What a weekend this has been! I thought we were done with winter but, nope, mother nature appears to have had one more spring storm up her sleeves, and she hit us hard this Saturday; my area got only some bad wind and biting cold temperatures, but my buddy Patrick, who came down from the mountains late in the week to do some work in the area and dropped in on me in on me Friday night, got caught in a nasty blow on his way back up the mountain Saturday afternoon! He was nice enough to bring me something he ran across that he thought I would like: this mid 1960’s Singer HE-911 transistorized portable stereo record player! He got this as a “throw-in” from someone he bought a vintage Singer sewing machine from and had no use for it but, knowing your humble blogger is a vinyl enthusiast, he elected to hand it over to me, and I enjoyed spending some time listening to a stack of ancient 78’s I got at a garage sale when I was a child and haven’t heard since probably the age of 13 or 14, since that was the last time I had a turntable capable of playing 78’s!
The quaint old-school “auto changer” works great, and the system sounds remarkably good for its age; a little cleaning and lubrication and we had her playing records like new! I’ll need to get hold of some of those little yellow plastic centers they used to make so I can play some of my old 45’s, since the only thing missing from this kit is the original spindle; as a result, I pulled out this rare British pressing of Ricky Nelson’s awesome 1958 single “Waitin’ In School” b/w “Stood Up,” since this London label version of the original release (on Imperial Records) sensibly has the adaptor built into the record! Those clever Brits! While we’re at it, let’s follow that “British classics” theme down to Drag City!
At the track, we also dove into some vintage fare, although it’s “retro modern,” since this is a modern rendition of a classic: I unwrapped another recent purchase of a 1:64 die-cast from a brand I heretofore have had no experience with. Tell me what you think of this, dear readers…
I had never heard of DCM Models when I stumbled upon this! After finding this awesome piece I did a little online homework and found that it looks like this Azn brand makes almost exclusvely models of modern cars, which of course I have zilch interest in. This one, however, was an exception: a beautiful representation of the most famous Aston Martin in history. It was made in variety of colors and I had trouble choosing one but I eventually settled on white, and as you can see, it looks pretty good!
As with the Kyosho Maserati I profiled last time, this is a very scale accurate 1:64 and thus it looks a little small in comparison to some of the more common die cast brands on my layout, but parking it in the parking lot at Drag City Diner next to a Johnny Lightning Buick Riviera, I think it displays very well!
Although it had the plate of the car from the movie(s) – BMT 216A – seeing it in Wardglenn on a spring day in 1986, there’s no reason beyond that to believe this is anything other than a “normal” DB5. Yet even in the mid 80’s, it was very rare to see these cars just out and about. In my lifetime growing up in CA I encounted very few of these in the real world (a red ’58 DB4 on the freeway, a white DB5 just like this one driving through the streets of Solvang, a black DB6 parked at the curb on the street on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood are some of the memorable encounters; the white DB5, I recall, had right hand drive and British reg plates) but, as with the BMW 507 and the Iso Grifo in the parking lot at the track, in this area where car buffs congregate and in this era before their values were so insane, you may have seen these cars out and about at an event like this. The realism of this detailed model is a nice add to the diorama. My only additional ask is…where’s Pussy Galore? 😛
And yessirah, the diorama is a-POPPIN’, as I’ve been busy painting and placing all kinds of new peeps all around, and a BIG profile of all this new population is coming! In the meantime, you can see that the DCM Aston Martin came with a figure of Mr. Bond complete with his Walther PPK, and I even found place to put him, although he is currently down the block from his car. Question is, is this a good Samaritan-pehaps even an off-duty cop, coming to save the day, or is he our nevous bank robber’s much needed partner???
And so, this evening Da Bears and I will have Saturday Morning Cartoons on Saturday evening, and I’ll race a little and work a little more on the diorama, which means more updates on the exciting new tableaus surrounding the track are coming up! Because, ya know, the fun never stops at DRAG CITY!