When I was a kid, we went to the hobby shop exactly once a year. The purpose of the trip was to buy one of those paper mats with fake grass on them, so we could wrap a 4X8 sheet of plywood for the requisite electric train under the Christmas Tree. There was a shop about 30 minutes from the house–the now defunct Universal Hobbies on State Road 7 and Broward Boulevard–so we went there and spent maybe 10 minutes from the time we opened the door until the transaction was completed.
Fast forward to about 1981. I was in my full-on "serious" modeler mode, having recently discovered modeling magazines in whose articles the authors discussed such exotic materials such as putty, airbrushes, and decal solvents. Well, the K-Mart didn't have any of that stuff, so I'd beg a ride to the hobby shop. They had some of the stuff I was looking for, but none of the kits I wanted. My mother mentioned that she worked around the corner from another hobby shop, but it was further away from the house. I just got my ticket to drive, so I took a trip one summer day. It wasn't too much further from the house, and had lots of stuff packed into a little space. I had discovered Warrick Custom Hobbies in the Twin Oaks Center on Davie Boulevard, and it wasn't too long before I became a regular.
Remember the stash I wrote about a week ago? Well, the roots of that stash go back to 1982 and Warrick Custom Hobbies. Looking through the stacks in search of an Otaki 1/48 F4U Corsair kit–a kit that was, at the time, my Holy Grail–I noted another oddity. It was a Life-Like kit in my favored 1/48 scale of the Gloster Gladiator. Asking around, I discovered it was initially released by a company called Inpact some years before. It was fairly cheap (maybe $3 by the time the Governor got his cut), so I bought it. Once home, I quickly botched the build, so I went back and bought a second–the only one left on the shelf. That kit was stashed in my desk drawer, waiting for the time when my skills were such that I could do the kit justice. I still have the kit, and my skills are certainly developed enough to do a nice job–but in the meantime, another company has released a better, more modern kit of the same airplane. To be sure, I will keep the Life-Like kit, if for nothing more than nostalgia purposes. I may even build it–the fact that it was old enough to vote when I first bought it belies the fact that it exhibits a good amount of fidelity to the original, it just needs some of the now-expected fine details not present in kits from the day.
Oh, and that Corsair? I found one a few weeks later, built it, botched the paint job beyone salvage, and went to the shop and bought a second. That one got completed to my satisfaction and remained in my collection for a good many years, until it got broken during a move. Of course, since then we've seen much newer and much nicer kits arrive on the scene, much like the Gladiator kit.
Once I went to college, I couldn't frequent the shop as often as I did during that summer. I would, though, visit on those weekends when I travelled home, and I would usually find something to purchase. Some, I would build during that semester in school, others would join the Gladiator in the desk drawer. Being on the six-year plan (two studying Aero Engineering and four with Aero Studies with an Avionics concentration) meant that I may have visited the shop five or six times a year, maybe a few more if I had a summer break. That would change once I graduated and moved back to Ft. Lauderdale.
I'll tell you more of the story later. Until then, be good to one another. I bid you peace.