Rat Fink model!
Posted on 05/30/2006 9:20:53 PM PDT by pickrell
The box contained magic. Oh, it didn't say that; rather, it said things like,"1/32nd Scale", "A Revell Kit", and had words like "Flying Fortress" emblazoned fearlessly across the top. Pictures of dreadful and desparate combat over Berlin warned the faint of heart that they were passing through friendly lines, across the no-man's land of imagination, and entering into ... the Free-flight Zone.
Believe me- the box contained magic. Lovingly peeling off the cellophane, my friends and I paused to savor the treasures within. We were seldom disappointed. Inside were hundreds of pre-formed plastic parts, which, under the tender ministrations of us 11 year old airframe and powerplant experts would soon come together into a frightful projection of unstoppable airpower, sure to stave off the Nazis, in time for a lunch of Spaghetti-O's.
This is because we were underpriveleged youth of the 1960's. Unlike today's upper-middle class boys, who open birthday gifts of preassembled plastic toys designed to prevent unnecessary, tragic, and gender-biased martial tendencies from developing, we delinquents were shamefully allowed to lust after war-birds.
Born of unnurturing parents, those of us lucky enough snared kits consisting of hundreds of parts, some quite small enough to swallow, or poke into our eyes... were we bone-stupid enough to do so. For the truly indigent, even a mere 19 cents would purchase a 1/64th scale plane of nearly 80 parts! The world was our unprotected oyster!
A tube of airplane glue- the tendons and connective tissue of the polystyrene world- would solemnly be produced by one of the gang as his contribution to the war effort. And the symphony would begin. Sages among us would educate the neophytes about keeping the glue from getting smeared onto the outside. As parts were skillfully detached from the plastic frame, we declaimed upon the secrets of assembly. The diagram provided by the manufacturer- (obviously for wussies far less skilled than us)- was disdainfully cast aside, as theories were propounded about what each part did... or could be made to do.
It never occurred to us that the tube of glue formed a ticking time bomb waiting to lure us into the lurid world of reefer-madness.
We would have snorted at the need for drugs- we were in the land of imagination. Parts fit into other parts, certain of them necessarily cemented forever into a fixed position, while the Committee for the Freely Turning Propellor presented it's final recommendations. Several of the props were too-liberally glued to the little spindle jobbies, as they passed through the cowling bearings; the extraneous glue serving as a mute and eternal testimony of left-wing rotational failure. Our self esteem was hammer by flak, but didn't shatter as we simply redoubled our care on the right wing.
The masterpiece emerged as the ideal bomber, suitable for flying in counterclockwise circles to throw off the cursed Nip fighters. (We were mechanics, not geographers...)
Over the summer, the idea that things were made up of smaller things, and that each part had it's necessary and vital function to perform for the overall good of the whole, seeped into our understanding of The Way Things Worked. It became obvious that Things Worked... only when sufficient care and sufficient talent went into their assembly. Thought had previously occurred by those mysterious craftsmen who designed these marvelous models in the first place. Obviously demi-gods of engineering.
The consensus agreed that, with a serious enough study of parts- a serious enough guy could probably learn how anything worked! Heady stuff.
As we talked, we propped up each other's morale, knowing that the fight against communism, floridation of our water, and other formidable challenges lay ahead. We spoke of fathers and uncles, real (and in a few cases imagined), who were "seldom owed so much, by so many... and collected it so few times". We may have got a lot of it wrong, but the idea that men actually flew in these things, you know, like, for real, daring death and dismemberment to stand against monsters... caused each of us to think. And then to think some more.
What would we have to do, when we grew up, ... to earn our place in their eyes? It was a time when you believed that all of those women, and many men also, back here at home worked feverishly to rivet and solder, to paint and test, the best weapons we could give those tall men. The occasional dirty Nazi spy was soon outed, and the G-Men took him out.
It was back when heroes were supported. It was back before disillusionment crushed us. A time of honor, when fathers were revered, and tragically, sometimes lost.
Today, a child is protected from the agonized inability to assemble his toys from parts. Esteem is as carefully monitored as the verboten choking hazard. Liberal eyes would roll in their heads at the very thought of a loaded tube of glue without a child-proof safety catch. Plastic army men were permanently and utterly routed from the field by the non-judgemental, indeterminantly-sexual, plastic play characters of today. They are certified free of environmental contaminants like testosterone, thank heavens.
So as not to provoke excruciating puzzlement, the imagination-stimulating 'Mr. Teacher Play Toy, (suitable for all ages)", is packaged in cellophane to facilitate close inspection by parent-advocacy groups. This guards against painful, psyche-debilitating surprise on the part of Timmy.
So why does Timmy seem to need regular doses of Ritalin?
Tell you what. Let's try putting the magic back in Timmy's life. Let's lead him to the precipice of assembly-required failure, and the tragic lessons learned therefrom at his tender age. As proof of our inspired viciousness, let's introduce him to the world of cause and effect, of the understanding that bigs things are influenced by little things and that he CAN understand why things work.
In a final act of barbarity, let's allow him to imagine himself the kind of boy that risks it all, to protect the folks back home. He can use the now painfully hazardous, old-fashioned safety pin to fasten on the towel-of-great-powers, and fly to the rescue of, (brace yourself- here it comes-), helpless damsels of the female girlness, sort of thing.
Let's throw caution to the winds, put the magic back into his life... and just risk it.
Where the hell do you think Marines come from, anyway?
I had so many models; tanks, armored cars, planes of every country (but Italy!), Army men, etc, that I turned my bedroom into a huge diarama.
I ruined several of my moms forks heating them up to melt bullet and flak holes into the sides of B17's and Aircobras. Alas, because I was never one to do the minute details, I had no patience to paint the dash panels of a Hawker Hurricane and FW190 when they had to be in battle so quickly after construction!
