Thanks to TinplateArt whose "Fond Memories" post inspired the following...
Growing up in the 1960's I would often call upon my Uncle Joe for help. He was a carpenter for Thomas & Betts Company and was the kind of guy who could fix or build anything. Woodwork, plumbing, roofing, electrical, carpet laying..he did it all. I remember he raised the roof of his house using RR jacks and added dormer rooms...by himself ! Despite my young age he was always willing to indulge my crazy ideas and "inventions". He once made a "see through" skateboard for me. I had traced the outline of a store bought skateboard onto a piece of 1/2" Plexi-Glass. He cut it out and routed a fancy bevel on the edge and drilled and tapped the holes so I could attach the trucks. That skate board was the talk of the neighborhood.
He even once may have saved my life. I was climbing a wall in the basement and stepped on the water meter breaking the pipe and filling the room with full city water pressure. I ran and found him and he managed to somehow fix it without my parents or grandfather finding out (which would not have ended well ) .
He built the Homasote covered 2x4 framed platform in the attic where we ran grandpa's Standard Gauge Lionel trains. It was about 10 ft long and he painted it flat green to look like grass and added some home made wooden houses. I can still see him hand sawing the wood and nailing it together with a real hammer...no power tools ! Eventually we moved and the layout was dismantled and the trains put into storage.
Sometime in the late 70's I asked him to make a display shelf for the engine and cars. It was a gift for my father so he could see the trains of his childhood on the wall of his den rather than having them hidden away in the attic. Uncle Joe cut the boards from heavy pine, routed the edges and rubbed some stain on. He made a couple of fancy wood supports to match. (Dark stained pine furniture and paneling were all the rage in the 70's ) We mounted some of the original track to it. The original set box had begun to disintegrate so we borrowed one of the side labels and fixed it to a board that acted as a center marquee and put clear varnish over it. The shelf and trains stood proudly on the wall until my Dad passed away and then it all got packed away again for another 20 years.
We lost Uncle Joe a few months ago at the age of 85. They brought his old hand made carpenters box to the service and laid it next to him. He was a swell guy, I will really miss him.
As the memories came flooding back I thought about the train shelf and not long after I went to retrieve it from storage. I decided it will look good up in the loft next to the 1925 Lionel Factory Scenic Layout I'm restoring.
Given the current value of original boxes there may be some who will cringe at the thought of using the label instead of gluing or taping it back on but if I had it to do over I wouldn't change a thing. We got a lot of enjoyment out of it over the years and even now just seeing it again evokes fond memories and a nostalgia for those simpler times.
You can always get another box but you only get one "Uncle Joe".
Gerry C
