THE LONG LONG TRAILER

796.5 T97L cop 2

Twiss

The long, long trailer.

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THE LONG, LONG TRAILER

Clinton Twiss

LONG TRAILER

New Yor%: Thomas Y. Crowett Company

Copyright 1951 by Clinton Twiss. All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form, except by a reviewer, without the
permission of the publisher. Designed by Maurice Serle Kaplan. Manu
factured in the United States of America by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc.,
Binghamton, New York.

To

MERLE

without whose

inspiration this book

would never have been written

with whose help it

took twice as

long to

write

/. The Long, Long Trailer I

2. The Budget 4

3. The Big Beef n

4. In a Coma 21

5. Bloody but Unbowed 30

6. The Cocktail Party 40

7. / Moves 42
5, Afo Psychology 53
9. .fifo/ <z:J Co/<3? Trailers 59

CONTENTS 10. On to Nevada 64

I/. Dress Re h ear sal on the Desert 71

/2. T/2<? Monster Performs 77

/j. Irresistible Force Immovable Object 88

14. The Old Home Town 93

15, Wide Open Spaces 101
/6. Disaster 112
/7. To Phoenix or -^y Place 128
./$. Fame and Bad Fortune 142
jrp. Florida vs. California 154
20. Trailer Par% Crises 167
2/. JZV<2-^ Yor^ or >BJ^ 180

22. City Slickers 190

23. Spring in New England 198

24. The Road Bacf^ 212

25. The Monster and the Lady 226

THE LONG, LONG TRAILER

1. THE LONG, LONG TRAILER

OF COURSE, we wouldn t have done it had we

known the man in Sacramento was going to explode. We most certainly
wouldn t have done it if we d had the slightest inkling that the wounded
agricultural inspector was going to be so sore about the whole thing.
We wouldn t even have done it i we had known we had to go to Mexico
to turn around; or we would get stuck under the Mobile River; or that
Mr. Ignition Expert was such a stinker. No! We wouldn t have done it
at all.

But we didn t know all this so we did it.

We bought a trailer the kind you live in. A long, long trailer. We
equipped it. We attached the thing to the car and lurched out onto the
highway. Like a couple o Balboas we headed into the wild pavement
yonder, with a monstrous piece of aluminum hooked to our rear end.

Merle (that s the better half of "we") is an "advance" worrier. She
likes to give trouble a break and meet it more than halfway. She was
worrying now.

"Is it still there?" Same question, tenth time.

"Yes, I think so."

"You thin\ so. Don t you know?"

"I m afraid to look.**

"Why?"

"It scares me it looks like a freight train bearing down on us.**

"What if it breaks loose what would you do? *

"I don t know. The man didn t tell me.**

Merle had been looking on the dark side ever since we had staggered
out onto the highway. She was asking me the same questions I had been
asking myself for the last hour. I had worried myself into a bundle of
quivering jitters. Merle was worrying me more. She was using her
funeral voice.

2 The Long, Long Trailer

"I read the other day where a trailer tipped over!*

"Yeah."

"Smashed up everything."

"Yeah?"

"Including the car."

"Yeah!"

"Killed both people."

"Oh God!!"

This sort of thing slowed me down to fifteen miles an hour I had
been tearing along at twenty.

The swerving to miss a squirrel hadn t been too successful. It seemed
a good half -hour before the trailer ceased wobbling its rear end.

A Greyhound bus roared by and nearly sucked us into the baggage
compartment.

My shakes had grown to ague size. Merle kept needling.

"What if we have a blowout?"

My hands were getting sticky. "We ve had blowouts before."

"Yes, but what if it was the trailer?

"I don t know."

"You don t \nowl"

"No. The man didn t tell me."

Merle blew. "The man! The man!! I m sick of the man!"

"So am I!" I shouted. "And don t keep needling me. We haven t had
any real trouble yet and maybe we ll never have any."

What a statement! "Never have any trouble." The mouthings of an
idiot. A statement by Stupidity out of Ignorance.

Conversation ceased momentarily and we swished along for a few
miles without a word.

I plucked up my courage and released one hand from the wheel to
wave to a. couple of truck drivers. We seemed to have much ia com
mon.

The Long, Long Trailer 3

I looked at Merle. She was staring straight ahead, but I could see
the doubts piling up in her mind. Then they overflowed.

"Does it drive easy?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Can t we go any faster?**

"Yes, we can. But I m afraid to."

"Why?"

"It scares me."

"Scares you. Why?"

"I don t %notv why. It just scares me that s all."

There was a long pause and I again stepped up our speed to twenty
miles an hour.

"Have we got lots of power?" Merle asked.

"Seems like it."

"Does it feel heavy?"

"It s not light two and a half tons."

"Do you think we can pull it over the ridge?"

"I don t know. We can try. The man didn t "

She blew again. "The man! The man! Didn t he tell "

"No he didn t. He didn t tell me anything. He just knows how to
build trailers. He doesn t know how to tow them. Maybe we re crazy
to go on a two-year vacation anyway. Maybe our friends are right.
Maybe we are off our rockers."

Merle heaved a sigh. "Yes. Maybe we are,"

2. THE BUDGET

WE HADN T HAD a vacation in ten years. On the

occasion of our first postponed vacation we took the money we would
have spent and opened a vacation savings account. At the end of the
second year, when the fund had achieved the respectable proportions
of five hundred dollars, we really became enthusiastic. We buckled
down and became slaves to the vacation fund. I agreed to toss my penny
ante and gin rummy winnings into the pot. (I paid my own losses.)
Merle dropped in a dollar and a half every time she turned down a
"dutch-treat" luncheon date. But, by far, the biggest source of revenue
turned out to be the Mentholatum jar. She had installed the jar (large
economy size) in the hall closet. The nightly ritual was always the
same pockets and purses had to be turned inside out. All the pennies,
quarters and dimes went into the Mentholatum jar.

