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But you still
love me... |
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by
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Brian Schindler |
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When I first started to collect diecast cars,
I was primarily into 1/18th scale. In our first house, I had one room in
the basement that I mounted shelves on once I finished off the basement.
At the time, my collection was modest to say the least, I had maybe 200
cars and the collection was growing faster than my waistline. |
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Weekly I would go down and dust off the cars
but all was really doing was rearranging the cars to keep my wife guessing.
She was already figuring I was spending waaaaay too much on this hobby...this
coming from a woman whose idol was Imelda Marcos in so far as shoes go! |
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When I would do the weekly "dusting",
the cars would get arranged sometimes by color, sometimes by make, sometimes
by model and so on. I came up with a hundred different ways to rearrange
them. |
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But none of that really mattered, I married
an Accounting Major. |
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So I had to find a way I could keep my fix going
for my habit and not get busted for it everytime I turned around when we
bought our next house. So I finished off the basement. |
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Now when I built the ceiling in the basement,
I put in a drop ceiling...and not just any drop ceiling. It was carefully
engineered. Being that floor to joist was about 10 feet, I calculated that
I could convienently drop the ceiling in the laundry room 18-20 inches.
On the grid work of the drop ceiling, I planned on 2 X 4 ceiling tiles
and made sure I had wires every 8 inches along the gridwork for a secure
and strong ceiling. |
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You see, I had a bigger master plan at work. |
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Once complete, I had some 32 square feet at my disposal
for hiding new diecast. When I was out at the store or hobby shop and found
yet another car I "had to have", I'd just stick it in the trunk
of my car and smuggle it in after the wife went to sleep at night or wasn't
home. |
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So I started smuggling these in and sticking them in my
well engineered drop ceiling hiding place. |
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Now the average car and box of a 1/18th scale diecast weighs
about 5 to 6 pounds and on one 2 X 4 ceiling tile, I could get 18+ plus
cars on one tile depending on the manufacture and the dimensions of the
box. No problem as my well engineered grid work could just about hold me
up let alone 18+ cars. |
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Well, 18 cars at just 5 pounds a pop weighs in at almost
90 pounds. I probably had 50 cars shoved in over the washing machine. |
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One saturday morning, I was rough housing with my dog, a
100 pound 3 year old male samoyed (like a husky only bigger, stronger with
long white fur, sled dog) right above where the washer and dryer were with
my wife doing the laundry. I guess the vibration from the dog and I bouncing
around was more than the weight could bear. |
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The next sound I heard was a horrible crash immediately
followed by by a scream and an "OW...SH*T!" and "WHAT THE
HELL IS....!" |
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I ran downstairs to see what had happened and there sat
my wife in a sea of diecast car boxes more red faced than an ERTL Precision
100 64 Mustang with broken ceiling tiles all around her. |
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End result was, the grid work was still intact but the ceiling
tile was not meant to support 90 or so pounds of diecast. In its weakened
state, the vibrations of the dog and myself were just enough to cause the
tile itself, not the grid work to cave in...unfortunately for me, it had
to happen when my wife was doing the laundry. Needless to say, I wasn't
allowed in the basement by myself for quite a while. |
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Oh, and if you're wondering...no diecast were hurt and neither
was my wife. |
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