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Old 10-09-2019, 08:48 PM
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georgegassaway georgegassaway is offline
Contest, Sport, it's all good......
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: West of Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 760
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
George, have you always lived down around Birmingham or were you close to Huntsville at one time?


I came up to Huntsville for a lot of HARA launches in the mid 1980's thru 90's but never lived near there.

Moved from North Carolina to Midfield (west of Birmingham) in June 1968, Homewood since fall 1970. West of Minneapolis, MN since 2012.

The shop near Midfield was Spivey's, a pretty famous hobby shop for the area. But as Centuri dwindled, so did his rocket section. Caught fire and burned down around 1994-1996. The "far away" hobby shop was Homewood Toy & Cycle, which was an odd combo of a bike shop and a toy store with hobbies. About the time we moved to Homewood, the store had split into two separate stores, the original bike shop, and toys/hobbies in a card shop next door. Then later, a five and dime store on the other side of the bike shop went under, it was bigger, so the Toy & Hobby shop moved into there and it still there as Homewood Toy & Hobby, the best hobby shop in the B'ham area. I spent a LOT of time and $ there till I moved.

But also in Homewood was Bill's hobby House. A literally classic mom and pop hobby store. Bill and his wife were both in their 70's when I first started going there in 1970 or 71. He had Centuri kits, and even got hold of some MPC Mini-Jets when those came out. I learned a lot about model planes and gliders from him. His wife passed away in the mid 1970's, and she was the one who did the store's paperwork and such. One of Bill's sons stepped in to help him run it, but only a couple of years or so later it closed.
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