My first model a/c was one of those yellow Aurora Zeroes. My dad helped me put it together; I must've been close to 6 I'd guess. My grandmother sat on it. Case closed.
Undaunted, I pressed on! Soon, I was building all sorts of models, but oddly enough, few ships.
I remember building a Boeing 707, Monogram 109 and P-40, and a rather large submarine (seems like it was an U-boat). I don't recall painting being a part of any of those. Slowly, cars began to win most of my attention. Duke and Ayers and Ben Franklin stores sold models and the two stores were almost side by side. How convenient! AMT was the most common car model, with a Monogram here and there. Model paints began to make their appearance around the car era. In 1966, while happily plugging along in 7th grade, my dad came home from his job at ALCOA saying he had been offered a transfer to Australia. Off we went, "a waltzing Matilda" to Geelong, Victoria, about 40 miles west of Melbourne.
I had received a couple different "table-top" slot-car sets earlier in my youth, the first an Eldon brand and Strombecker next. Oh man, did I love that slot-car racing. It was sort of like model cars but it was "interactive". My little hometown of Cameron, Texas was much too small for a commercial-sized track but my
new city of Geelong was 100,000 plus, and sure enough, the mid-60s slot-car craze hit down under too and before long, there were 6 or 7 "
slot car parlours" opened in Geelong. And, two of them were within 200 meters of our house. One track became "home". It was Avus Modelcar Raceways, owned by an expatriate German couple. It was less than a minute from my front door.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nirvana had arrived! Avus rates were .35 for 15 minutes track time when they first opened. "We" had an 8-lane track, 225 feet long. Eventually one of the worker's husband designed and built an electronic lap counter and timer. We had club night on Monday evenings, with several qualifying heats culminating in a winner's race with prizes! We even put on a 12-hour Endurance Race with 3 hours driven in the dark, so each entrant had to have working lights.
I became a regular, then a defacto employee who took money, helped with car problem, etc. I never paid for track time after that. Looking back at that period, I can see it was one of the most fun times I ever had...well, legally at least.
My mates and I hung out there all time, it became our "clubhouse" so to speak. We began "hopping up" those Mabuchi motors, the 26D, 36D, etc. Russkit came along with a belly-pan chassis, vac-formed (read: very light weight) bodies and sidewinder motor. Soon the hot-shoes found one could stuff a rewound Mabuchi 26 in one and have an incredibly fast racer. Our track record for one lap of the 225 foot track? 11.8 seconds! Using the same record-sitting car, a Russkit Porsche 906, which belonged to a fellow-Texas kid, I managed a 14 second lap. :( My own cars were a pair of Cox racers; beautifully done but not in the same league as the Russkit modified.
It was also in Australia that I became familiar with Tamiya brand stuff. Their 1/24 slot-cars were quite nice, and about the same performance as the Cox cars. I remember buying the IMC and MPC brand Ford GT race car models in Geelong and buying my first Humbrol and Airfix supplies. Yep, the same little Humbrol tins..one of those tins still held usable paint 40 years later! Huh! Take that Model Master!!
Returning to America in March 1967, I was just in time to get enrolled in driver's ed. In Texas then, a 14-year old could get a regular Texas Driver's License at 14 with driver's ed credit. Still enthralled by hot cars, I picked up the pace for a while, even building Funny Car chassis from "Pick Up Stix" and aluminum interiors from card stock. My car bodies had scratch-built, operating hinges too. Alas, I think most of that era is gone, perhaps a few bodies still remain. I used Testors and Pactra spray cans for paint jobs. I had a shelf full of drag racers by the time I reached the middle years of high school. But then, real cars and girls began gaining all my attention and models soon felt passe. The last car model I built was the Monogram 1/25 Bugatti Type 35B, back in my hippy "batching" days around 1976. My daughter Ann destroyed that one when she discovered it as a toddler.
Around 1988, I bought the Monogram A-10 from the local Winns department store. I wanted to see if I could build a model that looked like the one on the box top. I was fascinated with jet fighters and thought models would give me a chance to view them comparatively. I guess that's where my OCD about building only in 1/48 began. I bought my Paasche Model H at that time and started earning about airbrushing. I allowed myself to think the old A-10 looked pretty damned good. Until that is, I bought my first copy of FSM, Jan. 1989. We were in Austin, Texas at the still-great King's Hobby when I bought it. Taking it back to the Marriott Hotel. I was just floored by the great work in that magazine, topped by Bob Steinbrun's YP-80A Shooting Star. OMG. Then, I saw what great scale modeling looked like. I've been trying to catch up ever since...
If you've made it this far, thanks! I didn't mean to get so carried away but it's been fun remembering the bygone daze. I'd say we've all traveled much the same path to get here, in our happy model home. Thanks for having me and letting me be apart of this great community.
Gary Brantley
