
Last year, they moved to a warehouse at 875 N. 21 st St., just south of E. 5 th Avenue. The shop contains a menagerie of old jukeboxes, mountains of obsolete spare parts and a library of records and CDs.
There, they fix jukeboxes shipped in primarily from homes and businesses in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
But they have restored jukeboxes from across the continental United States.
For the most part, Crum handles the mechanisms while Cope works with audio components, such as speakers and amplifiers, and the music library. Crum likes to listen to country and classic rock; Cope prefers music from the 1940s and ’50s.
“We divide up the expertise,” Cope said. “You get to the point where you can’t be an expert at everything without being a master of none.”
They handle modern replicas with MP3s and CDs as easily as the classics, including Crosleys, Rock-Olas, Seeburgs and — of course — Wurlitzers.
Send suggestions for profiles to lifestories@dispatch.com or to Mark Somerson , The Dispatch , 34 S . 3 rd St ., Columbus 43215.
mmarx@dispatch.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
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