Most of my models met untimely deaths in the ferocious battles and firefights in my backyard. OK, all of them did!
Good read! Didn't assemble models back in the 60's, didn't have the patience. After I turned 30, I started learning patience and have built a few model planes/jets.
Exactly. While not exactly a latch key kid, when I was young my Mom was registered nurse and was often helping older family members and my dad worked long hours so many times I was on my own or with neighbors.
THose hours were spent building models or reading (admittedly lots of comic books as well as traditional print).
The skill I learned in model building have been oen of the greatest assets I've retained from my younger days. The one that comes to mind first is what to do when you screw something up. If I inadvertantly broke a spare or miscut a plastic part from a tree I learned to work around it.
That ability is valuable in just about every aspect of anything you do. In news writing if I don't have the exact info for a story...I write around it. Use only what I have to turn out as good and accurate a story as possible.
The models fired immaginations...taught me about cars and planes and boats and planes. Remember the "Big T" model T series? The visible V8 and the Visible chassis? WIldlife models? Dioramas? And of course the Visible Man and Visible Woman.
AMT, Revell, Monogram, Lindberg, MPC, Sterling, Estes, Cox, and countless other companies were huge parts of my learning years. I think that is where my real, usable education came from.
Great article, can't wait to pass it along to my kids later today. Thanks!
prisoner6
My model making days are so ancient,I had to cut pieces of balsa wood to make plane frames and then cover them with a filmy paper to be doped and painted---of course some of these could have a rubber band to wind up for the prop spin and really did fly---ah, the good old days
Rat Fink model!
And you usually asked either for "$2 worth" or "Fill 'er up." If you asked for "Fill 'er up" you got change back from a $5 bill.
I built aircraft and car models in the 60s, Now I have been writing and illustrating repair manuals for our most modern aircraft. It was a learning experience that served me well.
Here's one to drool over... saving up my milk money for this one:
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/mrc/mrc62001.htm
Canopy removed for pics.
Thanks for the RatFink pic. I have not seen one of those in years.
Real nice---congrats
Real nice---congrats
Now we're talking! I never could get the glue from model airplanes to stay where it needed to be.
Designing rockets that terrorized my neighborhood, that is another story. We would draw pages of plans and order certain pieces and parts, scrounge and find the rest. No fancy Estes launch pad for us. We built launch pads out of wood and wire. Wired the launch control with scraps found in our fathers workshops. Every once in a while we would design a rocket that actually worked as we envisioned!
We also built hot air balloons out of aluminum foil, wire and very thin plastic. Rubbing alcohol was the fuel. I remember we launched one on a cool, windy autumn day. It shot up to what seems to have been 1000 feet. We chased it on our single speed, banana seat bikes for four miles before we lost sight of it....
Thank you. :-)
Great memories pickrell. Thanks for writing and posting this.
Ex-builder here.
My dad built models when he was a kid in the 40's, and passed the hobby on to me. His preference was jet fighters, as he wanted to be a pilot, i meandered into cars and got hooked. He also explored remote control airplanes and model trains with me, and we had a blast. He built models on and off until his death a few years ago, and a couple of unopened kits are in the basement, and I want to distribute them to my nephews when they're older and see if they get the bug.
A group of us in school were all model car nuts - we did'nt blow ours up, we rebuilt them and redid them and added more and more stuff until we ruined it. :) We learned about engine wiring by pestering our dads when they worked on the family car (another sight you rarely see), and pored over issues of Hot Rod for ideas and inspiration.
We did'nt sniff glue, we learned to PUT THE CAP BACK ON, nothing was worse than settling in for a good modeling session and finding the glue dried out. Paint was currency, and we became scavengers whenever electronic devices were thrown out, for the wire inside. A model car was not considered complete unless it had minimum spark plug wires, throttle cables, and radiator hoses, all of which were possible with simple wire. Airbrushing was unheard of, we learned custom paint by happy accident with spray cans (and the fury of fathers seeing overspray on garage and basement floors).
The Holy Grail for us was the balsa wood models.Cheap to buy, but nobody ever finished them. But the solace and calm of mounting the sheets to the board, pinning spars and strips of wood until they dried, the joy as the skeleton emerged from a few slabs of wood. The fury and angst of propellor carving experiments. The wonder that if one messed up, a replacement block of wood was cheap and easy. Then, the long rumored but never seen plaves that had engines mounted and flown...
I gave it up for art years and years ago, but sometimes i stop by the hobby store just to see the state of the art, and the plethora of laser cut brass parts, machined pieces, amazing kits, and tools and materials available make me itch to build. I have my eye on this:
http://naturecoast.com/hobby/bil560.htm ( I always thought that boat was THE coolest boat, ever)
for that mythical day in the future when I have spare time.
The last model I build was a glider, with a 4' wing span, build from scratch from balsa wood, the summer before my freshman year in High School. Took me all summer to build, it was a beauty. I took it to Hampstead Heath in London, and promptly smashed it to bits on it's maiden flight. I left the parts and the hobby in a rubbish bin on the hill, and never looked back...until lately. I can feel the itch. Just the other day, I was remembering z scale trains, and how fascinatingly small they were...
It was like living on a different planet, wasn't it! (And, personally, I liked it better than this one...)
Earlier in this page I said 35 years since my last model, but it's more like 40, and having a beer on my build bench instead of lemonade is a comfortable footnote to growing young. :-)
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Airbrushing was unheard of, we learned custom paint by happy accident with spray cans (and the fury of fathers seeing overspray on garage and basement floors).
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Ain't that the truth!! I also remember painting and repainting a few car kits so many times I'd lose all the body lines and finally just trash the kit! And then there was the years where I'd shovel snow in the winter and mow lawns in the summer for kit & paint money.
Remember?
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