In exchanging some notes with Nick I realized a bit of a fable of sorts relevant to the Season and all of us here.
Long ago I perused a Military Modeling Magazine - 11 27 1997 to be precise and spied the following and was lost:
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These were from that years Model Engineer expo and were titled as 1 Alice in Wonderland flats group by Mike Taylor was awarded a Gold Medal and 2 Mike Taylor receives his Gold medal from Phillipe Gengembre. (Mind you both are very small pictures, maybe 2 inches square.)
Unfortunately no helpful individual listed the maker of the flats so I was in a pickle though I coveted them highly - they were charming.
A number of years later I purchased Mike Taylor's book and through it my first large flat purchase via Carl Gruen (listed in the book) who was the middle man for Wimor's Night in Venice as illustrated in Mikes book.
A number of years after that I discovered the Old BFFS online site and some helpful soul let me know that the Alice in Wonderland set came from Western Miniatures such that I knew what to ask Carl for and after 11 years of looking I achieved a portion of the Alice in Wonderland set.
Subsequently another helpful soul from the site - Charles I believe - assisted me in changing PayPal dollars to British Pounds so that I could purchase directly from Western Miniatures and I eventually purchased all of it.
From that little picture I eventually moved full time into flats and via the site have met many other helpful souls who have made my life and hobby more pleasant in many ways.
I never had the pleasure of thanking Mike for his inspiration but, he made my life a little richer. A pretty sweet legacy, I suspect among many.
All of you do the same through your participation and sharing - you just may never know who you are touching for the better.
Thank you for making this tiny slice of the world a little better too!
That's my message for the Season. Happy Holiday's everyone.
mark