It was almost a certainty that the bank felt we were either very
clever small change counterfeiters; had a couple of slot machines
stashed in our basement and were clipping the neighbors with some
kind of a skin game; or perhaps operating a small-time policy racket.
As a final analysis we thought possibly the coins may have smelled
of Mentholatum, Although the bank didn t refuse this Mentholated
money, the nods, winks and sniffs cut down our deposit periods from
twice a month to once a month.

At any rate, we think it was really more this uneasiness over making
any further deposits than anything else that gave us the final push
and prompted us to consider withdrawing the balance and taking .a
vacation. A long vacation. We would squander the ten-year accumula
tion in one mad fling. Two years was to be the minimum. At least
twenty months of this period to be spent touring the United States;
the remainder, if we could put the proper squeeze on the budget,
abroad. I was to sever all business connections and liquidate all assets.
4

The Budget 5

This I found easier to plan than execute. Nevertheless, since television
was driving me nuts anyway, I agreed to go through with it.

It s a surprise and a shock to pull your nose off the grindstone after
twenty years. It s bound to bleed a little where the abrasive has cut
deep.

Merle had the job of liquidating the twenty-year accumulation of
household furnishings, extra clothing, pots, pans, rugs, radios and
all.

We set up a budget. The price of the trailer, the ads soothingly as
sured us, would be in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars. Since
the price always included complete furnishings, we felt that an addi
tional five hundred dollars would buy all the kitchen utensils, sheets,
blankets, towels, etc. we would possibly need. We allocated another
two hundred fifty dollars for an overhaul job on the car. Total,
$2750. For this amount we were purchasing a home and the means
with which to transport it.

We could picture ourselves skimming along the highways and
byways of the Great 48; waving a carefree arm to the farmhands till
ing the soil, or watching the big combines in the prairie states reaping
our breakfast. We always envisaged ourselves doing this from the snug,
cozy confines of our trailer.

We would divest ourselves of all social and political obligations and
head for the wide open spaces. Let somebody else shove the world
around for a while, we d been pushing long enough. We would buy
a house a movable one. One we could take with us.

We would leisurely patrol the Columbia River en route to my home
town in Northern Idaho where I would point out my own personal
Little Red Schoolhouse. We would clip along the shores of mountain
lakes wallowing in fresh air and scenery; we would scale the highest
mountains and there, in majestic solitude, shut out the telephone and
radio and television and bill collectors and yes, even the mailman. We

6 The Long, Long Trailer

tortured ourselves with the thoughts of shucking off the old life and
taking on the new. Human chameleons that was us.

Nothing in the apartment would be transferred to the trailer we
would begin fresh anew! Yes sir, we would equip the trailer from
scratch. Trailer? What trailer? We still hadn t been inside of one.

Since encountering the reaction of our friends, we had again care
fully considered every means of transportation from plane to bus. The
only thing that made sense was a trailer, provided we could find one
large enough and roomy enough. We wanted a reasonably accurate
facsimile of a modern hotel suite. There was one more qualification;
it had to be sufficiently light and maneuverable to go wherever we
wanted to go.

That didn t seem like too big an order, particularly after I beefed
up my courage to the point of examining a trailer for the first time.
It was a hit-and-miss affair. I drove out Ventura Boulevard from
Hollywood and stopped at the first trailer sales lot I came across. I
tried to sneak in and catch a quick look at the thing surreptitiously,
but that wasn t to be. A salesman caught up with me just as I was
going in the door. I began to shake. I m a pushover for salesmen if
it s something I want. I struggled inwardly and clutched my check
book. If this fellow put the pressure on and I bought the trailer on
the spot, Merle would be in an uproar. When the desire is there, I
can t resist. If it s something I don t want, I always get it for half-
price then throw it away.

Fortunately the salesman was considerate and informative. I went
over the trailer from stem to stern. My eyes popped in and out and I
did fumble once or twice with my checkbook. I was dumbfounded.
Here was a trailer that had all the niceties of a fine apartment.

I didn t buy it on the spot but I did rush home with the news
that we were right, trailer travel was the thing; and I had found the
trailer the very first try. Of course, the price was a few hundred

The Budget 7

dollars over our budget, but, I urged, we could cut down on the
number of napkins or toothpicks or dishes or something and make
up the difference. Merle disagreed. She is a shopper of the old school,
be it a spool of thread or a trailer.

"The trailer show is only five weeks off," she said. "Well wait for
that and look over all the trailers before we decide."

In the interim we bought twelve trailer magazines, two months
back issues and the current release of four different publications. We
wallowed in them for a week. We clipped all the coupons. We answered
all the ads. We read all the articles.

We loved Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Perkins had lived in a house all her
life and had just recently discovered trailers. She was in Seventh
Heaven.

"How long does it take you to clean up your basement and pile
up next winter s wood?" Mrs. Perkins wanted to know. We didn t
have a basement and heated our apartment by pressing a button, but
Mrs. Perkins scared us nevertheless. Even without a basement and
woodpile, we were just as through with nasty old apartments as
Mrs. Perkins was with nasty old houses.

She whipped us into a fury with the information that she stood
outside her trailer door, watch in hand. It was half-past ten. Zero
hour for the test. She rushed into the trailer . . . hung the watch on
a hook by the door . . . dusted the walls . . . vacuumed the floors
. , . took a shower . . . did her hair . . . put on her makeup . . .
grabbed the watch and stood again outside the trailer door. It was
now eleven ten. Forty minutes- forty minutes flat! What speed, what
zip, we thought. Only forty minutes gone the day still a weanling
and here was Mrs. Perkins all buttoned up and ready for anything.

