Your first model?

My mother took me to the local Five and Dime store to pick out a gift for my dad when I was about five years old. The moment I saw the Darrell Waltrip Tide car in amongst all the other stuff in the store, I KNEW that was the thing to buy. Our family didn't watch Nascar, but the colors jumped off the box to a five year old boy.

I had obviously never built models at that age, and I don't think he had ever built one either, but we sat together at the kitchen table with a tube of Testors glue and put that thing together one night. No side cutters, no masking, no paint, just plastic and glue. Eventually, we even got the decals on.

After years of being proudly displayed, the old kit met its end. By that time my interest in models had grown, and I salvaged the tires and wheels. They've bounced around different kits and projects ever since. (As you can tell from the Goodyear decals)

I just recently picked up  another Darrell Waltrip car on eBay and plan on building it as soon as my current project wraps. Of course, I hope with a little more skill this time around. Heck, I might even put that set of wheels and tires from the first model kit on it...

This is the very first model I ever built. My dad bought it for me. I think I was 10 years old. We had probably just watched Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo on Channel 4 in St. Louis. Back then, the kit was made by Revell. Now that Atlantis has re-released the kit, I plan to have this kit on the shelf very soon.

Revell USS Pittsburgh, brush painted with Testors chrome silver and flat black.  I started and finished in one afternoon, sitting on the dining room floor (protected with an old newspaper of course).  That was back in 1970.

I also remember when my dad came home, he told me that the real ship lost its bow in a storm, but made it safely back to port.

As a kid,with my father,Aurora's Godzilla

As an adult,when I restarted in early my 20's it was Tamiya's Panzer IV handpainted Gray with a whitewash