Intimidation meaning to me!!!!

[Dennis Bourey]

Jerry, Thank you sir. My wife's left arm is held together with a plate and screw's when she hit the windshield. I'm glad we were driving our Trailblazer. I believe we would of died if we were driving our smaller vehicle. I appreciate your feelings and your survival of that accident. It's weird how things happen. One foot either way and Things could be so much different. I will keep your word's to heart. Dennis

[Dennis Bourey]

Here's a picture of our suv and my wife was flown to Boston Hospital from here in Tilton NH.

[Dennis Bourey]

Thank you Jeff and Dave. I will get to George's layout if ever allowed to reopen. I will get wall's and other material in the next couple of day's. Thanks Guy's. Dennis

[tct855]

Dennis,
            Modeling is like the highway of life here, so let me pile on as well.  Besides, it sounds like we're all in the same lane.  I'd love to sit here and tell a different story from all the others told here, that I'm a gazillionaire by trade, never made a single mistake (just double ones), always knew what the women in my life were thinking, always made the best decisions and investments etc. etc. etc., but I digress...not so of course.
  Growing up I was a navy brat so we moved around a lot, sometimes several times in a year and others several years in a row.  So I got to always start a new layout, diorama (not a good thing always) or discover how many parts were broken off my trains since my poor packing was always done last minute.
So then we lived on a farm for 4 years (age 14-18) with plenty of room for me to build 2 layouts (one for shows) and (one for in the barn). Wow! Right~.  Life was finally stable(?) until I came home from school one day at 16 to find my dad moved out and divorce papers on the table signed (his fault).  Well I did what any kid would do.  I sunk all my time, money and energy into my trains for the next two years.
Only to come home one day from school (a month before my 18th birthday) to find out my mom has a boyfriend for a couple months (who turned out to be a good guy for her) to meet him and he was moving in. (ok).  Well a month later (the weekend before my 18th birthday) they decided to take a trip to see her mother to introduce him to the family  (ok) and upon their return a couple days after my birthday (whaat?) my mom told me she was married (on my birthday) and she was selling the farm and moving in with her husband in another state and oh,... since I'm now 18, I could make my own way and should be out along with her in a couple weeks.  Isn't life the best!...........
No intimidation from a drunk angry father who threaten to tear down my trains with beer in hand or a mother who focused on herself.   So I did what any kid would do.  Throw it all in the trash and pack up and start over... Fast forward to being successful on my own at 26 and then got married (stupid) and then built a big house with a 22,000 sq. ft. basement for trains once and for all right! (really stupid).
While during the time of building the house myself (over 3 years and working two jobs).  I slipped on ice and permanently damaged two dics in my lower back and was paralyzed on my whole right leg and while I couldn't feel it or move it for 3 months I was in a lot of pain.  I'd learn to walk again, and go back to work and working on the house (because I got an empire to build someday) then I'd slip and it all started over again with the paralyzed leg (this happen to me three times in 3 years). 
One day while working on the house for a wife who's now a full blown witch with two brooms and still I'm healing my leg, the wife's best friend came over and told me she didn't like all this talk of me building a train layout and wasn't going to allow me to spend the money on it to which later turned out to be my wife being jealous of me not devoting all my time and money to kissing her anal cavity and keeping up with the jones like I did for a half a decade before. 
Well when I took a stand and said I'm building a layout from now until I retire, well let's just say- I was not shocked to received the divorce papers the same month we moved in and that she was keeping the house I built and the following week the local police were so kind to let me return with a rental truck to pack up once again all my stuff. (again life is the best!...........
So I did what any guy with bad luck and a love of trains in life would do.  I started buying all the trains, books, videos etc. etc. etc. of all the trains I could afford and lived, eat, drank, breathed trains, trains, trains.  So I packed everything in boxes and got a climate controlled locker and finally protected from having to throw out any more trains.
Then I met a little Russian woman (wait for it?) who just so happens to like trains in general (yeah).  We take train rides all the time (cool), she likes brass trains over plastic (bonus), she doesn't care what I spend (my) money on like trains (bigger bonus), and she has her own place and she doesn't want to be married and doesn't have a problem with me staying home and building trains while she's out sight seeing her beaches for the millionth time and collecting rocks/sea glass  (lottery ticket holder I am now) or am I?
So now that I'm many years older and hopefully smarter to life's challenges, I have all my trains, we live together, she's independent, she likes my trains, she doesn't' care how I spend my day being happy, she loves me and I her, her place is a condo with (no basement) (everything in life comes at a cost I guess) and all those trains and everything train related sit there in storage where I can go anytime and look at them sit there!  Ha,
So while I'm no longer intimidated or allowing myself to be intimidated ever again.  One thing is for sure in this game of life we all are playing.  Watch what you look for because you just might get it, and if you own it, be sure to own the space you keep it in, and when you put your foot down make sure you can lift it up again, because one thing I've learned in my 57 years is life is not fair, no one owes you a damn thing, and if you don't seize the moments you have, protect what's yours, someone else might try to control it or take them away from you!    (This sound's a lot like this country at the moment huh...)
Thanx Thom....