In a frenzy of excitement we tried the same thing. We went through
the same routine watch and all, but we couldn t compete with Mrs.
Perkins. Three hours after the start we rushed out of the apartment

8 The Long, Long Trailer

and into the car. We tore off for trailer lots and supply houses with
the picture of smug Mrs. Perkins standing beside her trailer, leaping
in the air and clicking her heels in pure joy over the acquisition of
another convert.

At the supply houses we looked at gimmicks and gadgets, toilets
and pressure systems, puncture-proof tires and towel racks. We were
up to here in the trailer business.

Response to our mail campaign began to arrive. Tom, the mailman,
was jubilant. He was a trailer enthusiast. He made an appointment for
us to visit friends of his in a trailer park. He had an idea for the in
stallation of a portable electric plant in the back of the car. Overjoyed,
I followed it up. Tom was loaded with ideas. If I liked the electric
plant, Tom pointed out, why not go whole hog and put in a water
tank and centrifugal pump. Then we could park any place any time
and live like kings. Tom was up on cloud seven and we were only
one stratum lower. We would have electricity, water under pressure,
and butane for heating.

Things were looking up. We had found a kindred soul in Torn.
He was even more impressive than Mrs. Perkins. We joined him in
scoffing at our skeptical friends. We waited anxiously for his daily
visits with the mail.

Good old Tom! Never in the long and honorable history of the
postal department had the clients on Tom s route received such fast,
prompt mail delivery. He was rushing to get to our place so he could
view the hundreds of pieces of literature laid out on the dining-room
table and living-room floor. He was bringing bulky envelopes contain
ing the floor plans of the "Vagabond," "New Moon" and "Prairie
Schooner." Oh, Tom knew what they contained all right. He always
read our mail before we did. He was an old trailer-hand and we clung
to him like effete clings to east. He was virtually a member of the
family now.

The Budget 9

But the big news was the literature on the electric-light plants. Tom
was adamant on this light plant business. He had even written for
literature himself. We must have a portable electric plant. Proudly he
handed me a booklet describing the latest development in portables.

"You can t even hear it run/* he said, "absolutely can t hear it."

I gathered from this that the big problem with light plants was the
noise.

Tom went on, "There s an agency right down town that sells em. I
phoned them this morning and they have three demonstrators from
five hundred to three thousand watts."

That was enough for me. I started a tour of inspection, which in
cluded a fifty-gallon water tank with pump, along with the portable
electric plant. They were both a heart-rending disappointment. The
power plant made more noise than a hot rod on a racing strip; and
the weight of the thing, plus water tank, pumps and fittings, achieved
a total of more than a ton. I learned that this, plus the weight of the
trailer on the rear end of the car, was something that shouldn t happen
to a diesel locomotive. I was more than a little let down. Somehow,
I felt Tom had double crossed me in building up this dream installa
tion that turned out to be impossible. We were pretty cool toward
one another for a few days. Merle wasn t speaking and I even went so
far as to refuse to share my mail with him.

"We ll open it ourselves," I said coolly.

Tom was crushed. This couldn t last though, and when Tom de
livered a map which he had sent for showing all the national parks
(in color) and their various locations and attractions, all was for
given*

In spite of these setbacks, we still insisted we knew what we wanted.

We must have a complete bathroom which was operative whether
we were in a trailer park or Siberia. We must have trailer lights
inside, even if we stopped on the desert. We must have heating and

io The Long, Long Trailer

cooking facilities, wherever we were. We must always have water. It
was a pretty big order but we thought we could fill it.

On the opening day of the trailer show we were the first in line.
We spent hours going up one street and down another. The first hour
took us through only one trailer, plus a careful examination of an
engine cooler. This little gem had a gadget that hooked on the front
of the radiator which in turn was connected to a water tank installed
in the back of the car. With the hood up and the water turned on, you
got an effect very much like standing on the Florida shoreline during
a hurricane. The literature said it would keep any car from boiling,
even crossing the desert with a heavy trailer. "Just what we need," I
thought. Not that we were going to spend the next two years crossing
deserts with heavy trailers, but the Boy Scout in me said, "Be pre
pared." Merle added it to our accessory list in the note book.

Next we listened to a very learned lecture on a device which looked
like a garbage-disposal unit, but which turned out to be a toilet. This
whirling dervish affair really captured our imagination. We watched
the man cut up beets into the bowl, then we d rush around to the
glass hose to determine if the chopper had done its work. It always
did. We ran back and forth watching this process till we were as
purple as the beet juice. It looked like a great success, and promptly
went into the little black book.

It was getting dusk when we saw it. The lights made the slick
aluminum gleam. It looked trim and light. It looked like an engraved
invitation to go adventuring. If the inside were only half as attractive
to us as the outside ! We crept gingerly up the ramp as though we
were walking the plank, bumped our heads on the low-cut door going
in, took one look at the interior and were sunk.

Oh no! Don t get the idea that we rushed up to the salesman clutch
ing a roll of bills in our hot little hands we didn t With the strength

The Big Beef n

born o Merle s previous shopping experience, we pulled ourselves
together. It was a good two minutes before I sat down and wrote
out a check for $4,200 and thrust it at the salesman with palsied fingers.

"The budget," Merle murmured.

It did put quite a nick in the thing, but by this time I had com
pletely lost my head; I was carried away.

"The hell with the budget," I said expansively, "we own a trailer."
And we did. . . . An Airway Zephyr. Ye Gods! We owned a trailer!!!

3. THE BIG BEEF

WE WERE pretty proud. We owned a trailer.

