The Little Miniature Shop of Horrors

(More anniversary party photos - sorry for the inconsistent sizes, but it's getting damn late.)

I'll always remember that first miniatures shop on that trip, because it was the first place I saw the infernal miniature display device that I would later come to call "the infernal miniature display device." Basically, it was a tall glass case with a series of little trays in it that you could cycle through by pushing two little buttons on the top of the case. One button would cycle the trays up, and the other down. This way, the proprietor could display a lot of tiny items in a very small space.

The machine held about 30 trays, and each tray held about 60 items. If you do the math and assume that my dad only spent two seconds looking at each item in a tray, that meant he would spend 3600 seconds, or an hour, looking at the items in each machine. Unfortunately, that would be a very optimistic estimate, because for most items, he spent far more than two seconds. He enjoyed discussing at length the interesting properties of each item with my mom, and how the item might be replicated at home for one of her doll houses. He'd take notes, make sketches, and talk about wood, fabric, and the tools he'd use to make each one. Then he'd move on to the next item in the tray.

This, of course, made the wait at that infernal miniature shop very, very long:

Finally, after I had developed a nice, firm rigor mortis, dad dragged my dessicated corpse back to the car and we left. My disembodied spirit breathed a sigh of releif at leaving, but the true, cruel irony was yet to hit. Not two miles down the road, my dad mentioned that there was another miniatures shop in the next town. Here's a map of all the miniatures shops we visited on that trip: