Art & Inspiration Moving On, In A Small Way

I can remembering walking to the hardware store on many a rainy day. We would pool our money and get the Graf Spe or Bismark model boats ,taking. Them back to the farm and building them. My older brother Carl an I would put gasoline in the hull along with a firecracker on deck . I learned to whistle through my teeth throwing matches at them when we pushed them out into the pond We were young movie makers ! I still can see the little gun torrents melting ,the POW ! The main boilers blew !. The ducks and geese were none too happy and neither was the ol-man when he saw the slick on the water ! Oh what fun ! .maybe not the model building story you guy are used to ........The cars were a different story ,we would build them ,tape to bottle-rockets to the rear fenders and race down the driveway. The trick was lighting both sides at the same time BEFOR my brother did ! The sticks acted like wheelie-bars! That was fun till one time we caught the field on fire. We stuck to the boats after that ! I was 9 my brother,10 I'm 54 now ,my brothers been gone 11 years...we had fun on the farm when we weren't workin

 

@Rocky -as I scrolled and stopped on the pic of your model, I thought "that reminds me of Rocky's coupe." No wonder.

 

My brother dropped off at my place a huge pile of Aurora HO slot car sets and models that were at my parent's home when they cleaned it all out.
I had completely forgotten about all of that stuff.
I didn't even open the boxes, t's all i the shop rafters.
I can remember when I was little I would get several Tonka toys from relatives at Christmas and for my birthday every year.
By the time I was 10 or so there were dozens of them. I would play with them carefully and wash and wax them.
When I was about 21 and no longer at home my Dad told me he gave them all to some distant relative who promptly got drunk and rolled the trailer that had them in it on one of their moves out of state.
That I will never forget.
My Dad used to say I loved cars and trucks from before I could walk.
I would count the trucks going front of my Aunt's house for hours learning to ID them all and beat the Chevy dealership the day the new models were out.
Several Uncles were HD mechanics.
I worked for 35 years at a major utility as a fleet mechanic.
My Mom told me before she passed that if they knew my potential, they would not have tried so hard to keep me from getting in the industry.
They sent me to school, I got degrees, but still wanted to get my hands dirty.
I did, and have had a great life.
Thanks for jogging my memory for a while.

HAPPYHOLIDAYS TO ALL

 

That's tough letting go of stuff like that. Heck, I'm 57 and most of my stuff I grew up with is still in my folks rafters.

 

In the 60’s Our whole village of hoodlums used to build them to race.
We used a concrete drainage culvert shaped like a half pipe.
The half pipe allowed a heavier faster car to zoom right around a slower one.
The winner took the other guys car.
What fun we had cheating by hiding weight for the advantage.

 

I still build models at 57,I usually build them during the winter when its too cold to go out in the garage and after I get off the computer and grab something to eat and grab a beer I am heading to the basement.

 

awesome story. I'm a little jealous of Martyn now.

I still have EVERY plastic model kit I have ever bought. Many unfinished, many destroyed, but still....

 

Wow, just Wow... been there and done that. Though I still have a few of the ones I built in the very early 60's; I was finally able to purge several boxes of unfinished kits and spare parts I had held onto for 50 years. I'll admit it was rough letting go...

 

I am not ready to give mine up just yet,I hope to have many more years of building.

 

It is a shame, model kits are $25 now. Can't think of any kid I know now ask'n santa for a model kit. Good of you Joey to give yours away to a modeler. See that double kit box way in the corner? Show N Go 40willys 32ford price tag says $1.47

 

model kits were two bucks when I was into them, and like everything else, they cost ten times as much today.

 

Yup. I could once in a blue moon maybe get $2-$3 from my folks and scrounge up any $ I had and could actually afford to buy a model from the D&C "dime store" or the hardware. And glue. And paint.

 

First graphics at about 8 years old.
A Herbie-type stripe on a VW bug.
Taped off the stripe reeeeaaaaal carefully.
But used oil paint from a paint-by-numbers set to brush-paint it with.
Laid it on nice and heavy so it would "flow".
Couldn't figure out why it wouldn't dry. Lol.

 

Model kits are 30.00 at stores in my area , now . Kids can’t scrape that together as we did the 2.99 at there age . Just reflecting on a simpler and less expensive part of my life .

