The first year I lived in Hot Springs I drove past Tiny Town on my way home every day and nearly every time I did I told myself I needed to take a look at the place before it shut down. It's a small building on Whittington, part of a longer structure of tourist shops that houses the crystal store and Santa's Glass Workshop.

This summer, thanks to a friend's visit with his wife and kids I had a good excuse to go. It's basically a big train track diarama with homemade cars, building, and people, but the cool thing is that the whole structure is automated, powered by odd things like old washing machine engines and bicycle parts. Viewed from end to end, the town forms a rectangle about the size of a motel swimming pool and features mountains, farmland, a lake, and a thriving downtown.


The guy who gave the tour was in his early 60's and it was his dad who built the thing, over a period of 60 years, starting out with a train track around the Christmas tree. He told us the parts from three of his childhood bicycles were integrated in the mechanisms beneath the town. Once he turned the lights out and walked us around pointing out details--pebble-sized red bricks on a house wall, or an "outlaw" hanging from a noose tied to a tiny tree limb--he told us Tiny Town is a replica of the town where he grew up. He pointed out the school he attended, the bank, and then showed us his neighbors and his own house. He pointed to a small hand-carved figure of a woman swinging jerkily on a miniature front porch swing. It was his mother.


For a long time after I've thought about this guy standing in the dark looking over the town of his boyhood, the glare of light coming from his house, the neighbor man mowing his lawn like a madman, his mother rocking alone on the front porch.