Dear Bad Order Hal,
Before becoming totally blown away by this hobby in 2005, (a hobby that had been packed away for over 40 years in a long forgotten attic), yes I did have hobbies.
The hobby which took me away from toy trains was competitive swimming as a young boy and baseball card and comic book collecting. When I moved to Staten Island I had to swim for another club but my baseball cards and comic books came with me for a brief while I recall that the American Flyer Train set came out but was quickly stored for posterity by my father again because he wanted to save them for when I could appreciate them.
I married my college sweetheart and moved out at 23 this was in 1980 and have been working ever since for the family business.
When my wife and I had a daughter in 1990, I became interested in showing her a hobby of mine so at Christmas time in 1995 I bought her a K line Christmas Set which I put around the tree without much success.......her interest was dolls!
Little did I know that in 2005, that my Dad would reawaken my train hobby by giving me a starter set so late in life (I was 48 he was 78). As a matter of fact in the next year he gave me back my S gauge trains, by that time I had an O gauge train table well under construction and no more room to build an American Flyer table.
Over the years I had many different hobbies going to fishing shows, and boating shows, car shows and I recall being quite skilled at model plane building.
Mike Marice