 

For me model building was the stepping stone to the real cars , I had them on this display all over the house. my dad said our living room look like a dealership and a suit case full of spare parts , you had 3 options on how you want to build them,it kept me off the streets and out of trouble, no electronic games or computers

 

Guess I'm getting old ! My 8 year 1/1 build & my 1 year 1/25 builds this year !

 

...buildin models as a kid got me hooked on old cars,...still buy em, don't get much work done on em,...here's a couple old builds...

 

I to built models from 8-12 or 13.
Then I started noticing the opposite sex.
The whole model thing was instantly over & my focus turned to the real thing, cuz with a car you could get girls.
I had my first car at 14 & never looked back.
Didn't think about model kits again til I was about 45 when a friend started talking about a kit he was building.
I looked through some old boxes in the attic & there they were just as I left them.
At that point I should have given them away & been done with it but I thought that maybe sometime I'll do
something with them.
I've even picked up a few kits at swap meets.
10 years later they are still sitting in a box just the way I left them at 13.
For some reason I can't seem to let them go.
I'm sure a shrink would have a reason or two.
The wife or kids will probably have to throw them away when I die!

 

I never thought that i'd be a "hotrodder" but i always had this vision of me driving a black car in the middle of the night with dim lit guages and one bright lit tach and at the time my mother had passed and i was about 11 years old..... My brother and i had to spend a lot of time alone as dad was still working a ton of hours and trying to figure out how he was going to make this work. I never asked for much but he knew i liked building model cars so he would stop at the hobby shop on his way home and grab me whatever he thought was cool. I did the same as everyone and modified them the way i saw fit. He would always ask that i didn't modify the mopars too much though. He brought me pictures of his 69' Roadrunner to go with a few of the models so i could try to make one look like his. I had two closets in my bedroom and one of them was converted to a shelf/desk for the models. When i was 15 i got my permit and dad came to my room, and said "Ty, it's time to come out of the closet" (he had been saving that joke for some time.) He handed me the keys to my first car (1991 honda civic, unfortunately) and the models went by the wayside. I still have an urge to seek out some old ones and build them, but i haven't run across any yet.

 

OT I know: I always thought the red on the forty was a reflection, always liked '40 standards.

 

Thanks you really put it in a nutshell...The sad part (to me) wasn't the letting go of the models it was this: "I have no cars, no real fabrication skills and" man you're only in your 20's!...As some others have said I was born a car guy, without any outside influence I just gravitated to them. My Opa had model airplanes in his "den"a secret place where the door was always closed and small people were scolded for entering...it had that magic smell and interesting stuff piled to the rafters. They represented all the planes he saw or flew in during ww2 I helped paint and assemble some of them. What had once been one of the kids room was just a narrow walkway through piles of stuff the only place in the house where even Oma feared to tread. Being a child of a single parent family one summer (to put me somewhere other than the sitters) I was enrolled in a modelling class I built the '70 Duster "Cop-Out" flopper of course later destroyed by a sibling. Lindberg put out a set in 1/32 called the "Jean machines" cast in beige plastic these were roadsters and coupes that were'nt hot rods in the modern ('80's) style but real "traditional" '50's hot rods flatheads, lakes specials, spaghetti headers, bias plies and dumb Jean stickers that was the pivotal point for me when I switched from being a "general car guy" to wanting desiring and dreaming of '50's style hot rods! also simultaneously found HG Felsen's Hot Rod then I was done for..hook line and sinker! I'd buy 2 or 3 different models so I could mix and match parts to build the perfect Hot Rod it would stay like that breifly then get torn down for a different set up....just like later in life they were always under construction and never really show ready (ie: driveable) then (also just like the real cars) they would languish for years then decades in the box (driveway) some of the more complete ones I pushed through and got on the road (shelf) the rest are still "in the box" ( a trailer) after being moved from basements, garages, carports and driveways umpteen million times...so yeah it's a microcosm now I have 3 boxes of Opa's planes (I'm planning a diorama for), 3 boxes of my 1/2 built and unbuilt car models, 3 boxes of AFX tracks, 1 box of Hotwheels/Kenner SSP, a trailer full of rusty model A/T junk (at a storage lot $) and a piece of shit '57 Chevy that I can no longer afford to build sitting in pieces in the driveway....

 

Hello,
Your story about those old models is a classic if there was one. “Pay it forward” was a recent term that means a lot for this time and era. There is always someone that enjoys doing what we used to do way back then. Their time is now and those models spark something in them to keep the flame going.

