Model Forum / General / Models / October 2007

It was Vash that was the character.
You've got a old map...and there's an interesting story about Vashti.
Many years ago I had a book that had a large map of North Dakota from
the 1920s. I noticed that there were towns on it that weren't on modern
maps, with Vashti being one of them. Since it was fairly close by, a
friend and I hopped into the car and set out to find it.  We arrived at
the place shown on the old map, but there was nothing there; my friend
noticed some odd depressions in a field though, so we went over to see
what they were...they were the remains of Vashti. We ran into someone on
the way back when we stopped off at a small diner north of town, and he
told us the story of what happened to the place,
the town was too small to make a go of it after the highways were built
in the 1940s and 50s, as what it had been was a rail stop for farmers to
bring their grain to a elevator so it could be shipped out by train.
With the highways in place, they simply sent their grain into Jamestown
via truck and it was sent out via rail from here.
So the people moved away from Vashti, and their houses were torn up and
their wood sold for use on nearby farms.
All that remains of Vashti are the ruins of a small brick schoolhouse
and the basement of the post office next to the railway tracks.
Everything else - streets, sidewalks, and house foundations, are buried
in the soil and overgrown by wild grass and fields.
The last people left by the mid 1960s, and the whole place has been so
deeply buried since then that you'd think that it had been abandoned
sometime in the middle ages. They say it takes a century to make a inch
of topsoil, but Vashti is a couple of feet underground already.
Other fun North Dakota city names are Zap, Hoople (home of PDQ Bach
inventor Peter Schickele's "University Of Southern North Dakota":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USND_at_Hoople ), Concrete, and Voltaire.
Back in the 1969, all hell broke loose in Zap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_to_Zap  and the National Guard was
called in.
And what is Jamestown noted for?:
http://sorabji.com/2002/road_trip/north_dakota/jamestown/
And of course or incest bred albino buffaloes:
http://www.buffalomuseum.com/whitecloud.htm

Pat

im sure it is, but thats from memory, so i could be wrong....im not into the
startfighter, or the bronco, and only took fotos cos i was stood next to
them.

thanks, will take a look

I think I've seen that on some F-4Fs and Tornadoes.  It's probably
'official' in that the Luftwaffe ground crews painted it with those
colours.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.