Asses to Airstreams

Last Modified January 1, 2010

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Asses To Airstreams
PO Box 565
Anacortes, WA

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............ There he was with five kids, a wife, a sister-in-law--and a Cushman scooter as his sole means of transportation for the entire family. He occasionally carried all five of us kids at the same time, usually to church, which was about a mile away. A picture my mother took shows us all loaded up. My father has a look on his face that’s somewhere between proud and bemused. Ray, my next older brother, sits on the very back, then my oldest brother John, then my younger sister Marcia. Marcia’s twin brother Mark and I are standing in front of our father.

The picture looks like a distorted, time-warped scene from a third world country, and in a sense that’s what it was. Five kids, scrubbed and dressed all at the same time. How did they do it? Years later I gave my parents an enlarged copy of this picture that I had hand-tinted. My mother accused me of painting the mud on the scooter’s side where the heels of our shoes hit. I suppose you would notice it more if you had been responsible for getting us all cleaned up..................

.............At some point my brother John discovered coupons and “write for more information” ads in magazines. This proved to be an entertainment bonanza, the high point of which was having a bulldozer salesman knock on the door and ask Mom if there was a Mr. John Des Jardins at home. Mom explained that Mr. Des Jardins was 12, in school that morning and probably didn’t need a bulldozer. The salesman was very nice and left a catalog for John anyway. John remembers seeing the salesman’s footprints in our muddy yard when he came home from school that day.

The Marion Power Shovel Company didn’t send a salesman but they did send several large black and white photos and a nice catalog. The Mack Truck Company and the Lionel Toy Train Company were duds. The Mack Truck Company didn’t respond at all and the Lionel Train Company wanted 25 cents for their brochure. At 65, John might still be a little huffy about both of them.

A lot of advertisements with coupons were about travel and, in a 1954 National Geographic, there was a coupon for Airstream an Airstream trailer with a picture of a mid 1950s Chrysler pulling one of their models. The Airstream Company came through with a lovely color brochure which my brother still has..........

My automotive gene pool: it all adds up.

I never got to meet my Grandfather Des Jardins from Michigan. A railroad mechanic and machinist, he died in the late 1930s. My father told interesting stories about him and the cars they had--1920s Chevrolets that needed frequent rear end work. I have a great picture of my grandfather standing in coveralls with a Chevy in the background, jacks under its back, the rear end missing. I want to talk to my grandfather every time I look at this picture. I would like to hear what he had to say about early 1920s Chevrolet rear-ends........

There it sat in my yard: a 1963 single axle Airstream Safari. My yurt, my horizontal teepee, my cabin-on-wheels and the aluminum womb of my traveling dreams. In 1963 it was another person’s dream and $8,000; the nomadic lifestyle as delivered up for wealthy folk. But now, in 1989 it was all mine.

We were barely married that trailer and I. We had the piece of paper that said we could live together, but that was all. It was like a marriage and a home remodeling project all at the same time. Something to test the nerves, the finances and commitment all at once.........

It is the middle of January, 2003, as I write this at the Oasis RV Park. I’m two miles East of Dateland, Arizona, sixty miles east of Yuma. They have dates here, and the dateshake at the little restaurant downtown is impressive. General Patton trained his troops here before leaving for Africa in World War II. In fact, the RV park office is near Patton’s old headquarters. I have been here three times between 1988 and 2002. It’s a fun, quiet, out-of –the-way place, just far enough off the freeway to see the traffic without hearing it. The trains that go by are very definitely audible, but I like it all.

The atmosphere is just right for reflection--the southern desert division--and I end up thinking of friends, family, and traveling. In 1988 I was here with my parents, the third trip in my "new" 1963 Airstream Safari, and remembering that visit makes me think of others, especially our first Airstream trip together.

My parents were visiting Sacha, my 14-year-old daughter, and me that summer, and we all looked forward to another trip together: Washington to Wyoming to visit my sister, Marcia, her husband, Richard, and their daughter, Sarah...............

