Everything was going fine. Beautifully, to be more accurate. Construction was quite a bit ahead of schedule and I was very pleased. The only dark cloud on the horizon, albeit a very large cloud, was my rendezvous with destiny. To be perfectly blunt, a titanium rendezvous. I had one eye on the benchwork and one eye on the calendar. The day I would get my new hip was approaching like a desert scirocco, you know, the sand storms that sweep across the vista of the horizon obliterating everything in its path. We were doing everything we could before we were forced to call a halt to construction. Of course, like everything else, the good part was that I would have lots of time to think about whether my layout plans were likely to come to fruition.
Now, looking back on the surgery three months ago, I find myself being very philosophical about many things. I'm walking fine, not pain free, but upright. I still cannot do very much in the way of lifting, carrying, and constructing, but I am much more clear about what the layout might be. Hopefully. With a little luck and a little help from my friends.
Perhaps you remember the movie "Being There," with Peter Sellers. He played a very simple gardner not coincidentally named Chauncy Gardener. Chauncy saw everything simply by season. If anyone asked him a question, particularly about something Chauncy knew nothing about, he would respond by alluding to the stages of a garden, how and when things grew. One could say Chauncy was something of a savant. The word Savant is considered particularly pejorative in the minds of many because we sometimes assume, falsely, that savants are somehow mentally off, ill we might say. When I go into my own world in the train room, I can think of little else besides the layout, the trains and when things will come together.
Seinfeldesque status report? What the heck does that mean? Really it means that this post is really about nothing, yet at the same time, it is about everyday things that have meaning to me. I think that I am sometimes humorous, like Jerry, when I lament the glacial pace of the layout build. I truly feel neurotic, like George, when it seems things will never go my way. I can see myself as slapstick, like Kramer, when I cannot find my nitryl gloves and I stumble over two by fours. I'm certainly looking for a relationship, like Elaine, with a layout that seems so far off in the distance.
For those of you still reading and pondering if I have lost my mind, the answer is partially, yes. I am lost in a thousand directions about how to do something I have never seen. I'm trying to build a layout that enables me to feel the way I do when I am trackside and watching trains in my other life . . . . . photographer and train spotter. I have not yet seen it done and the hourglass of opportunity in running out on me. I have decided to build a layout composed of dioramas, each of which will depict a scene that has great meaning for me. In most cases, there won't be any trains in the scenes. There will be track, structures, and life. The trains, as they do when I am trackside, come later. How will I do this? Good question.
A recent photo or two
