The good old-time hobby shop.
Greetings ~
If I had access to a time machine and had the chance to travel back in time, I think I would like to go the the two decades that were probably the best for the old time hobby shops, the 1950s and 1960s. I would love to, once again, walk the creaky wooden floors and see the shelving stacked with old model kits of cars, trucks, ships, airplanes, monster figures, etc. And I would love to gaze into the glass counter showcases with the tiny piles of dust balls in the corners.
I was one of the very lucky young people to walk into those shops at that time period. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and spent a lot of time browsing the hobby shops of the Akron, Ohio area. We had our fair share of them. It's funny, I can remember so clearly the store's interiors and such, but can not remember any of the names.
The great American hobby shop was a wonderland for us kids. The wooden floors creaked and the shelving was old even then. Some of the shelves bowed with the weight of the stacks of model kit boxes. You could find all sorts of kits by the famous manufacturers of the times: AMT, Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Pyro, etc. A kid in those days could own any car he pleased. But it would be a scale model. And we sat at the dinning room table for hours and, in many cases, days building that kit.
One of the hobby shops I do remember well was located in Barberton, Ohio. It was called Kiddle's Hobby Shop. It was owned and operated by Gary Kiddle. Gary was an older man when I knew him in the early 1990s. His shop was a favorite because it was in an older building in town that had not changed at all since the 1950s style. The floors creaked and the shelves were old and stacked full. Gary sold new kits but also had a very extensive collection of vintage kits for sale. And his prices were decent enough that I could afford to add a lot of models to my own collection. I stopped into Gary's shop every week and walked out with my arms full.
I remember that, at the time, I wanted to create the death car that President Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated in 1963. No model company at the time produced any Lincoln four door kits. I asked Gary to find me one. He did a few weeks later. It was a dealer's promo originally and not sold to the public. Then I told him I actually needed two of them as I had to make a stretch limousine. Gary came through a second time two weeks later and found another one. Then I said I needed a 1956 Cadillac convertible for the follow-up Secret Service car. He grabbed his head and told me I was giving him a bad headache. But, by golly, Gary found me the car in 1:24th scale a few weeks later. It was also an old dealer promo and was actually made from a hard wax. I finally got my Kennedy death scene finished.
At the time, I worked 3rd shift, 11:00 pm until 7:00 am. So on Friday mornings I would arrive at the diner on the corner for breakfast at 7:30 am and eat, then walk the block down to Kiddle's as Gary was opening the door at 8:00. My wife knew that I would not be home for hours on Fridays. Yes, I had a mistress and her name was Kiddle's Hobby Shop.
I built my first model in 1957. It was and still is a midget racer. Yes! I still have it. I've built models ever since. I am 70-years old now and am going strong building model kits. I've featured many that I have built on blogs. So, my love affair with the hobby shop goes way back.
Today, kids don't build models as they used to. Now many adults are building them. The prices today are out of this world. The reproduction of the original kits cost 30-times more than they were then. Kits that sold in the early 1960s went for $1.50 to $3.00. Those same kits today, re-manufactured by the same companies are selling for $24.00 to $40.00. And try to get an original un-built kit today without mortgaging your house. The vintage toy and model kit business is a good one.
In the middle 1990s I owned a gift and hobby shop in downtown Akron. It had been a dream for a long time and I finally managed to do it. I only had the store for a few years as costs began to raise to high for me to keep it. But for the time that I was there, it was an absolute joy to operate. I stocked new and vintage trains as well. After closing it down, I sold a lot of the leftover inventory on the internet through eBay. But I did keep a bunch of kits for myself and still have a good amount in storage.
Model building, for me, is a relaxing experience. It's also a way to own something even though it's a scaled down version of the original. It's a great way to pass the time during the cold and snowy winter months also. I've traded in mom's old dinning room table for my woodworking shop in the basement. When I'm not doing a carpentry project, I pull out a model kit and spread it all over the workbench and, for a few hours, I am 13 years old again and the smell of plastic glue and Testors paints fills my nose. I am at home, I am relaxed and nothing bad can happen...unless I run out of glue. And I make sure I have enough so that never happens. Also, instead of having a Coke bottle at the building site, now it's a cup of coffee. And back then I didn't need an ash tray as I do today. So, some things have changed. But when I'm building a model I still feel like a 13-year old...smoker and coffee drinker.
This blog is dedicated to those folks who ran the hobby shops. It's also dedicated to my friend, Gary Kiddle who passed away several years ago. Gary probably didn't understand it at the time, but he was one of the passing anigmas. The hobby shop owners of yesteryear.
