I'm a little conflicted. I'm not into guns or military bravado but I like
to see military hardware - planes especially, but land vehicles are also interesting.
I was expecting to be disappointed when I got invited to see Jacques
Littlefield's private collection of tanks and other military hardware.
I knew nothing about the man or his collection and half expected to find
a barn with a few rusting
scout cars in it. After all, how much can one private collector achieve?
Mr Littlefield shows what one collector can achieve with enough time and money.
Tanks may be an unusual subject for a private collection but the geek in me
gets it. It's not about owning big guns (all the tanks in the collection are
deactivated anyway - read: they can't shoot anything). These are awe inspiring
machines and part of our history that deserves to be preserved.
But
that's
not the fascination either.
It's
the design,
the construction
techniques, the complicated mechanics and the scale of the projects that interest
the geek. Mr Littlefield, I think I get it - if I had your time and resources
I'd be a collector on your scale. Maybe not tanks but art and Ferrari race
cars have been done to death by the wealthy without any imagination or geek
tendencies so why not something more obscure? And the wealthy usually collect
these things and then lock them away from the public - I hope I'd be as generous
as you, opening your collection to thousands or people a year. Mr Littlefield,
I salute you and what you're doing. |