................South of Grand Canyon, at a cattle guard before the junction of highways 64 and 89, four solemn young Indian kids were lined up in a row, solemn, all with feathered native headdresses, three boys and a girl. Of course we had to stop for pictures.

My brother Mark was uncomfortable posing with Indians though, even little Indians. We had watched a lot of Westerns on TV the last three years and he was a little worried about his scalp, so he stood off to the right in the picture..........

.......................Back at the construction site East of Paulina, I took a couple of pictures of Grover. I always do this when I break down, as long as I’m not in the middle of the road. It’s a stress reliever. Since I didn’t have a supply of the Bokorah Bitters, I made tea instead. After the tea and a sit-down, I opened the hood and meditated on the sight before me. Eventually I noticed a loose wire nut where I had switched Grover’s ignition from conventional to electronic. I screwed that nut and the two wires back together and Grover started right up.

It was late afternoon, cloudy and starting to rain when I left, but on a ridge only a few miles later the sun suddenly appeared behind me and the world was beautiful, so beautiful I had to stop and take pictures. The rancher, the meditation, and the sudden late afternoon sunshine flooding down--it all happened because of a loose wire-nut. It was way past my usual stopping time, and getting dark when I went through the town of John Day. I was worried about finding a camping spot, but eight miles later the Clyde Holiday State Park appeared, an oasis in the desert that I didn’t know about...............

I tend to assume the worst case scenario when I spot a problem. One day when I came out of a second-hand store on highway 97 north of Bend, Oregon, I was surprised to see that Grover’s front driver’s side wheel had apparently experienced what looked like a massive wheel cylinder brake failure. What looked liked hydraulic brake fluid covered the bottom wall of the tire.

There’s no excuse for what happened next. It was a classic example of advanced worry and impulse overtaking logic and reason. I decided to see if this liquid had the acrid petrochemical smell of brake fluid, so I bent over for a sniff. (I didn’t want to get the brake fluid on my fingers if I didn’t have to).

Right at the bottom of my arc I became aware of two things: eyes were watching me, and there was an incredible stench of urine, not brake fluid. I suddenly felt shy, awkward, exposed and…stupid........

It was a dark and stormy night, rain was pelting down, wind was howling, my bedroom walls were swaying, and something slapped rhythmically against the bathroom wall. It was completely cozy in my 1963 Airstream Safari though, and I loved the rocking motion of a wind and rainstorm from inside a trailer. “A trailer is a trailer is a trailer, unless it’s an Airstream,” said my friend Gertie to her companion Alice. Alice was baking brownies in my Magic Chef oven. Well, perhaps Gertie and Alice weren’t really there--I can’t remember for sure--but the storm was sure real............

.............It was an early trip in my 1974 Pinto station wagon. I got the car for a very reasonable price because the passenger-side door had a large dent. This door made merging to the right on a freeway a lot easier.

I had actually started the day in northern California. East of Cedarville, under an other-worldly cloud above a dry lake bed, I crossed into Nevada. “Other-worldly” is good preparation for this state.

The road I was taking wasn’t a blue line on the map, just two empty, skinny black lines, a cartographic invitation to people who don’t care and/or don’t have good sense. I was doubly qualified.............

I stopped when I got to Wells for a quick snack and then motored on south in wind and sleet blowing so hard from the side that water from the windshield washers wouldn’t hit the windshield. It was a nasty afternoon and I really should have stayed in town. Coming up a small rise twenty-five miles south of town, and going about fifty miles-per-hour, I suddenly lost a lot of power, something that Grover could ill afford in the best of times; then the truck started handling erratically. A quick check in the rearview mirror reflected a cloud of smoke, blue smoke that turned out to be the remains of the curbside trailer tire and bits of the rim, all gone on to their just reward.

.........A single-axle 22-foot Airstream Safari with a flat tire looks like a beached whale, a decayed and swollen, beached whale. The blowing snow and sleet added to the dismal effect.........................

