Some of life's experiences seem to have a special magic, an aura if you will, about them that, rather than fading with the passage of time, continue to glow as - or even more - brightly. For the men who to this day proudly refer to themselves as "Guildsmen." this is absolutely the case. Becoming a Guildsman was no easy matter. It had to be earned.

The Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild required its entrants, who could be no younger than 12 or older than 19 to handcraft exacting 1:18 scale models of the elaborate Napoleonic Coach that was the trademark of the Fisher Body Corporation, which had become a division of General Motors in 1926. In 1934, the fourth year of the competition, entrants could choose to enter in a new-that-year Apprentice class, and thus only have to make a slightly less ornate, but equally intricate Traveling Coach. Others had to make the Napoleonic version. Yet another category was added in 1937, which permitted an entrant to choose to create his own design for a car (within a set of parameters) and execute it as a 1:12 scale model.

Nearly forty years after the last Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild competition, one of those Guildsmen, John L Jacobus, saw his labor of love, documenting the Guild, published. No, this isn't an Inglenook segment gone astray, but the story behind the compilation of this book, which can only be described as scholarly...