Tuesday, March 18, 2008

"Passing Time as Time Passes"


When I was younger, just a lad, I had a thing for model aircraft.
My reward for enduring visits to the dentist was to get a new model kit to build.
Eventually all these painstakingly assembled and painted models wound up as targets for my BB gun in the barn, but before they went down they spent years suspended from my bedroom ceiling on black thread. They weren't really "playthings" as such, but they did spark my imagination and a lifelong interest in the ways of war.
Be that good or be that bad, that's what they were: educational.
In recent times, now forty five years later, I visited a garage sale where a woman was selling a plastic bag full of miniature cars for a couple dollars, and I bought them. Now I have accumulated more... and although they are small, to me they are interesting to paint and put into homemade displays.
It's not an expensive hobby, and as you can see from this picture, it can take any form your imagination cares to give it. These vehicles are not complete or finished, merely "in the yard"
waiting for my inspiration and paintbrush to make them real.
I hope that you, too, find a hobby to spend time with, no matter what it may be.
A place to escape reality, perhaps, and create a world.

2 comments:

Andree said...

I imagine that this is like us having doll houses: creating worlds and having an imagination. It's fascinating. But even tho I'm a girl, I remember having a couple of trucks and a pile of sand outside where I built cities.

Why the railroad tracks?

Michael Serafin-St. John said...

Ah, yes...the tracks... well, it seems that no model railroad scale EXACTLY corresponds to my model cars (1/64) but HO scale comes close enough for jazz. I wanted to use some tracks in one of my displays, and bought some sections ready-made, and then discovered that the cars I had (or at least some of them) would rest neatly astride the rails and not roll all over the joint. So there you are.