The Junk Yard/Diorama
by
ROBERT KARR
It's some time in the late 1950's. World War II has only been over for a little more than a decade, but already the hundreds of thousands of airplanes built during those few short years are rapidly disappearing. Scrapped, salvaged, melted down into more mundane items, the remaining hulks are still spotted here and there along the highway at the small airports that always seem to be on the outskirts of America's small towns. I imagine this representation to be somewhere along old Route 66, between St Louis, Missouri and Kingman, Arizona. As a kid on long cross country vacation trips, I remember getting excited whenever the old highway went by one of these small airport reliquaries.
I admit my diorama is a bit of a fanciful version - I doubt many of these junkyards, no matter how magical, ever sported an Me-109E among their troves....but there WAS magic.
The birth of the so-called warbird movement was still a few years away, but a few farsighted individuals started to see that one day these now-forlorn piles of ripped metal might be valued and treasured artifacts from the nations most triumphant era. Maybe the scene here depicts the first stirrings?
"Technical" Notes on the Diorama:
Aside from the childhood memories, this was also a good excuse to use up alot of spare parts accumulated from decades of model kit bulding and collecting. There's quite a bit scratchbuilding, but also bits and pieces from dozens of kits. There's Lindberg and Monogram Avenger parts, Monogram P-39s, T-6s, B-17, B-24 and C-47, Revell B-25 and I'm not sure what all. I also tossed in some watch parts, disposable cigarette lighter bits and a few tank parts. The goat - inspired by an uncle's auto junk yard where a tethered goat kept the grass down - is an O gauge model railroad item. The trailer and shop (including the infamous cat clock) are scratchbuilt, as is the furniture-both inside and out...and also the worn out mattress that lives in the C-47 hulk. The lurking rattlesnake is epoxy putty, as are the doggy "reminders" (watch where you step!).