Topical Guide 36
Mark Dorset
Toys: Models: Ship Models; Children and Adults; Youth and Age
the room my father had had when he was a boy . . . was still a boy’s room. . . . A cupboard and a set of shelves above it were filled with ship models, the models that he had built from The Boys’ Book of Boatbuilding. A couple of these were half-finished, as if my father had been at play, working on his models one day, when there was a knock on the door and someone had barged in, caught him playing, and said, “Stop that, now. You’re grown up,” and he had never returned. I always stayed in this room, but he never came upstairs to visit it. I sometimes thought of finishing the models, but they were too complicated for me then, and they bored me later.
Little Follies, “Do Clams Bite?”
This model faithfully reproduces a clamboat that Kraft and Edward Zaron owned and operated, as co-owners and co-captains, during the summer of 1961. At the end of the summer, it sank.
[Note to self: Include “Toys” as a topic in The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset.]
Photography; Painting
She was at the ocean, romping in the surf, standing at the edge, running into the water, running from the water, throwing sand at the photographer, imitating September Morn, sticking her tongue out, striking a bathing-beauty pose, lying in the surf, standing with her hands on her hips, toweling herself dry, and finally, holding the towel at her side, draping it on the sand, just smiling at the camera, a little chilled, with goosebumps on her skin, so very happy that my heart leaped each time I reached the last picture. The pictures were clear and sharp. My father had taken a passionate interest in photography for a while; these pictures had been printed with great skill and care.
Little Follies, “Do Clams Bite?”
[more to come on Thursday, July 1, 2021]
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