As Christmas approaches, those thoughts of a long time ago keep popping up after watching old movies and photos. It was fairly easy for our parents to get us stuff. A pack of white t-shirts, a couple pairs of Levis, some new desert boots and Converse High Tops, and of course, a model car kit or two.

Since there were two brothers about fairly even in size, being equal in gifts and presents was pretty much the course of the day. My parents could not get my brother something without getting me one of the same or similar. When it came to model cars, they somehow did not buy two of the same. But, every time, it was a couple of different models for each of us. (A Model A Coupe for my brother, a 32 sedan for me. Etc. My dad must have been checking out our bookshelf at the models we had made or were making.)

For some reason, after we were on to our future lives (post drag racing incident), those models were given to our cousins and to our next door neighbor. My mom was one of those… “If it hasn’t been used for…types” that are considered dangerous in most homes. Hmmm…that mantra must have been passed on to my wife!!! The old models were put to good use and every time I went over to their houses for a visit, seeing those models started the memories flowing. But, I have an old/new 58 Impala and a 41 Willys coupe box kits that I bought over 30 years ago that have survived that “garage clean out purge,” safely. Whew…

Jnaki

These days, I still feel the same about those 1/24 scale models. I have a couple left, but they are dust catchers and memory boxes, for now. My attention has turned back to those 1/64 die cast models of our high school cars, long distance cruisers, our Bonneville dreams and drag racing builds. This being the Christmas holiday season, each of those little cars brings back memories that somehow faded, but are revived with today’s builds and accessories.

1965 Fall/Winter:
Significant memories of the 1965 Christmas season...
Being back home from my Northern California college, I remember being selected to get our tree at the local tree lot. It was nice to have an open bed El Camino for ease of transportation. The two large presents I remember getting that year were a new leather seat for my 66 Greeves Motocross Challenger and a new 35mm Asahi Pentax Camera (Honeywell in the USA) with additional lens accessories. The camera became the basis of my photographic future. I still have that old Pentax today, gathering dust in a drawer along with its film/camera accessories.

Small is fun, but smaller does not take up a whole wall or desk shelf space. They are like rabbits, they are easily controlled, but multiply like crazy. Time to get some reasoning behind those purchases.

 

Thank you Mr. Ukrop. That brings back memories of me and my brother building models as kids. Used to build a lot of Nascar models from the early 1970's stars. Big rig ramp trucks and dirt modifieds as that was what my Dad ran.

 

I hope I can find someone to give mine to when I am ready to give them up,I think I have a few years left to build.

 

Back at it !

 

I built models until the summer I was 17 and I got into roundy rounds in 1 to 1 scale...that was 1978 (that and girls too)...I have tried over the years to go back and build some again...I even cleared a spot in my basement and tried to build recently when I had nothing in the garage...I can't seem to get enthused with the little plastic stuff again...I love the price of building these models as you spend $100.00 on 4 models and build something really cool too...as opposed to the 1 to 1 stuff where almost all the parts are at least $100.00...

So yes I miss the low cost of models a lot...it was a magical time for me but...the 1 to 1 stuff is so much more fun to get in and drive than pretending with the plastic stuff...if I live to the point where I can't go out into the garage I am thinking I will have to go back and do models again...

Thanks for the memories...they are priceless...

MikeC

 

I'm guilty too. My parents told me that I made car sounds, before I could even talk. Been building model cars, slot cars, bicycles, go karts, and real Hot Rods my whole life. When in school, I only had two interest, girls and Hot Rods. Not necessarily in that order.lol My dad is 87 now, and still lives in the same house that I grew up in. I had the Attic as my room, so alot of my old models have survived time. But not so much me , as I've been known to torch a few also. lol I still build models, and race the slot cars, but it's with the grandkids now. Ron...

 

......It is a reflection. A reflection of the previous owner's indecision as to what color to paint the car....When the car was last painted some 35 years ago now, and before my ownership which has been 30 years now, the previous owner (a friend of mine) couldn't decide between Porsche India Red or Black. He taped off the lower portion of the door and did a spray out of the Red, then decided he wanted to go with the Black. Left the red stripes as a little conversation starter.

 

Vintage plastic done one a week ago.. they where made to build!

 

Outstanding!