Englewood Cliffs, NJ
I went to Philadelphia last weekend to visit my other brother's family. He's 2 years older than me. My oldest brother who lives in Englewood Cliffs is 3 years older. I actually went to Philly earlier this month for his 7 year old son's birthday, but that was with the rest of the family and it was just a day trip. On that trip, I learned that my brother was introducing his son to plastic model kits. They were working on a model of the Titanic together, and he had a model kit of a B-17 (1/48 scale I think – rather large) in the closet, waiting to be built after he gets a little older.
Me and my brothers all got into building plastic models when we were kids, but he was indisputably the best at it. My efforts often turned out as incomplete or inconsistently painted pieces of crap. I forget how good my oldest brother was at it – we were bitter enemies when we were kids and many of my memories of him in that period have been wiped clean.
But my older brother seemed to have a natural talent for it, as he does with many things, and his assembly, painting and weathering were impressive for his age, which I'm guessing he was in the range of 9-12 when he was actively building these kits.
We were mostly into World War II warships and planes – 1/700 scale Waterline Series Imperial Japanese Navy warships and 1/48 or 1/72 scale Japanese and U.S. warplanes. We had definitely stopped by high school, maybe even junior high, and the remnants of the collection ended up out of sight on some closet shelf, I shouldn't wonder.
The years took their toll and the vast majority eventually was lost or destroyed and discarded. At some point, I decided to pack the remaining pieces away in a single box filled with synthetic cotton for meager protection. I forget exactly when this took place, but certainly it was after my brother left for college and I still had 2 years of high school to finish, or on one of my trips back from college on vacation.
I don't think he knew what happened to the collection, but I clearly remembered I had packed it away. So when I heard he was introducing his son to plastic models, I went searching for the box and found it without too much difficulty (aside from my mother filling my closet with clothes, after completely filling the closets in both of my brothers' rooms, the contents of my closet have remained untouched), and brought them down with me to Philly.
I was hoping to go to my brother's son's little league game, but it got rained out, so instead we excavated the box and pulled out the contents:
My nephew was pretty excited and impressed and asked a lot of questions. I was surprised at how many models were in the box. I knew the main aircraft carriers and battleships were there on top, but then there was an assortment of lesser ships, including heavy cruisers, light cruisers, a hospital ship, a seaplane tender, and an entire support fleet of destroyers and submarines.
I suspected there were some planes in there, but didn't know which ones, and there they were at the bottom of the box. Only one 1/48 scale plane survived, which is sad since we had a lot of them. I don't even know the name of the aircraft that survived (middle left of the photo), but we had maybe at least a couple dozen of 1/48 scale aircraft.
However, the piece that survived was a good representation of my brother's skill. The propeller and engine cowling are removable and he had painted the engine. He had also weathered the wings along the joints and around the guns for realism.
The other planes in the photo are smaller 1/72 scale models, and we had a lot of them, too. They are in various degrees of disrepair, and they make me think I may have made a decision over which planes to save, meaning the ones I didn't choose got chucked, which is sad if that's what happened.
The most damaged 1/72 scale plane is the light grey (white) A6M2 Zero with the diagonal blue line on the fuselage by the napkin holder, and it was saved despite the damage because the markings of the plane were supposed to be that of Saburo Sakai's plane or his flight group.
Sakai was Japan's leading fighter ace to survive the war, and he was a bit of a hero to us because his story was recorded in a book called Samurai! that may have been the first novel I ever read. He was among the best of the best and one of his stories was also featured on a Discovery Channel episode called Dogfight Over Guadalcanal.
As an adult, he remained an impressive figure to me because he became a man of peace, refusing to even kill a mosquito, and he went on reconciliation trips to meet and befriend the American pilots he had fought against during the war. When he died some 10 years ago, I read about it in the New York Times and printed out the article and tucked it into the copy of Samurai! that I still owned. It turns out my brother did the exact same thing.
The other 1/72 scale model of historical note is cut off on the left side, the B5N torpedo bomber with the yellow fuselage and brown and olive camouflage wings. That was the only plane with those markings
I'm glad how it all played out. It was a bit of atonement to have preserved these models and have my brother show them to his son 30 years down the line. It wasn't only with my oldest brother that I fought, me and my older brother also had our share of fights.
On one occasion when we still lived on Cambridge Place, we were in a heated fight, and it ended with me on a balcony on the upper floor of the house with a bunch of models threatening to send them crashing to the lower floor where my brother was. I remember him warning me not to do it, but then I started hurling them down.
I don't think they were his models. Even in our worst fights, I hope that it would have been unconscionable for me to destroy his work (my other brother would've been a different story, I'm sure). And since I'm not sure he would have cared whether I destroyed my own models, the most logical explanation is that they were my models that he had helped me complete, since I always ended up with a plastic ball of paint and glue when I made them on my own anyway.
I think that incident left deep scars on both of us for different reasons – on my part it represents the environment of sheer rage and hate that I was up to my eyeballs in.
I don't think having preserved these other creations from his youth is necessary towards anything in our sibling relationship that we haven't dealt with in our own ways through the years. There hasn't been anything hanging over us that has prevented us from having a more fulfilled and complete relationship that we can finally let go of.
But there's still the full circle aspect from that incident to actually handling these models surviving from 30 years ago. There's a bit of finality or bringing it to a close, and realizing it's about his son and raising his children emotionally well now, and not any lingering aspects or memories from the past.
