Always "Remembering WENN"

Over the years I have looked at "Christmas villages," those miniature worlds where all is merry and bright, with different levels of envy. My mother-in-law has a corker of a village setup in the corner of her living room, but I've been reluctant to get that elaborate and we really don't have the room (except perhaps by taking everything out of the foyer). On the other hand, a few homes on the mantelpiece wouldn't have been bad, except that there was really no room at the old house for that sort of thing. The fireplace was of fieldstone with a narrow, rough board for a mantel.

The new mantel is white and pristine and begging for a village.

I have observed over the years that the majority of Christmas villages tend to have a Victorian theme, with horses and carriages, men in top hats and women in long skirts. However, I noticed this year that several of the stores had 1940s-looking figures and vehicles with their Christmas villages, so I decided to make a 1940s village. I have a grocery store, tree lot (with period trailer), church, post office, and a house where a soldier is just arriving home and greeting his girl. Kids play in the recesses between the buildings, the grocer sweeps in front of his store, the man running the tree lot waves at the bus, loaded with old-fashioned valises and suitcases in its luggage rack and having just dropped off our soldier, passes by, and a family listens delightedly to two nuns singing Christmas carols while Father studies his Bible. (Right now this is all set up on the library floor.)

From the internet I have found old war posters plus I have made a couple of signs, so the grocery has a poster advertising war bonds, a 48-star flag that James found, and a sign "Bring your fats here." The post office has a recruiting poster for the Army Air Corps and a Red Cross "give blood" sign, and of course our soldier's home has a blue star flag on the house.

But there was also something else I was determined to do if I found the right building: to convert one of them into the building where WENN, the Pittsburgh radio station from Remember WENN, had its studios. Finding a building was actually harder than I thought. I was looking for a tall office building type and what I was finding was toy shops, candy stores, restaurants and other "quaint-shoppe" edifices.

Finally I found the right building. James helped me and this is what we came up with (these are linked rather than posted directly in the blog because the photos I took are large).

I started with Lemax's 3rd Precinct Building. We also bought an oil derrick that would go with a model train setup and James placed a pointed aerial on it and painted it silver.

Then he removed the interior scene with the policeman at his desk. There wasn't much else we could do with it, but I turned the desk so it was in front of the window at the side and glued the policeman back down on the floor, which James painted a solid brown. He also painted the "jail door" a solid brown, and on the inside wall which you could see from the window, I put a miniscule menu. Finally I printed up some "gingham curtains" on the color printer and pasted them in the window. This became "The Buttery," the restaurant the folks from WENN patronized.

Then, with the printer, I replaced the signs that made it a police station and added a Red Cross poster in the window and a signboard for the Buttery. James glued the tower to the roof and I applied the call letters to the tower (these are lettering for scrapbooks).

This is now what the building looks like, except for the modern NO PARKING sign still on the lamppost:

WENN Building

Here's a (little darker) picture of the finished product, but with that pesky NO PARKING sign replaced.

Completed WENN Building

The darker pic shows the "gingham" a little better.

There's a funny story about the antenna at the very top. As I was taking that second picture, although I lifted it in place carefully, I snapped the hair-thin thing off. James shook his head, then disappeared back downstairs to his workroom and returned a few minutes later with a new antenna. "This one is flexible," he told me. "Oh, what did you use?" "It's a bristle from a hairbrush, spraypainted." That's my guy!

This took us most of Saturday night from concept to conclusion, but it was quite fun. I know why people with train sets get so involved with setting up the scenery!