Dad’s Hobbies

I dunno what possessed my dad to do some of the things he did. He was a commercial artist, by trade, but he had hobbies, some of which were more regularly enjoyed than others.

I remember he built a kite – quite large, for a kite. He designed it and fabricated the whole thing from scratch, using a very heavy-duty Christmas wrapping paper to form the "skin" of it, and heavy-duty twine for the lead. I remember him flying it once, on a cloudy and windy day. It stayed up in the sky without any wavering or instability. He let me hold on to the lead, but not completely by myself because it would have dragged me forward, so strong was the pull of it. I have no clue what became of that kite. Only flown once, that I know of.

He built model planes, ships, and cars, though ships were the usual fare. He just didn’t buy a kit from the local department store with a tube of glue and some dime store paint – he got kits and plans from who-knows-where with tiny pieces that took weeks (and sometimes months) to put together. Hardly any of it was plastic (unlike the models I did) and often he would not be satisfied with the parts from the kit and would fashion his own from scratch. He was very patient and the results were usually amazing – sailing ships with intricate detail in the assembly and paint job that made it look authentic, except for its greatly reduced size from the real-life version.

School Shopping

“School shopping” was an annual event which occurred around the end of August. Still is today, except now I notice that advertising for “back-to-school” shopping happens in July. Sort of like how stores start putting out Halloween stuff (and in some cases, Christmas stuff) around Labor Day.

Anyhoo, it was a ritual we went through the last days of each August (or the 1st days of September, depending on when school started). Mom would take us out to the department store – usually Big N in Newark (the N stood for Neisner’s or something like that) and we would pick out new clothes and supplies for the upcoming school year. The stuff I really wanted was too expensive for us and I had to haggle and negotiate for the next level down in status. I’m sure Mom spent more than she thought prudent and I’m sure I thought she was being stingy. What one ended up wearing the first few days of school was critical in determining one’s social status for the semester.