Well . . . now ... it might be stretching a point to imply that we
owned a whole trailer. We didn t. Actually we owned three wheels
with tires, the chassis, the floor with special inlaid linoleum and one
wall. The rest of our home-on-wheels was still under construction.
That didn t deter us from phoning our friends to pass along the owner
ship information.

I arrived home one evening just in time to hear Merle in a one-sided
phone conversation. She was reciting the vital statistics to the silent
party on the other end of the line.

"It s huge," she was saying, "absolutely huge. Room enough for
everything. We have a kitchen, dining room, living room, which is
also a spare bedroom, twin beds, three clothes closets, a bathr What s
that? How long is it? . . . well ... let me see. It s ... ah ...
eighty feet, I think."

12 The Long, Long Trailer

I gulped. Apparently die party on the other end of the line did
too. There was a long pause and I learned later that the phonee was
bringing up a point of law. Something about the legal length of vehicles
allowed on the highway. This didn t stop Merle though. In spite of
the fact that a "dolly wheel" to her meant a baby buggy, she insisted
on telling anybody and everybody all about trailers.

She came right back with a more startling set of figures. "I could
be wrong about the length then," she said brightly, "I m not very
good at figures . . . maybe it s the width ... yes ... that s it ...
it s eighty feet wide!

That statement made my knees buckle and apparently stopped the
party on the other end of the line cold. The conversation ceased almost
immediately.

Wearily I again got out the yardstick and measured off a space
twenty-eight feet long and eight feet wide, a difficult feat in a small
apartment.

I then proceeded to outline lightly, in chalk, the general contour
of the trailer. The rear end was backed up against the television set,
which put the bathroom in the middle of the living room, while the
trailer living room extended into the apartment dining room, with
the dolly and draw bar poking an imaginary hole through the dining-
room wall. We then outlined the beds, kitchen, sinks, refrigerator, bath
room, doors and closets.

Closets there was another touchy point. In the trailer we had
one half-length and two full-length closets. Merle walked from the
closets outlined on the rug to our clothing supply. She measured with
her eye the size of the trailer closets and the racks of dresses and
suits hanging in our apartment bedroom. The solution to the over-
supply of clothes was quick and uncomplicated. She sold six of my
suits to the old clothes man far five dollars apiece and threw in four

The Big Beef ^

pairs of my shoes to clinch the bargain. Like magic, there was now
plenty of room in the trailer closets for everything.

Of course it may be a little strangeit may even be illegal for
a nudist to be towing a trailer around the country, but I always had
my bathrobe to fall back on. Then too, Merle did leave me all my
shorts and neckties.

We quickly agreed on twin sinks, an apartment-size range with
four burners, a good-sized oven and broiler, a six-foot refrigerator,
twin beds and a McPherson toilet. The McPherson was the device
which had so enthralled us at the trailer show. It is built on the prin
ciple of the kitchen garbage-disposal unit except it is operated by
water pressure instead of an electric motor.

I felt that I had done a sufficient amount of thinking on the subject
to timidly approach the trailer people with an idea that had been
touring the rusty section of my brain reserved for inventions.

Since we were already committed to a water tank under one of the
twin beds, why, I wanted to know, couldn t we put another tank under
the other twin bed, fill it with water, pump it full of air and thus be
able to operate "Mister MacPherson" even if we decided to get away
from it all and spend a few days on the desert alone.

My proposal met with a pretty unenthusiastic response. Not that I
wasn t right in theory, they hedged, they just didn t know of any
case where that sort of installation had been made.

Now I had to prove my theory. At a war surplus store I found a
B-29 alcohol tank. This is the tank carried in the wings, and with a
few pounds pressure was used to assist in de-icing. I had special fittings
put on it bought a tire gauge, a short length of hose and a foot pump.
I lugged the whole layout home and deposited it on the patio.

Even today I have the feeling that my efforts were unduly hampered;
that everything would have gone much better if my next-door neigh-

14 The Long, Long Trailer

bor, Walter Lemmer, hadn t appeared on the scene at the exact moment
I chose to conduct the experiment.

I detested Mr. Lemmer.

He carried himself with an arrogant air and had a continual half
smirk on his face that always gave me the impression he had caught
me with my fly open. In addition to that, he had a foul tongue.

We nodded coolly to one another as he took up his position with
hands on chin, elbows propped on top of the wall. Instinctively my
hand went down to reassure myself about the fly. He caught the
movement out of the corner of his eye and bared his buck teeth in
a leer of satisfaction. I yanked my hand away and, ignoring Mr.
Lemmer, proceeded with the tank.

I filled it three-quarters full of water, then began pumping it up.
If I could get sixty pounds of pressure inside, the experiment would be
a success. I would even be able to use this very tank in the installation.
At ten pounds pressure everything was fine. I opened the petcock and
was able to spray a respectable stream of water around the patio.

Lemmer shifted his position and grunted. I looked up and perceived
he was giving me the back of his hand with clenched fist and middle
finger vertical. He pointed at the hose in my hand and sneered, "I
could throw a better stream than that through a straw." Then he
uncoiled his lanky frame and sauntered off down the steps.

I was boiling inside. Vowing I d make the thing work, I resumed
my furious pumping. At fifteen pounds I had gained fifty per cent
in pressure. At twenty pounds everything erupted. The seams leaked,
the petcock leaked, the hose, gauge, cap everything leaked. The thing
could have doubled nicely for a fire-sprinkling system. Fortunately
Mr. Lemmer had departed before the catastrophe.

Obviously, what I needed was a stronger tank. I searched every
where to no avail. The tanks were either too small, too long, too fat
or too heavy. I finally resorted to the phone book.

