Friday, February 12, 2010

"Pizza box" building models

Before I built any other kinds of models, when I was a young kid, I would build models of houses, and famous buildings out of what they now call posterboard. My parents, and I used to call it "shirt cardboard" because new shirts that you would buy in the stores usually were packed with a rectangular piece of cardboard to stiffen the package bag that it was in, plus about 30 million pins! I would use this shirt cardboard to cut up, and make model buildings out of it, because my parents were not exactly rich. My dad used to buy also alot of pizzas that came in the same type of cardboard boxes, that new and starched shirts came packed with. I LOVED pizza boxes, because it would yield alot of material for me to make bigger models with. My dad showed me how to do this around the spring of 1964, by showing me how to make a "birdhouse" out of the stuff, incorporating tabs and slots into his design, held in place with scotch tape. I took his basic design concepts, and ran away with them. I used to LOVE to build models of churches, and houses, the most. I would draw on the details, such as stairs, doors, and windows with pencils, and crayons, markers, and pens. Since I liked do this so much as a six year old kid, my mom, really started to trust me enough to let me use her really sharp scissors. I was able to keep her trust, for I knew, at a young age, that they were SHARP, and I never did cut myself with them.From 1964 to about 1973, I probably built about forty models. The later ones graduated from tape to Elmer's Glue, which is much stronger, and more durable. Due to time, age, circumstances, attrition, and a destructive temper in my younger years, only three from 1971-1972 survived to today. The first one is the Taj Mahal. I built this in August of 1971, when I was thirteen.I developed an extreme fascination and love for this building in 1966, after I saw a scene of it in ruins in the movie, "The War Of The Worlds", on TV,on "NBC (name your day) Night At The Movies" I still love the building, today. The second survivor is Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lancaster, PA, where I was baptized as an infant, and where we attended until about 1968. This is a neat red brick building that I actually modeled three different times. This is the second model, which I built in November of 1971, out of a white pizza box. I actually built it one more time after this, in 1989, but with much more correct coloring, and 1000% more relief detail. The third survivor is a model that I built for my ancient history class, but I did not want to turn it in, because every time I would turn a model in to my history teacher, she wanted to keep them, because she thought for a kid, my modeling was exquisite!! So I kept it. Still have it today. this was also the last model that I built out of plain white posterboard, with draw on details. It was built in three days,in March of 1972, and it is the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. I built this model,using a grand total of two photographs. One of the main facade, the other a 3/4 view of the back , photographed from the Seine river. This model, although it has some age, and silverfish damage, is in the best condition, of these three surviving "pizza box models"

Jim.






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