A Model for Christmas

So, one of the more special Christmas gifts I got came rather unexpectedly. I had gotten a model of the Eiffel Tower more than ten years ago on a trip to Paris, in some department store. The model that they had on display was very nice and elaborate. I have more than one model of it, including one that dates back to my first remembered visit to it, way back in 1982, when only a child of seven years old – only a year older than my son is now! For that matter, I still have that model, although it got dented somewhere along the line during my childhood, so it does not stand up straight, but is a bit crooked and warped. But none of the models had quite the detail, or height, for that matter, of this model.

The problem? I never really had ever successfully made a model in my life before. Oh, I tried one time, when I was a kid. It was an aircraft carrier, and I looked at the small pieces, then at the bigger pieces, and decided to take the lazy way out, basically putting the bigger pieces together to make the hulk of a ship. But it was hollow and incomplete, and so looked rather crappy. I did not paint it, only applied the runway that was included, which was more or less a sticker, if memory serves correctly. So, it came out incomplete, and reminded me not of any success, but of failure revolving around my own impatience.

So, I approached this model with trepidation. On the one hand, the store model had been beautifully complete and was irresistible enough to decide me. I would take a chance that my capabilities as an adult had grown, that I would be up to the task, and build something that looked like that model on display!

Unfortunately, more than ten years later, it was still in the box, with the shrink wrap around it, to boot! I brought it in, just out of curiosity, one day, to my weekend job. There was a coworker there who spent his free time (and there is a lot of free time normally for all of us on that job), and I wanted to get his thoughts on just how difficult the task before me would be, what I might need to know or expect, and all of the basics. It was, after all, only the second known attempt I would make on such a model (there may have been others when I was really young that I simply cannot remember), and the first since I was a kid.

Imagine my surprise when he examined it, and then asked if he could bring it home with him. He wanted to soak it in water, and he would study the Eiffel Tower in the meantime, to get an idea about it (he believed it was a copper color that would work best, but it was a mustard yellow that proved to be the right color, as it turns out). When he makes models (mostly of World War II era battleships, he really goes to town, studies everything about it, knows all the details, and gets all the pictures that he possibly can, to help get the feel and make everything more realistic. I like to say about my writing that I want to "breathe life" into it, and that is as apt a description about what this guy, James, does for models. He goes all out, tries to make them come alive.

I could tell that he was thinking about doing it as a Christmas present to me, and he even told me that outright the very next day. So, I was excited.

He showed me pictures, but the pictures seemed distant and lacking detail. He model had come in a relatively close color to the actual tower, but he had painted it a flat gray, which is apparently, more or less a standard thing to do with models, in order to get the details down pat. So, I saw the pictures, and thought it looked cool, but did not think much more on it.

That was, not until I saw it in person, when I was actually quite taken by it! It had come out beautifully, and the color was just about perfect! It was taller than I remembered, and very well detailed. He had mentioned that, in painting it, that the color really made the details stand out, and that it really looked like the real thing. I had to concur, marveling at it. Unlike most standard models, this had both the inside and the outside. It was not just an empty shell, which all of my models prior essentially were, including the beloved one from 1982, which itself has an interesting story or two attached to it.

This one had the inside. If you pick it up and look under it, it looks pretty much exactly the way the actual tower does when you are standing underneath it, even including the hole on the first and second levels that allow you to look straight up. The antenna, just about everything, looks exactly the way it does in person, and seeing it side by side with pictures confirmed all of this further.

What made this extra special was that it was such a nice gesture from James. I always knew him to be a good guy, and a solid worker. I found his model building hobby very interesting. Most of the guys at my job use their free time watching movies, sometimes one after the other, from the beginning of their shift to the end. Sometimes, that means twelve, even perhaps sixteen, hours in a row like that! I do something a bit different, although I certainly watch movies at times, as well. But I read and write often times, which makes me almost the only one who does those things, especially writing (unless it is some research paper, which some of the others attending school do during that down time). So, seeing James there, weekend after weekend, working on his models, telling me about the history of whatever ship he was building at the moment (and there were quite a few of them!), elaborating on them, and showing me the details, and what he hoped to do to make it more realistic or impressive, I could not help but feel some measure of kinship. Not that I build models, although I certainly admired that he never watched movies or anything like that the way everyone else did, but just spent the entire time working on them, or reading the companion books, reading about the history of these ships, examining the details of the pictures, and sharing with me the stories that had captured him.

He took the same exact approach with the Eiffel Tower, taking care to study it, to share with me what facts he had learned, and to take exquisite pleasure in how well detailed it was, how nicely it was coming out, and how beautiful it was when completed, and ready for me to take home. He enjoyed making it, saying it was a change of pace from his usual ships, and that he had really actually appreciated the opportunity. He also told me that, despite never having been opened, many of the pieces had gotten warped, due perhaps to the heat during summer, or some such thing. It would have been very difficult for me, as an amateur. It had been surprisingly difficult for him, and he was an experienced model builder!

So, it was a nice Christmas gift, and came as a surprise! It also rekindled my fascination with the Eiffel Tower, which was one of my favorite landmarks since earliest childhood, as far as I can remember. That said, expect another blog soon, with more detail on the actual tower itself, and a bit of the history behind it.

I surely could not have asked for a better Christmas gift, and thank James once again for work well done! Hope you had a Merry Christmas on your end!