The great thing about keeping your trailer inside, if you're able , is you can work on it all you want, when you want, no matter the weather, day or night.
Now we had Sprocket back home, that's all I wanted to do. Exactly like when you get a new puppy, you get puppy brain. You buy all the goodies, treats, toys, clothing, pet bed, collar, and leashes. You spend endless hours playing with, potty training, and enjoying the puppy breath while it lasts. The relationship steadily grows into a deeper love and understanding but some of the excitement fades a bit. You deal with the poops, peeps, and throw up. But you do it for the long term, for all the love that's coming.....
Well, I HAD TRAILER BRAIN ! I slept, woke, ate, drank, and daydreamed our little trailer. During the time it was in Colorado, I was hitting the Antique Malls and eBay with every other breath. I had the time of my life selecting all the special touches. It all began with the wallpaper that I found at Hannahstreasures.com. My personal style is more Victorian in a Continental and Old World vein. I adore vintage anything and I love texture and fabric. But this trailer was to be MOD '60's and I purchased everything with the wallpaper in mind.
All that winter, I was out in the garage painting and papering, hanging the draperies and cornices we made together out of vintage textiles. You haven't lived until you've cut into 1960's fiberglass fabric only to instantly see it spontaneously unravel right in front of your eyes! We had to wrangle it into submission....
I used to say the hardest room in the house to paper was the bathroom with all its corners, cabinets, and fixtures. But I have since changed my opinion. A TRAILER is the most difficult thing I have ever papered!!! All those nooks and crannies had me bending and contorting myself into positions so extreme, I gave passing consideration auditioning for Cirque Du Soleil!
As you look at these pictures, pay close attention to the back splash. That is oval glass tile with grout. I have cut and set a good deal of ceramic tile in my life so, I thought it would be similar, right?
WRONG.
I started after it with a tile saw and it ate the glass ovals alive! Pausing to assess the damage, I thought okay, I'll use a Dremmel. "Where was my table vice?", I wondered... I fired up my Dremmel with it's cutting wheel and realized it would not work like a hot knife through butter. More like an erupting volcano spewing hot lava!!! "Well Hell, THAT didn't work!", I muttered. I finally figured out if I used the Dremmel just to etch a line all around the tile while holding each in the vice, then with a pair of pliers, I could snap them in two easily, well, relatively. It took a while.... but what you see in the pictures remained intact for the two years we had the camper traversing the Continental U.S. east to west, from Canada to Mexico, and the Great Lakes to Key West, FL. I'm just a little proud of that. Especially, since all the trailer restoration shops we have been to FREAK over tile and grout. I will clarify, both of our trailers had framing provisions to eliminate shifting of the substrate for the tile. I would not throw on a tile counter and back splash in a vintage trailer without it.
I was really pushing to get us to my cousin's who wintered in Mission, TX with their ginormous fifth wheel. I decorated like a mad woman on a vision quest thinking this would be a great funky fun holiday.
In many ways, it was.....
Supposedly, my cousins went south for the good weather. They forgot to pack it.
Retired from Coos Bay, OR my cousins Don and Judy wanted to see the country and have a home base to park in Carthage, TX. So, they sold their home lock, stock, and barrel, then, hit the road. With daughters and grandchildren on both coasts, they spent several years zipping back and forth. On occasion, we would drive down and see them when they were in house.
This was to be our maiden voyage......
I hastily planned our trip, giddy with excitement! We would stop in Galveston, TX on the way. I always wanted to go as I love Victorian architecture and that Glen Campbell song...... Then, it would be down to Mission and a return stop in Houston, then home. Easy peasy, not too far.
With jingle in our bells, we were off! I had brought Christmas decorations to doll the camper up with, I had waaaaaaay too much but I didn't get to practice the set up and I ran out of time. I'd try things and pair down later.... that was the plan.
I have since learned to research campgrounds but bear with me.....
We started out late, mainly from me wrangling all the stuff and making it up as I went along. The one thing we noticed, is a loaded trailer tows very differently from an empty one and a small loaded trailer bounces and bucks on the hitch. It takes some getting used to but what did we have for comparison purposes?
Pulling through Galveston at night was less of an experience than backing our new trailer up in a dark campground. Which took some doing. I insisted on putting out all the cute stuff even though it was late, for I could not help myself! We were staying a couple of days to tour historic homes, there was a walk through holiday light display, and a pop up ice rink. We had not prepared to cook in the trailer and the only thing open was a Chinese Buffet, my goodness it was horrible just horrible, in a way that's hard to describe how horrible it was.....