The Big Beef I5

I made a practice of phoning ten numbers each day in my tank
search. On the third day I hit the jackpot. I found a versatile gentleman
who would build a tank which would fit under the bed. Not only
would it be of the right size and weight, but he would adorn it with
a water and pressure gauge, a pop-off valve and a neck long enough
to permit filling the tank from outside the trailer.

The installation was made and with the addition of a couple of
check valves, was ready for a trial run. With the exception of a few
leaks, which were quickly repaired, it was a great success.

I had proved my point. The total cost $385. It did seem a little
overboard just to prove a point though somehow I felt my honor was
at stake. Merle tossed the whole thing into limbo along with the
dolly arm.

This experiment and its subsequent cost was to rise up and haunt
me every hour of the day for the next two weeks. I say the next two
weeks because that was the crucial period of our lives. We had sold
the apartment lock, stock and bedding, even kitchenware and china.
Further, we had promised to vacate within two weeks. The Airway
people had agreed that our trailer would be delivered within that
time, which left us free to devote our entire efforts to furnishing the
new home on wheels. At this point our only possessions consisted of
a few keepsakes, our personal clothing and a 1941 Chrysler coupe.

We tackled the major problems first. Merle insisted that the trailer
have two doors. It was promptly ordered additional cost one hundred
dollars. I didn t like the idea of only one butane tank. We ordered the
single tank discarded and twin tanks were mounted over the dolly
slight additional cost. I wanted a spare dolly wheel complete with tire,
heavy-duty truck tires with Sealomatic tubes, lights inside the trailer
that worked off the car battery, jacks that fastened to each corner of
the trailer and folded underneath and stop and turn lights mounted on
the rear. All this moderate additional cost. Merle wanted twin beds,

16 The Long, Long Trailer

complete bleached mahogany interior with no trim, a special type of
upholstering material and inverted lights. All this slight additional
cost.

Having met all these obstacles one at a time and conquered them,
I was beginning to feel pretty good. After all, there wasn t so much to
getting a trailer ready for a long trip if you just approached the thing
from the right angle and with the proper attitude. Just as I had
predicted, our months of advance study and preparation had paid
off.

Then the first blow fell!

It was a quiet, drowsy summer day. I recall the generally tranquil
conditions so well because of the sudden change that seemed to come
over everything.

Quietly but firmly Merle handed me three sheets of paper. It was
obviously a list a long, looong list an endless list of the things needed
to operate any well-equipped trailer. She had started in the kitchen.
I read ^and read and read. The list seemed to go on forever. At times
my eyes refused to function as a team. The left eye would focus for
distance while the right eye refused to reach out more than a couple
of inches. This made for queer happenings. There were intermittent
flashes of a brilliant orange light, with figures in the middle. Oc
casionally the estimated price would move from its position in the
right-hand column over to the left-hand column. Revere Copper swam
from the left-hand column, circled the figure twenty-five, then tele
scoped.

I read about skillets, double boilers, dish towels, roasters, Pyrex, coffee
pots, dish drains, Pyrex again. I leaped at this. Hopefully I thought it
was a duplicate and could be eliminated. It wasn t and couldn t. It
was Pyrex this Pyrex that. Revere this and Revere that. Each item,
each figure, was firmly and lastingly imprinted on the page and fought
for with the tenacity of an ocelot defending its young.

The Big Beef 17

Timidly I ventured the thought that a great many items could be
eliminated by including a pressure cooker. When the impulse first
seized me, I had the feeling I should have squelched it then and there.
Knowing that Merle was practically the world s finest cook, I should
have had better sense than to even thin\ of a pressure cooker much
less mention it aloud. It was a mistake, all right. She had been waiting
for just such an opening and she pounced on it.

"Pressure cooker!" she bristled, "so you want a pressure cooker!!"

I felt myself shrinking in size. One would have thought I d in
vited her to join me in a jigger of hemlock, she was so wrought up.

"All right, that s fine. Throw out the whole list. Just tear it up! We
won t need anything else!! *

She was rapidly warming up.

"Well get a pressure cooker. So you want everything to taste alike
you want corn to taste like beets beets to taste like pot roast and
pot roast to taste like tooth paste."

I had no idea she was so well prepared but the pressure-cooker lecture
lasted a full twenty minutes.

In the end I found myself begging her to add to the list of pots
and pans get a big roaster get two roasters. More pots and pans
more Revere more Pyrex copper Pyrex more Revere!!

It was quite a brawl.

She knew it was necessary though, in order to soften me up for the
other two pages of the list.

I had fought my battle too early. A quick glance through the other
two pages told me that instinctively. Merle had maneuvered me into
over-extending myself in the first round and over a few piddling
pots and pans. There was no spirit left in me to battle for the big
prizes which she had listed for the dining room, living room and bed
room. I had been tricked. I was a dupe a sucker.

Glumly, almost blindly, I read on and on through blankets, sheets

l8 The Long, Long Trailer

(eight pairs), pillows and pillow cases, rugs, vacuum cleaner ("My
God, again! I" We had just bought one for the apartment it seemed
we were perpetually in the market for a vacuum cleaner), twin brass
lamps, dishes (service for six) .

"Why ? There are only two of us."

I didn t say it I just thought it. Three yellow rugs, dish towels,
bath towels, bath mats, hand towels, face towels, wash cloths. . . .
It seemed we were going to wash ourselves from state to state. Either
that or we d run up a couple of dozen towels on the main mast of
the Zephyr and with a Yo! Heave Ho! and a spanking breeze, coast
down route 66 and right into Chicago. The figures on the list were
beginning to swim again. I began to hear voices ... it was Merle.

"The fernery," she was saying, "is the thing we should look at
first. Let s get in the car and drive down to Bullock s-Wilshire right
now."