[Dennis Bourey]

Tom, Thank you very much. Made me smile. Wow You hit the nail right on the head. Sound's like my family back then, Not moving because of service. Other reason.s. Father left when I was 8 and the oldest out of 6. Life was grand back then. That story of your life was close to my 59 years here.Dennis

[S&S RR]

John, I appreciate that. I will keep going and as Craig and you said. My first kit is about done. lol  I made some changes now and will post picture's tomorrow. Dennis

Dennis


I'm looking forward to the pictures. By-the-way  I'm always making changes to my builds.  I made some changes to the Brambell's build I did 4 or 5 years ago, just today.  I'm working on the scenery in that area and looked at it at a particular angle and said that has to be fixed. Photographs are the best way I know to critique your own work.

[Dennis Bourey]

You will have them tomorrow my friend. Fresh film in camera and scanner hooked up. lol I love the way your build's come out over the years. Dennis

[ReadingBob]

Dennis,

You tale is certainly a poignant reminder of how one's life can be turned upside down in an instant.  I, for one, am thankful you survived and joined our band of merry modelers.

I won't try to restate what others have already said so eloquently.  I'll only mention that I got over the fear of messing up those big buck kits (with one small exception).  I realized long ago that the fun, for me, is in the process of building the kit.  The cost divided by the hours I spent building a kit turns out to be a pretty cheap way to entertain myself.     If I end up with a nice looking structure when I'm finished that's a bonus.     The one small exception is that I really worry about messing up a kit is when I'm building it for someone else.  I get to enjoy the process of building it for them and want to do a good a job.

You've done a stellar job on your first build.  I'm looking forward to what you do next.

[BandOGuy]

Dennis,
I read your post and the responses posted last night. My delay in responding stems from being overwhelmed by the entire thread. So here I am at 8 AM, coffee in hand and I'm still speechless (an amazing exception to the norm). You displayed and enormous amount of intestinal fortitude to simply post the story as did many of the responders.
Thanks for the proverbial foot to fanny. Downside is, you (thankfully) destroyed a lot of my miserable excuses for not having accomplished more in the hobby.
Does anyone know how to bookmark this thread for later re-reading?

[Keep It Rusty]

You can bookmark this URL:

http://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=5703

[S&S RR]

In reading through these posts I realized that another great thing about this hobby is you never face the day building a model railroad where you have to stand back from your layout and say - well that's done now what?

[Keep It Rusty]

The day this hobby is finished is the day my family and friends will be mourning my passing.

[Dennis Bourey]

Craig, I feel the same way...Dennis

[Dennis Bourey]

Thank you BandO, John, Craig. Dennis

[tom.boyd.125]

Intimidation...
Where to start...when I got home 45 years ago to the smell of Floquil paint and followed it to the dining room to see my spouse with 20 open bottles of solvent paint painting the FSM castings that were primed by not started to get finished by me...hint...if your not going to build all those kits on the shelf...then I will...still married after 47 years... and after the Campbell shingles were installed on another kit...she advised me they were not straight and to do it over...
When putting a Campbell roof together the metal roofing sheets where put in upside down...noticed after the model kit was put together...Having to move 3 times in 21 years...twice at 1000 miles each time...do you know what that does to your built models...left for work one morning and did not know there was ice on the driveway as I slid out down the driveway to the curb... spouse watched me slid 60 feet and had a good laugh ... staining wood in a kit that came out shinny...purchased some new lumber and did it over...
Hearing my spouse had a golf ball size brain tumor that was ready to cause a stroke...that was removed over 16 years ago...that was found by accident when she threw a disk out after one of those moves...When I went into the same hospital a year later for 5 days due to weird blood work and was told by a team of 5 doctors that cancer was a possibility...the dead gall bladder was 24 hours from taking me out...receiving a call from the police that one of my daughters was in a bad car accident and was being air lifted from our area to the city ... lost a kidney and had an almost severed spinal cord ... had to have metal rods put in... so my advise is to take everything in stride...go see the FSM layout soon...maybe join the Seacoast Division in NH and meet some model RR'ers...and have a good time with our remaining time here...keep sharing with all on the Forum too...