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In search of an honest voice |
| In search of an honest voice On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, the New York Times published a story, “Graying, and playing with trains,” written by Terry Pristen, a veteran staff writer. In a nutshell, Pristen defines the hobby as being mostly for men, over fifty, and gifted with multiple building skills, a dwindling group. Her contention is that the hobby is dying out because the kids growing up today don’t have those skills and aren’t inclined to develop them. Mostly, Pristen is working an angle, something which happens when journalists give up the quest for truth and settle for a regular paycheck. Aside from quotes pulled at Model Railroader, MRIA and NMRA, most of her material comes from a couple of New York stores down on 45th Street. She describes Manhattan’s Red Caboose as being “a grimy basement store crammed with as many as 100,000 items” and the store’s owner Allan Spitz as someone “... who conducts business in midwinter wearing torn Bermuda shorts and rubber sandals.” Assuming Pristen’s descriptions of the store and its owner are correct, is this an apt description of model railroad shops in general or their owners in particular? Here in Medford, Terry James operates the Hobby Tree in the basement of Hubbard’s Ace Hardware store at the corner of Main and Central. The shop is neat and tidy; Mr. James dresses appropriately for the location and his clientele, usually wearing fairly new jeans and a pressed shirt with collar. Dynamic, hard-hitting journalism is as much about imagery as accuracy. Something has to be grimy, inappropriate, misplaced, or unfit in order for the written piece to have any voice. What Pristen doesn’t mention would make another entire article. While talking to MR, she somehow didn’t come away with the World’s Greatest Hobby campaign. She dismisses the NMRA as a promotional organization after talking to their Gordon Belt, the NMRA Library director. What else did Mr. Belt say which didn’t make the story? In an especially poor bit of English construction, Pristen says, “It is easy to imagine that there are many reasons this kind of exacting work has less appeal to young people than it used to.” If I had turned in prose of this sort to my college writing instructors, they would have had me for lunch. Not only is the syntax weak with a vague “it” for a subject, the content is pure mush. She could have said, “Kids today don’t go for this kind of exacting work,” but she didn’t. If you read this month’s TAMR column by Peter Maurath, you’ll see why. Even hard-hitting journalists need to shy away from bald-faced lies. Kids today are like kids in any other era; they will learn what we put before them. I’ve heard many children and their parents express a love of holding something tangible, with three dimensions, using painsakingly developed skills. An assembled and weathered GP40 brings a lot more pride than a billion dead computer pixels. I’ve taken trains into the classroom and watched children with 30 second attention spans stay focused on trains for a full hour or more. Pristen states, “Trains themselves no longer have a hold on the imaginations of those accustomed to swiftly spanning huge distances by airplane.” I’m not willing to concede that point. I know that many people don’t pay much attention to trains and even dismiss them as being out-of-date or passé. However, an equally large number of people admit to a fascination for railroads. I’m not some jaded writer living in the concrete canyons of the Big Apple, focused on the Bermuda shorts of store owners. I’m the editor of a model railroad magazine, and when I identify myself as such, I hear each person’s perspective on trains. So many of them have either ridden trains or want to. My dentist’s father worked for Burlington Northern and the son has bought model trains for his children. A French born real estate agent grapples with the difference between the TGV and Amtrak; she wants to resolve the question by riding both. Several people have asked where the cabooses went. A surprisingly large number know that most of their clothes and other consumer products spend at least some time in a container on a train. Pristen quotes Fred Hamilton of the Model Railroad Industry Association (MRIA) as saying, “The general consensus is that the hobby itself is pretty stagnant, but the number of dollars spent has increased.” That means there are fewer of us, but each is spending more. The number of hobby shops is down 25%, but Pristen doesn’t connect the problem as being associated with a general shift in all retailing away from small stores. This is especially odd, given the number of prior articles she has written about retailing. She isn’t any better when attempting to define the typical railroad modeler. She cites one as saying, “It’s a nerdy hobby.” But our dynamic, hard-hitting journalist has missed the point, which is this: model railroading is a safe, harmless, honest, and morally respectable pastime. We’d be better off if more politicians built models instead of dating them. The trains themselves require that you plan and do your best, otherwise they don’t stay on the track very long. Model trains test you constantly and will let you know if you’ve been found wanting. Perhaps if Ms. Pristen took up the hobby, in time she might find a more honest voice in her own work. |
John Sipple, Editor |
| To respond to this month's Editorial, send comments to: Editorial@modelrailroadnews.com |
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