I was too weak to resist. My mind couldn t hold "the fernery" any
way it was too full of figures. The whole thing seemed entirely logical.
A fernery, of course! What is a trailer without a fernery nothing but
a hollow, empty shell. A solid copper fernery is just what we need,
all planted with green stuff and trailing arbutus and things. Those were
the little touches that made a house or a trailer a home. Inwardly I
was hysterical, outwardly atrophied.

I came out of this terrifying state to find myself standing right in
front of the fernery. "All planted with fresh dirt," the man was saying.
Merle assured me it was a good buy at thirty-five dollars because it was
"all planted with fresh dirt."

We bought it, and three more copper containers "just for an emer
gency."

"Can t have too many ferneries around the house, ha ha!" the clerk
said.

We could though and did!

The Big Beef 19

We bought a small folding table, two foam rubber pillows and
four cocktail mixers with pairs of dice and compasses mounted in the
handle. We rushed over to Barker Brothers and bought sheets, robes ?
blankets, cases and towels. We went back to Bullock s-Wilshire and
bought a set of dishes.

Then it happened!

She saw the thing sitting on the shelf, quite apart from the other
pepper grinders. The clerk smilingly handed to Merle what looked like
an old Edison record.

"It s a most unusual pepper grinder," she said coyly, "and, marked
down from twenty-three dollars."

My ears pricked up. "Twenty-three dollars," I exploded, "it comes
with a motor?"

The clerk froze me with a haughty look, "We re closing this num
ber out at only twelve dollars and fifty cents."

Twelve-fifty for a pepper grinder. I couldn t believe it. I looked at
Merle she was on the clerk s side, I could see that, and there was
that loo\ in her eye.

This was going to be the battle unto death.

This was the time and place to "gird my loins" (I d often wondered
what that meant) and pitch in. ... I did!

I begged, I cajoled, I threatened. The pepper grinder was beginning
to take on a sinister aspect. It grew in size, till it looked like a hogs
head. I was working myself up to an explosion. With great effort I
pulled my voice down to a quiet roar.

"Look," I said, wheeling in my heaviest irony, "it is my contention
that anybody, almost anybody can undertake a trailer trip with just
an ordinary pepper grinder "

"Not us," she slipped in.

" or, even just a regular pepper shatter if we want to brazen the
thing out and slum our way across the country."

20 The Long, Long Trailer

Merle couldn t see it. "After all," she said, "the grinder does match
the trailer and furthermore it has elan and chic!

I agreed. But I couldn t help observing, "I don t think it has twelve
dollars and a half worth of chic."

Merle seized the opportunity. "Didn t you just spend three hundred
and eighty-five dollars for an old toilet tank for Mister MacPherson?"
Her voice was beginning to rise to a loud whisper.

This was without question the quietest battle, with feeling, in all
history. In spite of that, a little knot of people began to gather around
the pepper grinder display then Merle delivered the clincher.

"Three hundred and eighty-five dollars would buy," (she s not very
quick with figures, but took a wild stab) "it would buy fifty pepper
grinders." A couple of old dowagers and a fussy man with a carnation
in his button hole nodded approval.

I was licked there was no use going on. I gave in. We owned a
pepper grinder a twelve and a half dollar one. Probably the only
trailer in the whole wide world properly equipped with pepper grinders.

I surveyed the wreckage. Trailer with extra gadgets, $4750 Furnish
ings, $1600 Total $6350. Budget, $2750 Deficit, $3600.

It was a beautiful layout though, with which to travel the length
and breadth of the land. It was elegantly furnished inside and a slick-
looking job outside. Too slick. We couldn t possibly tow such a
magnificent device with our shabby old 1941 car. No, it was crassly
unthinkable. I staggered down town, thrust a check for thirty-five
hundred dollars into the hands of a man standing in a doorway and
we owned a brand-new Chrysler New Yorker convertible.

Now we could hold up our heads. Now we could face our fellow-
men with lofty dignity. We had a trailer a twelve fifty pepper grinder
a new car and a budget deficit of $7100.

4. IN A COMA

IN THE FACTORY we had a brand-new trailer
nearing completion. In the garage we had a brand-new car waiting
to tow it. The man at the trailer factory had made an appointment
for me to deliver the car to a trailer supply and repair shop. There it
was supposed to get its hitch attached, releasing overload springs,
(whatever they were), control mechanism for the electric brakes, wir
ing for the stop and turn lights, and all the necessary plugs and con
nections that would make the whole thing operative.

It was with some misgivings that I delivered our shiny-new Chrysler
into the hands of the mechanics to do with as they saw fit. They
ran it over the pit, gloated for a moment, then went to work in high
glee. The hood was propped open, the trunk came up, somebody was
boring a hole through the bumper, hammering was going on under
neath, sparks were flying from a welder s arc, and the rear end was
being jacked up! I couldn t stand it. It turned my stomach. I walked
away to the edge of the paved lot where a dozen or so trailers were
parked, each awaiting its turn on the operating table. Curiosity about
my fellow trailerites momentarily obliterated my grief over the wounded

Chrysler.,

I sauntered up and down the line admiring this one and mentally
sneering at that one. By standing on tiptoe, I finally found one I could
peer into. I was curious about the furnishings, and so lost in comparing
their "homey little touches" inside with the "homey little touches"
we d have inside, that I didn t hear footsteps until a big voice boomed
out, "That your rig?"

I whirled around and genuflected in the process. More and more
often my knees were failing to sustain my weight in these troublous
times.

22 The Long, Long Trailer

As I whirled I pulled out my check book. I had come to associate
any foreign sound or unfamiliar voice with a request for payment.

A little puzzled at my unusual maneuver, the big voice repeated the
question, "I say, is that your rig?"

I pulled myself together. "No/ I said feebly, "we ve got an Airway."

