The Hobby Workshop

In my county there was a hobby shop in a strange old-style mall. The mall was The Bazaar, the store was called The Hobby Workshop. It closed when I was really young, but memories of the place are etched deep. They had an impressive variety, from plastic kits, radio control, to a huge wall of Matchbox cars and a lot of fantasy-minis. This was the early 1980s. I remember they had a display case with all kinds of minis in there, some may have been painted but I remember the unpainted silver ones more keenly. Particularly the walking brain (which I later learned was an intellect devourer). I went along with my father and brother when they went, there was so much to look at, to stumble upon in the way of imagination and creativity. If I could only travel back in time to browse again...

The other day I drove by the last hobby store in my county, a decrepit invalid hold-out called 3B Hobbies. It was in an awkward tiny brick building in the middle of a neighborhood that had outgrown it decades ago. It stood like a homeless woman passed out in a pile of garbage on a corner of a main drag. It had been closed every time I've checked in the past few years, but the other day it was empty - BUILDING FOR SALE. The last hobby store, which could barely be called such, finally dead. I wonder what they had in their basement. Shrink wrapped boxed sets of Heritage and Grenadier minis? Cardboard boxes full of blisters untouched for twenty years? Who knows, all gone. Dead and buried.