May in Florida is…well, its hot…and humid…but there I was nonetheless. Orlando Florida, to be specific. I was 28 years old, had been married for six years, and my wife was expecting our first child. Let me tell you about my wife for a moment. Debbie is a teacher–a high school English and literature teacher. She was teaching at a very small school (approximately 25 students per graduating class on average). At that time that particular school still helped their graduating seniors go on a senior trip. The students worked for a year manning concession stands and taking on other fundraisers to make the trip free for the seniors and their adult sponsors. Each class had the freedom to choose where they would go on their senior trip, and every class claimed early on that they would be THE class to go somewhere different. Every year, however, every class ultimately chose the same destination–Florida.
This particular year my wife was one of the senior class sponsors. That meant that she helped with all of the fundraisers and all of the planning. It also meant that she and I got to be sponsors on the actual trip. She and I and two other adults took 24 graduating seniors from central Missouri to Orlando and Tampa, Florida for eight days. I know many adults will groan at that thought, but it was actually a great trip. Being a young adult, I loved challenging these 18 year old boys to races on every go-cart track that we ran across. We visited Disney World, spent a couple days on the white sand beaches of the Gulf Coast at Clearwater, Florida. We had a great time.
There were a few destinations that were perennial musts on this trip. Of course that included Disney World and the beach, as well as an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet on the beach (unforgettable). But another, more shocking annual destination was billed as the world’s largest flea market. Was it ACTUALLY the world’s largest flea market? I have no idea. What I did know is that I was decidedly unenthusiastic about the half day we were to spend there.
When we arrived I found it to be much different from what I expected. It was more of a flea market meets suburban mall. Many of the vendors inhabited long-term shops inside of permanent structures that were much nicer and more professional looking than the string of folding tables under awnings that I envisioned when someone said flea market. We spent the morning strolling through the shops and vendors, picking up souvenirs and trinkets here and there, until…I saw it…
I need to pause here to explain something about myself at that time. I was, and had always been, a person of many hobbies. I started collecting stamps as a child–specifically US commemorative stamps. By age 28 I had graduated to collecting plate blocks of those stamps (if you don’t know, Google it). As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s I collected matchbooks. Though rare today, at that time everywhere you went advertised with free books of matches. I had an album designed to store and display matchbook collections and had hundreds of them. I had dabbled in rough wood working since childhood and had even worked as a carpenter for a few years while in college and graduate school. I had collected pop bottle caps. In the tiny, unincorporated town near where I lived as a small child there was an old community store. Morley’s Store sold basic groceries, had a store room with pet food and basic livestock feed, and had a single old gas pump out front. The store had an antique water-cooled Coke machine with a bottle opener on the side. When the basket on that bottle opener was full, Mr. Morley would take it out the back door and dump it in the driveway. Yes, the delivery drive was literally paved with decades worth of old bottle caps. I loved to dig through them and collect the interesting ones. I had also taken a golf class in college as a PE credit and had taken up golf–though I was not very good. Do you get the idea? I HAD HOBBIES.
Fast forward back to the flea market. As my wife and I rounded one corner of the indoor market I was confronted with a model railroad shop. In a previous blog I told you how I had been a railfan as long as I could remember, had some very basic train toys as a child, and had eyed better trains sets over the years. It was at this moment, however, that I learned about the existence of a whole new world–the world of scale model railroading. The window of the model railroad shop housed a small HO scale layout which featured a suburban scene and a trolley that came from out of sight, automatically stopped at a trolley stop, then, after a few seconds, automatically reversed and returned to it’s off-stage spot. I was instantly hooked! We entered the shop and saw a glass case filled with O, HO, and N scale locomotives neatly displayed. There was shelf after shelf of rolling stock and structure kits, boxes of track, racks of turnouts, scenery supplies, and tools. There was a media rack with current issues of Model Railroader, Railroad Model Craftsman, N Scale, and numerous other magazines and books on the topic of model railroading. Picking up one of the copies of Model Railroader magazine and leafing through its pages, I turned to my wife and made a statement that changed my life in a dramatic way. I said, “I am trading all of my other hobbies for this one.” And I did just that. I stepped into that new world I had discovered and gave up collecting stamps and even my mediocre (that is generous) golf game for model railroading. That was 30 years ago, and I have never looked back. Model railroading became not only my hobby, but a true passion and my personal form of therapy. It still is today. I can honestly say that, in my humble opinion, this truly is the world’s greatest hobby.
