Ghosts of Christmas Past
When I sent the original of the Halloween cartoon to my select group of ftf friends/art aficionados (the latter whether they wanna be or not), I told them I'd despaired of getting it finished in time, but in the end I'd not only had time to finish it that Sunday, but even time to get the girls to the party supply store for their last minute costume needs and make it out to the rural marches of Bixby to get the traditional pumpkins from Carmichael's Farm--and if I could have just found an Aurora "Famous Monsters" Frankenstein kit, all would have been right with the world, but finding a REAL hobby shop with inexpensive plastic kits would have been truly dealing with things risen from the grave. And thus was born the idea of the Christmas cartoon.
Model railroading, model rocketry, and radio-controlled airplanes, cars, and boats will probably last for a good while longer, but as I've said before, I fear the plastic model hobby that was born with us Baby Boomers will probably die with us as well. It's already a niche market, with the prohibitive prices that entails, and that along with the internet and other cheaper and more immediately gratifying forms of entertainment like computer games and the aforementioned "action" models, have caused a decline in the number of small hobby shops. To the best of my knowledge, there are none left in Tulsa--we have one of those "Hobbytown USA" stores, and while they are doing what they can to keep the hobby alive, they just lack the charm of those old mom 'n' pop (well, okay, usually just pop) stores that once had a presence in every other strip shopping center in postwar America. A recent SITREP from that old cavalry scout Col. Fabacher advises that in Irving, Wild Bill's is still in business and Edgar, Jr. is still keeping M.A.L. Hobby Shop open, and I'm sure there are others here and there across the country, but I fear the writing on their tombstones is almost as plain as that on the one to which the Ghost of Christmas Future boney finger to invited Scrooge's attention.
But once there was a time...
Being in the G.I. Bill business myself, I like to think Bob here came home from Anzio or Iwo (or, a little later, like my dad and an uncle, from K2 Taegu or Uijongbu), took himself a few G.I. Bill-funded courses in business at the local college and got himself a veteran's small business loan, and now, here on this New Frontier between I Like Ike and Camelot, he is, if not a prosperous then at least a modestly successful LOCAL merchant. And I'd like to thank him and all the Bobs (and Dicks and Teds and Johnnies), as well as Aurora and Revell and Monogram and HAWK and all the other manufacturers, who did more than their fair share to make it a childhood well worth remembering. That F9F Panther our little stocking stuffer is clutching was indeed a treasured find under the tree for the artist on Christmas morning, 1957.
And, not only are those old hobby shops going--going--(almost) gone, I hear that, thanks to online shopping and credit card purchasing and the resultant lack of change in the pocket, the traditional Salvation Army bell ringers may be going the way of the cheap plastic kit, so I figured I'd celebrate them in this scene before they, too, like so much that is worthwhile, exist only in memory. I'll still put 'em on my United Way payroll deduction every year, but somehow, that's just not the same, doesn't have the same feel of giving that actually putting real money in the real kettle and exchanging a personal "Bless you" and "Merry Christmas" with the believer putting faith into works out on the cold sidewalk gives you.
Speaking of giving, if you're wondering about the lack of traditional snow in this cheery Xmas scene, there's an explanation to be found in Santa's Little Helper putting in her two cents worth. I know Hollywood and the greeting card industry would have you believe they were part of everyone's holiday, and maybe up there on the polar icecap in Amarillo they had them, but down around Dallas we'd never seen a White Christmas, and I'm not sure the kith & kin in San Antonio had ever even heard of them. But if we didn't get a White Christmas, what we did get--all year 'round--when we handed the man our dollar bill for a ninety-eight cent kit like the Panther there, was two cents in change, because back in those halcyon days what no part of Texas had was a sales tax. And, if two cents seems a bit chintzy an offering, let me say that (a) two cents was also the deposit you got back for a pop bottle back then, and a leisurely afternoon collecting a grocery sack full of them from roadside ditches could go a long way toward financing that next model purchase; (b) you should recall the widow's two mites (Mark 12, 41-44 and Luke 21, 1-4); and (c) in case it escaped your attention, our little Yuletide Trollop ain't no widow, she's an elf, and with an elf's Christmas magic, by the time they hit the bottom of the kettle her two mites aren't going to clank like Lincoln coppers but ring like a couple of solid gold Double Eagles. Just like 98 cents worth of plastic could magically become a million dollars worth of fun.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Comments and faves
gopadres added this photo to his favorites. (5 months ago)
Sir Basil Birchbottom (5 months ago | reply)
Thanks, GORDO-8! Yes, that's one of the sad things about plastic models, and undoubtedly a contributing factor to the shrinkage of the hobby--not only are fewer and fewer people likely to be willing to spend more $$$ for something that just sits there on a shelf after it's assembled instead of getting more "bang for the buck" with something that provides ongoing "interactivity" like a game cartridge or a flying model, they're are fewer and fewer who want to spend the $$$ on something that isn't even going to "just sit there" for very long before disaster befalls it.
r8r (5 months ago | reply)
Actually, I've been noticing more pretty-young-lady bell ringers this year. They're usually dressed in red, but with more coverage than your example above. I think they're an improvement over the standard guy-in-a-santa-suit type. I wonder if they pull in more cash?
Sir Basil Birchbottom (5 months ago | reply)
I haven't seen any bell ringing cuties, r8r--just the usual guys and some older ladies in the red aprons. Oddly enough, I would suspect the poor girls wouldn't do as well as the guys and older gals do. Somehow, the latter probably project more sincerity in the eye of the beholder, while the yummy young stuff might make people instinctively think of an advertising gimmick and wonder, "Gee, is money really going to help, or is this just a hustle?"
I saw something about the Cowboys no longer being America's Team, GORDO-8, on my Yahoo headlines, but I didn't bother to read it. Despite born and raised in the Dallas suburbs, I just never got into the Cowboys, and always thought that "America's Team" stuff was kind of pretentious, like Dallas itself--again, even though born and raised there, I always liked San Antonio and Fort Worth better; they just seemed more down-to-earth, friendlier towns (never spent any time in Houston--just trips to The Battlefield and USS Texas). And, as long as I'm damaging Dallasite street cred beyond all repair, I might as well admit that I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Packers, because when I was a little kid, before there WAS a Dallas Cowboys, the Packers were my favorite team (and, even after Dallas got the Cowboys franchise, my favorite Dallas team was the AFL's Dallas Texans!).
Excal-9 [deleted] (4 months ago | reply)
Sir Basil : Flickr found me out and deleted ole GORDO-8 ! So
now I am back to my cartoons and photos I take with my new
NIKON camera. I thought having a PRO account meant I could
post until it was a year gone......but not so. There are many mad
Flickr members who want some of their money back but so far
they claim that none is in sight. I asked for you to allow me to
be your friend and will make you one of mine if you ask. I am
now ESCAL-9 (Short for Escalibur ) The old sword in the stone
thing.
Sir Basil Birchbottom (4 months ago | reply)
I've made you a contact--glad to do so. Hate to hear about the deletion. One of the reasons I've put off getting a PRO account myself is that, from what I can tell from the experience of you and other Flickr contacts who've disappeared and reappeared under a new name, about the only "benefit" of having a PRO account is that it conveniently marks you as a target for deletion.
RonDen3 (3 months ago | reply)
Hi Sir Basil ! I'm back again and will try to keep my pages
just cartoons. They can't delete me again....can they ???
Well they can but your art was always better than mine
anyway . Still think you should do some pics on Superman,
Wonder Woman and Batman as only you can.
Sir Basil Birchbottom (3 months ago | reply)
Thanks for the alert, RonDen3, and just added you again as a contact (hope it's not being a contact of mine that keeps getting you deleted!). As your art versus mine, thanks for the compliment, but yours is just as good if not better--at the very least, your's is done by hand, with pencil and pen and colors, they way art is supposed to be created, not clicked out pixel by pixel with a mouse (not complaining, mind you--glad I go the outlet since the arthritis limits the ability to do it the real way anymore, I just don't feel that kinship with Renoir and Willis that I felt with pencil in hand). As for the comic heroes, can't say Superman and Batman inspire me, but I could have any number of ideas about Wonder Woman (and Supergirl and Bat Girl and all the rest).
DEM's Book Shelves (3 months ago | reply)
I used to frequent Bob's Hobby Shop in Richmond Va in 1968. It's where I bought my AMT kits of the Enterprise, Klingon cruiser, Leif Ericson, the American SST.... ah, good times.
If the kits were aerial or spacecraft, they ended up hanging from my ceiling.