I SUPPORT KENT JOHNSON WITH UNWOBBLING FEROCITY!

I met Kent Johnson through the old ALL-SCALE listserv. I was the only Maoist on the list (the majority was Trotskyite), and my head was filled with abysmally sectarian ideology. I blush to admit that I used to believe that G Scale was a late-capitalist fetishization that inevitably led to uncontrollable gigantism and ultimately, crisis of replication. Kent and others on the list helped me to correct my errors. When the people act as one, anything is possible.

At the time, Kent was starting to put together his heteronymic agit-prop masterpiece, Garden Railroading, which features plans for a cunningly disguised replica of La Higuera, monument and all, to name only one of the book’s remarkable prestidigitations (there’s also a water tower based on El Lissitzky’s Lenin Tribune). As it happened, I was at the time very familiar with Bolivian geography, had just gotten my Feng Shui license and was beginning to translate Fernando Pessoa, so I was able to help him. That cemented our friendship.

Kent was and is firmly non-sectarian. I remember our arguments and agreements with great fondness. Kent’s kindness eventually won me over to his anarcho-castroist views, for which he was ejected from UN PASO (United Pan-American All Scale Organization). Under his tutelage, I began to re-read with newly-opened eyes the works of the great masters of autonomist model-making, Robert Burl and Pattie Galvin. Kent and I conceived of a new project, a volume to be entitled G Scale Landscaping for an Anarchist Education of the Future. We believed it was no longer time for subtlety. Alas, we were so wrong. Kalmbach sent us a sneering rejection of our proposal and the project was dropped.

Though our politics have diverged, I’ll always be grateful to Kent for his support and guidance, which were and are tempered with a stern regard for objective historical consciousness, a keen understanding of the dialectics of G Scale modeling and unvanquishable hope based upon solidarity with ordinary enthusiasts. In a very real way, I’d be someone else entirely if I hadn’t met Kent. Recently, Kent told me that I had influenced him, as well. He sent me a photograph of a G Scale tecoma in the shape of my beard. Now, that’s what I call friendship!