May 20, 2019:
Godzilla. An Enterprise-class aircraft carrier. A Midway-class, a Yorktown class. Two PT boats, an F-9F, an F-86. An SST, a Starship Enterprise painted the wrong colors as our TV was B&W. A nuclear ballistic missile sub in cross-section, the kind where the hull opens to show the internal minutiae which had been such a PITA to fit and glue. A B-58, an F-105, an M48 tank, an SR-71. Mickey Mouse. A large transistor radio with a carrying handle on the top. A set of books on geography. A picture of Beatle Paul hanging on a string.
The shelves were aluminum, floor to near ceiling, adjustable, with sharp edges that today would get the vendor sued. Later we moved them out of my room, where they became a divider between living room and kitchen, still filled with military models but now also the Hardy Boys and a reference library of literature suitable for kids. My room got cheap wooden shelves increasingly filled with books on airplanes and military history. Eventually, much later, all the models were gone, the shelves were jammed, the books transitioning from military subjects to literature, history, philosophy, and Marxism.
These models died a violent death. Some friends of the moment drove us to a dry wash near the Del Mar fairgrounds. We set them up one at a time and destroyed them with BB guns. Another hit on the Enterprise! The B-58's lost an engine! An appropriately poetic end for these objects I'd once loved but no longer needed.