My visitor nodded approval. "Nice job an Airway nice job. A
good rig. Yes, sir! A very good rig/

It hurt me a little to hear our beautiful trailer called a "rig," but I
assumed that that was the nomenclature of the trailer world and there
was nothing to do but go along with it.

"Yes," I said, "it s a good rig all right. A very good rig."

He pursed his lips. "I m a Spartan man myself; just came in from
Florida. We towed her over seven-thousand miles last summer it s a
good rig." Then he quickly added, "But that s not saying the Airway
ain t a good rig too."

He paused, while he looked me over from head to foot. I squirmed
uncomfortably I wasn t wearing the accepted trailer costume. I didn t
have on a cap with a long visor no wind breaker no khaki pants.

He looked at me with one eye half closed. "You towed her far?"
His voice implied that he dared me to have towed a trailer more
miles than he had.

Now, I didn t want to lie about the thing, neither did I want to
be forced into the admission that I hadn t towed a trailer any miles
not even one foot.

I cudgeled my brain for a logical answer. "No," I finally said, "we
haven t been traveling much lately." I don t know why I added the
"lately." Probably because it seemed such a bald uninteresting statement
without it.

At any rate, he seemed satisfied that I was no rival of his for
trailering honors. He turned, and with a couple of affectionate pats

In a Coma 23

on the wall of the Pan-American alongside us, accompanied by, "A fine
rig, Pan-American. A very fine rig," he went in search o a more worthy
opponent.

I wandered back to the pits where the men assured me the emascu
lated Chrysler was doing fine. A little pile of spare parts kept growing
in size near the right rear wheel. It was a source of worry until I
found out they were nuts, bolts, plates and gadgets, no longer neces
sary, since the installation of the "releasing overload springs." Before
the operation was completed, I had accumulated enough spare parts
to build a moderate-sized kiddie car.

Then I spotted the ball! The ball performs a most important func
tion in towing trailers. It is mounted on the end of the hitch and is
supposed to match the inverted cup attached to the end of the dolly
arm on the trailer. The cup is lowered over the ball, locked in place,
and you re ready to go. This particular ball, however, didn t appeal
to me. The rear bumper and guards were all chrome plated. The ball
they had installed looked like a rusty old railroad spike with a grape
on top. It was repulsive. It offended my esthetic senses. The men were
sympathetic. "Did I want a chrome ball?" I certainly did! They promptly
installed it a beauty with a long flowing neck.

I persuaded the men to jack up the rear end and engage the over
load springs, so I could get the feel of the thing. This they did. Now I
was ready to tow a trailer.

I picked up Merle and we headed for Valley Park in North Holly
wood to select the parking site for our new home.

Even without the trailer hooked on behind, all the pedestrians seemed
to be casting admiring glances at our rear end. Probably in approval of
the new chrome ball and hitch. There was only one jarring note. The
car now rode like a ten-ton gravel truck. This was apparent every
time I hit a bump. Our heads would snap back and forth, accompanied

24 The Long, Long Trailer

by a three-inch rise off the front seat. I had been warned about this
though, and told that when the trailer s weight was added to the rear
end, the whole thing would ride like a twin baby buggy.

At Valley Park we signed a lease on a space for thirty days. I very
cunningly selected a lot directly in front of the wide, paved driveway
that opened on Lankershim Boulevard. Merle had wanted the lot next
door, where the trees could shade the trailer from the afternoon sun,
but I was not to be thwarted in this plan. Turning a corner with a
trailer to get in and out of a space was one thing, while pulling
straight ahead and backing up on the same line was another. I felt I
had been very crafty to figure that out.

During the thirty-day period before we began our travels, I intended
to take the trailer out on the highway for a trial spin every day until
I got to be an accomplished trailer-tower. I had marshaled so many
arguments in favor of the lot in front of the exit that Merle finally
gave in. We paid the twenty-five dollars monthly rent, and Number i,
First Avenue was our new address.

The next day I was to appear at the factory to try the new ball
and hitch on the trailer.

I sensed something was wrong as I backed in the double doors. All
eyes were on the hitch and there was much shaking of heads.

"Too low," somebody said sadly.

"Wrong-type ball," was another analysis.

Wearing a long face the boss patted the ball gently. "Neck s too
thick," he said. I thought I detected a slight quiver in his voice. The
mechanics formed a little circle around the boss- and talked in low,
hushed tones. The consensus of opinion was that we ought to couple
the car and trailer together then see if we could pry them apart.

Before I could enter a protest, everybody went into action. The
emergency was yanked on and the wheels blocked. Somebody was
twisting a big turn-screw on the dolly. Two big huskies jumped on the

In a Coma 25

rear of the car to lower the ball. Down went the dolly arm. Snap!
It was locked. The boss said, "Now, let s see if shell hold."

That was the cue. The two men on the rear bumper started jumping
up and down fiendishly. A hydraulic jack was run under the front
of the trailer and it was hoisted in the air. Somebody grabbed a crow
bar and began prying on the dolly.

"Rock her more!" the boss shouted.

I ran from the car to the trailer pleading "Fellows the car it s
brand new let s be careful!! * Nobody paid any attention back to the
trailer. "Please men let s watch it. She s tipping, the trailer look out
please "

It was no use. The men were really working at fever pitch now.
The trailer was rocked and tipped and pushed and pulled and pried
and thumped.

I finally stepped quietly aside and closed my eyes; if it had to collapse
like the wonderful one-hoss shay, I didn t want to be a witness. Sud
denly all was quiet. I opened my eyes.

The boss was talking to me. "She didn t break loose, but you ll have
to put a three-inch box on the hitch and change to an Atwood ball/
I breathed a sigh of relief and headed back to the trailer repair shop.

