Michael Roper started working at bars in the 1970s, and for the first 40 years of his career, across 15 taverns, he rang up each drink on one of the same lines of mechanical registers.
So when Roper, 71, opened Hopleaf in Andersonville in 1992, he purchased two of these machines — one from a Salvation Army store and the other from a moving and storage company — for $120 apiece, he said.
These gear-and-motor-powered “bangers,” as they were called, now sit quietly in Hopleaf’s storage room. Built by the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio, they feature a metallic body with a chrome finish. Black, beige and golden keys line the front, and a wooden drawer sits below.
But with the touch of a few buttons, the click-clack from within would promptly return, followed by the familiar cha-ching and the receipt total on the mechanical display at the top.
“It’s like music to my ears,” Roper said. “The new registers just don’t have that.”
The 33-year-old Hopleaf, which has become a neighborhood staple, stuck to these registers for as long as it could, Roper said. For a time, Hopleaf used separate system for credit card purchases, but the two machines were eventually retired in 2012. Roper stopped tending bar around the same time.
Hopleaf’s registers were built in the 1940s, at a time when they were the industry standard, Roper said. He said one first served at a grocery store in Ohio, and he believes the other one was also built for retail use, since it lacks the keys where multiple servers could each keep a separate total of their sales.
The registers also keep a running tape of each sale and have the ability to print onto an existing ticket, Roper said.
However, the advances of electronic registers in the second half of the 20th century made the mechanical systems obsolete.
Marty Slim, 62, has worked at Hopleaf for almost its entire life, beginning his time on the mechanical registers.
“For the old bangers, we would have to know the price” for each of the dozens of beers, plus food and other beverages Hopleaf offers, Slim said. “But they are really something to behold.”
Slim said Hopleaf opened with about 15 kinds of beer.
“We thought, ‘Who’s gonna drink that many beers?’ ” The bar now offers more than 60 beers on tap and 150 more in bottles.
“The whole neighborhood changed, and beer culture changed,” he said. “With businesses like this, Andersonville has become a really nice place to live.”
Roper said the mechanical registers are practically “indestructible.” He recalled an instance years ago, when a customer threw a chair over the bar at the register, but it did little damage to the machine.
“If you have a simple business — corner bar that only sells beers and hot dogs — this could serve you forever,” Roper said.
But Roper said the machines require regular upkeep, and the place where he used to send the registers for maintenance, A. J. Thomas on Randolph Street, closed in 2012.
Roper recently moved both machines to have them cleaned, with the plan to put one on display in his store and the other possibly given to an all-cash bar.
One register is now fully cleaned and operational, and the other one still needs to be cleaned. There’s just one problem — he couldn’t find the key for the drawer.
At 125 pounds each and “unwieldy,” Roper said the move badly hurt his back, and his doctor told him to take it easy.
“I guess that would keep a thief from taking it,” he said with a laugh.