I probably got hooked watching my father building one the Twenty Mule Team kits that you had to order from Borax.
I must have been about four years old at the time, so probably 1966.
In any event, when I was five the local convenience store had one of the Aurora Blackbeard kits in the window and I just had to have it. I begged and pleaded for what seemed weeks until my parents shelled out the 98 cents to buy it for me and I put it together as fast as I could.
I never painted it, I just looked at that pirate day and night, proud of what I built and so amazed that something like that even existed.
From there, like many of us, it was the Aurora monsters, and then cars, planes, ships... until in my late teens and early twenties I stopped.
But when the father of one of my close friends died his widow gave me some of the wooden ship kits he'd purchased and my interest in the hobby was renewed.
In my forties I happened to be browsing in a hobby shop for a new ship to build and stumbled on the Polar Lights/Playing Mantis Wolfman kit by Randy Bowen and bought it on a lark. I thought it might be fun to revisit my childhood. Well, inside the box was not just a kit that was a far cry from the old Aurora Wolfman but also a flyer for Amazing Figure Modeler magazine. I had no idea the resin world was even a thing (I lead a very sheltered life in Montreal
)
Since then my hobby has become not just a pastime but also as a way for me to decompress from stressful work days. And lately I've even been able to confess to myself that it's helped me reevaluate my own opinion of myself.. that maybe I can consider myself to be even the tiniest bit of an artist.
That's a pretty powerful thing for a hobby to do...
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THAT part of Forest Hills was up near Austin Street ... this section was more pedestrian ...