When we got back to the trailer we noticed a distinct odor..... what was THAT?! Pee You! No one had told us about those lovely little deodorant capsules and the holding tank was stinky! We threw open the windows but word to the wise, Galveston does not smell like a rose itself. With all the oil refineries, the locals refer to it as The Carcinogen Coast!
There's one thing the local Chamber Of Commerce would rather you not know..... since the city is only inches above sea level, nothing drains. Yep. The sewers are on a pump system. They pump the poop and not very well I might add. Eeegadds! We got up the next morning to the lovely fragrance of Eau Du Doo Doo 💩 This time I investigated. Yes, dainty me. Dear sweet Dave and I had made a pact. He would drive me anywhere I wanted to go but I had latrine duty, forever. I went into our little bathroom, think small airline, and flipped open the lid. With flashlight in hand, I opened the toilet ball lever with my foot and peered into the jewelry case..... Well, there was, uh...... it was, hmmmm..... There's just not a nice way to say this...... maybe if I say it real fast it won't be so bad!
THEREWASAPOOPPYRAMID !!!!!
Oh my, I feel better!
You know how they cook meat for Euros sandwiches? Try to imagine a Knome's hat version of it only its made of, well, crap.
What to do? About. You know. The Doo Doo. I puzzled a long moment. Dave wasn't having anything to do with it so, I was on my own. Okay. Fine. Think. I opened the bathroom door. Dave asked immediately, "Did you fix it?" "Not yet", under my normal decibel level. I scrounged for a tool, GOOD LORD! What was I looking for? What I found was a long handled wooden spoon. Now, I had tried running a lot of water which only ran down the sides of The Brown Matterhorn but this situation required a more direct approach .......
When you start a vintage trailer project, you dream of all the places you will go, traveling in style, and enjoying the fruits of your labor. This was strange fruit, indeed.
As Sophia Patrillo might say, "Picture it! Sicily, 1922".... I'm saying, " Picture it! Galveston, 2013...... there I was stirring the pot of home made stew and after sufficient separation of it's contents, it did not go down." What I did not know, was the whole town's having trouble. We had retrofitted the trailer with this system and it never occurred to us it wouldn't work. I learned later on it was key to have the trailer absolutely level and always add more water when you flush and it helps immensely if the campground drains ACTUALLY DRAIN!
So much for potty training the new baby. I closed the outside valve and resolved to deal with the tank contents later. I rinsed the sewer hose and was done with it. By this time I was exhausted. And disgusted.
The next morning we left Galveston and drove south to Mission, TX. This was late December and the weather is supposed to be temperate and sunny. It wasn't. It rained. A lot. The sugar cane fields had been burning and the smoke laced a strange fragrance in the air. The primordial Rio Grande River Valley had deposited eons on silt which mixed with the rain to form a mud called Adobe, can you say, "Adobe" Very good, I knew you could! What was the dust of earlier in the day which was tracked in everywhere became the stickiest, gooiest, mess that got on everything and went nowhere. It was stuck. Think clumping kitty litter and southern Texas is the pan....... and there's no pooper scooper.
It was pouring rain when me arrived at the "Oasis" by the border or I think that's what it was named. My dear sweet cousin Judy while lovable is somewhat of a ding bat. She gave us the wrong directions and gps was of no help. We got off on this road that had us turning around when we figured out there was no RV park. Turning around on a two lane dark road had me jumping out with a flash light to direct dear Dave during maneuvers. We got my cousins back on the phone and Don talked us into the RV Park.
We had a spot right behind my cousins and we awoke the next morning to a break in the weather. So, we got out all the awnings and did the setup, having fun doing it, too. Don came over and helped with the ropes and staking and we had a nice time playing cards outside that evening. Dave and I went to sleep happy.
At approximately 7am the next morning there was a loud knock on the door. Please remember this is a Shasta Compact about 10 feet long in the cabin so, there's no need to knock LOUDLY. The noise jarringly woke us. We knew it wasn't Don and Judy as they understood we wanted to sleep in. KNOCK, KNOCK! I whispered to Dave, "Who could that be?!" "How should I know?!" Dave replied.
"HOW YOU ALL DOIN' IN THERE?! THIS SURE LOOKS GREAT, I'D LOVE TO SEE INSIDE!", the old FOOL said.
The walls of little trailers are thin enough for someone outside to hear what you holler inside, "WE WERE ASLEEP, PLEASE GO AWAY!"