“Stop, stop, STOP YOUSONOFABITCH... Dumb-ass,” the lady said. She was helping her husband move their Airstream forward. We were in the Coolee City, Washington, campground. My brother Ray and I were taking a walk around the park, and we had found a large hubcap from a 1970s Lincoln that had obviously fallen off their Airstream as they came in. We heard the instructions to Mr. Yousonofabitch as we were bringing the hubcap back.........

As an unborn child is comforted by the sound of the mother’s heartbeat, so is the operator of a properly tuned and prepared mid 1960s GMC 305 cubic inch V-6 by the thumping sounds of its exhaust and the vibration in the seat.

This engine at idle went “whumpa-whumpa, whumpa-whumpa,” and at speed was as smooth as silk. It sounded like three Harley Hogs bolted together or, one half of a Rolls Royce Merlin V-12 aircraft engine from World War Two. They all have that rough, coughing and spitting idle, and they all have “The Power” as soon as you ask for it. Pistons as big as number ten tomato cans, a long-stroke, slow-turning engine as opposed to a modern short-stroke fast-turning engine..............

A flaking, white-colored 1965 custom model with a 4-speed transmission and two doors, it looked like an early attempt at the SUVs you see all over nowadays. Square sides with rounded edges, a luggage rack--it really looked like a slightly modernized stagecoach..............

Old Airstream literature pictured trailers and tow vehicles in the snow, but I doubt anyone at the company actually tried camping, fully self-contained, in the wintertime. True, Airstreams have most of their plumbing insulated and on the inside, but keeping everything from freezing can be tricky.

Tow vehicles need extra help as well. Grover W. Hope usually got the “sack treatment” on the first part of the trip south…the paper sack in front of his radiator, that is. The temperature could drop down so cold outside that the heater wouldn't get warm. Putting a paper grocery bag in front of the radiator would always help. It was kind of like a bum putting newspapers inside his clothes in cold weather. But even with a good thermostat and the sack, Grover only got luke-warm. Cold mornings were accompanied by a chorus of hawking, spitting, coughing and the smell of raw gasoline when you first started the engine. All that, plus the sound of a cold engine on "high idle," makes starting modern vehicles seem boring in comparison; nowadays all you have to do is turn the key--anyone can do it...............

Imagine experiencing below-freezing 55 miles-per-hour winds in your house, piercing through all those cracks around the doors and windows you meant to weatherproof, and sneaky blasts from you don't know where. That's what it's like when you pull your house down the road. Just thinking about it makes me want to pull another cover up over my shoulders..............

............Then, there was the long affair with Penny. She wasn’t red, white and blue; she was pink. Pink all over. Long legs, quiet, easy to get along with and never causing me a single problem. Sure, she was a lawn ornament, plastic, and her legs were metal rods (one of which I lost somewhere in Utah), but she was a real sweetie.

Penny usually stayed in my backpack, but did like to get out and pose for pictures on most occasions. I’ve got to admit that I was a little shy when taking pictures of her; I usually looked around to make sure the coast was clear before I got her out, inserted her leg and stuck her in the ground. Penny posed like a pro though, always staying put where I positioned her. There was one strange phase, though, where she continually wore an old pith helmet and wanted to be referred to as Penny the Pith-backed Pflamingo...........

............It’s been ten years since “The Church of Bob and the Realized Rolling Wheel” closed down. On that day, he gave me that week’s accumulation of cartoons and columns, his version of the church bulletin, as he cleaned up, and I still have them. “Crack Kills,” proclaims one drawing. And not in a way you might think. “Would-be victim seizes situation”--a much greased-stained Mike Royko column about a middle-aged nurse who caused a would-be rapist to experience some painful introspection. There are two versions of a “Certificate of Dickey-Do Award,” there’s a topical cartoon with physiological impossibilities involving the Gulf War, a “Norwegian Medical Terminology list,” a “Polish Home Delivery” cartoon and, one of my favorites, an application for Washington State “Lutefisk Inspector, Grade II.”...............