The Builder - Chapter 1

Airplanes and Railroads


I don’t really remember doing this but mom told me that I would sit on dads lap or at least where I could see him and he would build models. Dad was always a model builder and my earliest recollections are of some of those models. Model airplanes played a part in both our lives even many years later. The early ones in the first years of my life were balsa and paper creations that were powered by a rubber band and propeller. He had made many of them and they hung from the ceiling of the house where we lived. Some were even in the room where I slept. I could see them flying through the air, they were hung that way so that they appeared to be flying.

One day, I am not sure when or how but I was told about it later, I got my hands on one without his supervision and promptly broke some part of it. Mom rescued the remains and when dad came home he was very angry to say the least. He put a lot of effort into those and didn’t want them broken needlessly. They all actually flew and the best times were when we went out to the yard and he wound up the propeller and let them fly.

Another thing he built in those early days was kites. He built box kites and his favorite, (and mine), the upside down buzzer kite. This was a 3 stick conventional looking kite but it flew upside down and had a bow like structure that buzzed when it flew. I have one hanging in my room today at home.

The thing I liked best was that my dad ran a railroad. Not only did he run it, but he built it. It was on a table about 5 feet wide and 10 feet long. It hung from ropes in the garage and at his touch it would glide down out of the ceiling or go back up into it. It was fascinating. There were 2 oval tracks and some switch yards and a couple of towns. He would spend hours building the locomotives with all their wheels and parts. They were mostly the old steam type engines and they were very detailed. They were HO gauge which defines the size or scale that they were built to. He also built the houses in the villages and laid the track rail by rail. He had a control panel that enabled him to control several trains at the same time. The real fun was watching him make up a train with certain cars and then run it from place to place even though it just went around the oval track and stopped in the same place it started. I loved those trains and I have some of his trains in a box still and someday I will set them up so they will remind me of him. He also had a Lionel electric train that went under the Christmas tree. It was there from my first Christmas and I don’t remember when he quit doing it, but many years later after he retired he had another one that he setup for the grandkids and I have that put away as well.

The other thing he built during those years was me. Of course I didn’t know it at the time but now I see how many of these experiences shaped me into who I am. His faith and belief system was instilled in me during these years. As you will see in future chapters the lessons were not always learned the first time.