" OH." *pregnant pause* "I 'll come back later. He left. He never came back.
What the heck? I'll get into campground etiquette later as there are clearly many who need to learn, BUT, if it's early in the morning, all the shades are down, and the door is shut, leave people the Hell alone!
Well, we were up. We saw Mission, TX by daylight. If Texas had a Vegas Strip, minus casinos, white haired RV parks instead of hotels, and every suburban chain restaurant in existence instead of Wolfgang Puck's, then you have Mission. We had lunch at Chili's, go figure. Now, Don has lived his whole life on the Oregon coast, fought in Vietnam, and is a staunch Republican. We are about the opposite as opposites can be. He and Judy had been going to Mission for about 3 years so when Don popped off a comment in a restaurant staffed entirely by people of Hispanic decent, I was taken aback. "I don't like the fact there are so many more Mexicans here than there used to be!", he snorted. "DOOOOOOOOOOON! TEXAS USED TO BELOOOOOONG TO MEXICO! THEY WERE HERE FIRST! WE FOUGHT A WAR.....REMEMBER THE ALAMO?!", I retorted to no avail.
Back to the park for the ice cream social. We sat politely as a very shrill off key elderly woman warbled, "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' With Lovin' On Your Mind" to the seeming delight of the white haired attendees. I was freaked. There we sat, with our flaming red hair, in the sea of white, a full 40 years younger than anybody, trying to enjoy the melting vanilla in our cups. Don't get me wrong, I love elderly people but this was culture shock of a different kind. A separate plane of existence I had not known about! This place seemed like an open air nursing home and, at times, an asylum. Especially, when on the way back to the camper, after excusing ourselves early, a 90 something in his Speedo and copious white body hair came barreling down the lane in a golf cart kicking up gravel very nearly clipping us in the process!
Dave sheepishly inquired of me, "Do you like it here?" "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!", came my response a little too loudly and quickly. "Oh! What a relief, I thought you were having a good time", he said. "Are you kidding?! A proper Southern Lady always smiles and nods agreeably no matter how miserable she is, I was just being POLITE! What I don't understand is why my cousins like it! They're newly retired and most everyone here is 30 years older! It scares me to DEATH these people are on the road towing and driving RVs!", I ranted. It was a guilty rant. I know full well elders need to have fun and enjoy each other's company but in the space of 24 hours I was eating at the kiddie table and it felt weird. I wondered when I'm old would I still feel this way?
That evening we went to see a large Christmas light display in a small town nearby, it was fun and quite the to do. Once we had seen it all we went back to Don and Judy's fifth wheel to play cards. I started feeling stewy, you know, kinda warm, glassy eyed, and tired. I excused myself and I went to our camper next door. Dave followed. I awoke at 3am with a fever.
The flu. Sick as a dog. AND it began pouring rain and blowing, turning the tops of the palm trees into whipping tassles. With a 101.5 temp I was miserable and in an out of consciousness while The Barbara Streisand Movie Collection played on the tv in the darkened trailer. "Don't Rain On Myyyyyyyyyy Paaaaaa Raaaaaaade!" In my altered state, I felt dampness..... no, noooo, nooooooo, Noooooooooo, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
THE TRAILER WAS LEAKING!!!
I pulled the damp pillow out and dropped it on the floor, SPLAT! *that sounded really wet* one touch revealed it was soaked. Where was the water coming from?! In my stupor I patted in the general direction of the pillow's former location. Nothing. I turned on the light. Cross eyed, I focused in on a tiny rivulet of water coming in from the base of the window, not through a Jalousie Windows.......... hmmmmmmmm, "Ugh, I feel so baaaaaaaad" I fumbled and found a roll of paper towels to replace the pillow and passed out. Dave woke me at an undetermined later time, "Sweet heart, how are you doing?" "I feel like chewed string", I moaned. What time was it? Who knew? It was still dark and pouring rain. "I said, "Touch that pillow...."
The weather had come from the west, which the trailer was facing. All the water was being blown in torrents over and down the back of the trailer, remember Colorado?
It took two days for the fever to break. The rain stopped and bleary eyed me, after spending two days motionless in the camper, ventured outside. By the way, you don't fully realize how small a small camper is until you have been sick in bed for 48 hours in one. Jus sayin'
I followed the shape of the trailer, looking for clues. Finding none, I broke out the water hose. I didn't take long to find the offending screw hole, just above the window under one of those cute little wings that was caulked in the rush to get over the Continental Divide! I stopped it up with butyl putty and I began to break down camp with a low fever of 99.5 Don came over to help. The wind had uprooted part of the awning and I learned to have both large and small stakes for varying conditions.
We hugged our cousins and left.
40 miles north there was a Border Patrol station. We'd never seen a Border Patrol Station. It was somewhat disconcerting. Dozens of cameras at odd angles and a number of very large Stretch Armstrong Types asking stupid questions. We had our turn with Stretch. "Are you two American Citizens?" Really? Two Pale Faced Red Heads With Southern Accents and Arkansas driver's licenses?
It's a small hobby of mine to have a little fun with people spouting a corporate spiel so, when Mr Armstrong asked with a humorless expression, "Do you have any illegal aliens back there in your little camper?" I very nearly said, "Please done take Consuela! She cooks really good. So good, in fact, I didn't take her money!"
But I didn't.
Something stopped me. He was charm free. Kind of like the guards at Buckingham Palace. You just don't mess with them.
We drove on.
Chosen next was a city RV Park in Houston, TX. Tightly packed spaces on solid gravel fenced in chain link gave the lot a homey feel...... if you're on maneuvers. The sun finally came out, Finally! We woke happy and I felt soooooooo much better! I did my hair and make up for the first time in three days! Dave opened the door of the camper and helped we out. I turned to shut the door and something hit me from above.....
I gasped as I spun around looking straight into Dave's face, "A bird just crapped on me!" His eyes were wide and as he made the man placating motion of air patting toward me with his hands," Honey, it's going to be all right.....", in a tone that did not have me convinced. I reached up and felt of my face. It was hot, wet, and had run down the side of my face, descended the full length of my neck and into my sweater, my Chanel sweater. The smell met my nostrils. My head snapped upward in hopes of finding the culprit. Ten feet above me was a large pigeon cooing in post potty relief. I made a continuous motion in an uninterrupted arc that could only be measured in one hundredths of a second, simultaneously I lunged earthward scooping up gravel in my hand, I spun and hurled my ammunition straight at the dirty bird hitting it square in the chest creating a feather explosion! The bird SQUAWKED like a frightened chicken and flew off while having the absolute nerve to look surprised!
Something inside me snapped....
I began to wail and cry and spit, " I CAN'T BELIEVE WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH ALL OF THIS, SPENT ALL THIS MONEY, DRIVEN ALL THIS WAY, IN THE RAIN, AND MUD, TO BE SICK IN BED, IN A LEAKING TRAILER, AND THE FIRST DAY OF SUN I GET SHIT ON BY A BIRD!!!!!!!! I HAVE HAD IT DONT SPEAK TO ME!!!!
Could it get worse? Oh my, yes, it could. And did.
The Shasta Compact's original interior lever lock door handle can fail. And, when it does, it can lock you out of your trailer. With bird droppings smeared on you.
Just then Portly Bubba Yahoo and his Ample Bubbette come around the corner, "Hey! That's a cute camper! Where'd ya get it?! Dave hastily asked, "Do you have a screw driver, we are locked out of our camper!?" "Uh. No.", said Bubba, "How long you had it? The camper, I mean." Dave and I exchanged a look. The two of them kept looking at the camper, walking around the trailer oblivious of our distress, and the bird excrement on my face and neck. "I'm sorry but you're going to have to leave now, we have to figure how to get into our camper and we don't need the distraction!", I blurted.
They left, offended.
Whatever.
Dave went to the office and got a screwdriver. In my haste to leave, I forgot our tool bag. I remembered the garland and vintage ceramic Santas, so, all wasn't lost. It became apparent the only way we were getting into our trailer was to take out a window. Which is precisely what we did. Getting through the opening was another story..... the edge of the aluminum siding was sharp and Dave hoisted me up so I could curl over performing semi -summersault onto the bench and into the floor. The form was Olympic Level. This time I opened the door and did not come out proceeding directly to the soap and water. What a nasty mess! I cleaned myself and my sweater and nearly two hours after we started, the window was back in and we taped the door lever into the "up" position so it would not lock from the inside as the key lock is independent of it. Yeeeeesh.
We had a lovely dinner and left the next day for home.
There was some particularly rough pavement just outside of Houston that did an odd thing to the trailer. It began listing to one side. The airbag system was not working properly, for some reason, and we leaned to one side which caused the trailer to shimmy slightly ALL THE WAY HOME......like a maimed goose.
I figured I would call Buddy at Liberty Trailer if and when we got back...... what I really wanted to do was forget about this trip. It had to get better, right? It just had to!
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