En route I sang the boss s instructions to the tune of "I love coffee,
I love tea," just so I wouldn t forget what I was supposed to have done
to the hitch.

Three-inch box and an Atwood ball

Three-inch box and an Atwood ball

Three-inch box and an Atwood ball

Three-inch box and an At wood baaaEL

With the installation of the box, which raised the hitch three inches,
and the right-size Atwood ball, I was now deemed properly equipped
to tow a trailer. I lacked only two things; instruction and experience.

During the final two days, while the trailer was getting its finishing

2 6 The Long, Long Trailer

touches, we bought the little odds and ends for "the rig." These items
included four lengths of hose (for water supply and drains), five
Sealomatic tubes for the car, and a tool box and reasonably complete set
of tools, including a Boy Scout jack-knife. The jack-knife turned out
to be, by all odds, my most useful and valuable possession. It contained
a long thick blade, a smaller one, a corkscrew, a bottle opener, screw
driver, can opener, leather punch, reamer and a nail file. After my
experience with this little wonder, I wouldn t hesitate to undertake a
minor repair job on a Swiss watch, or a bull dozer.

Other items that were stored in the rear end of the car included:
a GI collapsible shovel, a canvas pail, engine-cooler tank, spare dolly
tire, two dust mops and a short handled brush (for washing the
trailer), chrome polish, penetrating oil, wax, foot pump, innumerable
dust cloths and a chamois. The whole mess crowded the rear end
a little, but I felt they were necessary atems to have with us if we were
going to defy the wilds of America.

The day finally rolled around when everything was ready for the
towing of the trailer to Number i First Avenue. I had an appointment
to meet the sales manager at the factory at three o clock. I would like
to have made it a bit earlier since the traffic along about that time is
a bedlam of wild-eyed, wheel-clutching maniacs bent on destruction.
This bedlam quickly rises in tempo and explosiveness, to reach its
crescendo between five and five-thirty, when everyone in Los Angeles
who owns a car or truck (paid for or not) unleashes his monster into
the down-town traffic.

Don t get the idea that 7 was going to tow the trailer through this
wall of steel; I wasn t. The sales manager was going to do that
with my car. My concern was primarily for the trailer and car. It was
my fervent hope that we might be able to pull them through this
battle unblemished and without the little nicks, wrinkles, dents and scars
that identify the rolling property of most California drivers.

In a Coma 27

At three o clock promptly I presented myself at the factory. My
khaki trousers were pressed; I was neatly shaved; and attired in one
of those long visor caps which most old trailer hands wear. In addition
to this, I was affecting a very smart wind breaker. This, I had observed,
was also a necessary article of apparel while towing a trailer. I looked
like one of the clan, from head to toe. Only the newness of this
raiment stamped me as a neophyte.

The sales manager hadn t as yet returned from delivering a trailer
in West Los Angeles but that was probably a good thing since my tank
invention had sprung another leak and the boys were still working on
it. I joined in the work on the tank. This process involved filling it
with sixty pounds of air, then going over the seams, joints, and connec
tions with soap and water (the leaks blew soap bubbles) until the
tank was pronounced perfect.

It was now four o clock and I was getting visibly nervous. I looked
up and down Sixteenth Street no sign of my man. I watched the park
ing lot I paced the floor like an expectant father. At four-thirty the
phone rang. The boss answered. The sales manager was tied up in West
Los Angeles but would meet me at Valley Park. This upset me, but not
the boss. He was imperturbable.

He turned to me, "Ellington s tied up, but don t worry we ll get
you there. I ll take her around the block a couple of times and send
Pete instead."

The palms of my hands began to leak sweat. I looked around for a
man who might be named Pete. He would have a minimum of two
heads, of that I was sure. I didn t want Pete hauling my trailer around;
I had all my hopes pinned on the sales manager.

"Of course," the boss added, "Pete can t drive, but he ll tell you
what to do. You re a good driver, you won t have any trouble."

For a moment I was too stunned to comprehend what he had said.
Then it dawned on me ... tow the trailer] Me! I opened my mouth,

28 The Long, Long Trailer

but sounds refused to come out. I forced myself out came, "Me who?"
The statement didn t make much sense and on top of that, in forcing
the speech, it came out two octaves above my normal voice range.

By this time the boss had me by the arm and was gently urging me
into the driver s seat. I was numb. Somebody pushed in the clutch
and pulled the gear lever. I looked around it was met I had done it.
We were moving. The car was towing the trailer or maybe the trailer
was pushing the car. With this thought, I gave a convulsive jerk and
slammed on the brakes pure reflex action.

The boss s voice was soothing, "Take it easy now, everything s fine."
Then a little sharper, "Cramp your wheels to the right."

I cramped the wheels.

"Now straighten her out."

I straightened her out.

"Right again! to the right!"

I could no longer tell my right hand from my left, but I cramped
again anyway, both inside and out. I sensed him looking at me and
attempted a smile of confidence I didn t feel. My facial muscles wouldn t
respond.

"Turn right, hard I" He was leaning far out the right-hand window.
"A good six feet!" he shouted.

It turned out he meant that I had cleared the curb by six feet on the
turn. The boss suddenly reached across me and jerked the trailer brake
lever on the steering post. My head snapped twice and nearly parted
from my body.

"Fine, fine," he said. "They ll wear in all right."

I had no idea what he was talking about. I found myself putting on
the brakes at his command. We stopped. The boss hopped out and
Pete slid in beside me.

"Pete ll tell you what to do," the boss was saying. Turn right on
Alameda, then to Broadway, then to San Fernando Road.

In a Coma 29

Direct route to the cemetery, I thought

It seemed that every vehicle in Southern California was on the
streets just in the hope of getting in at least one glancing side swipe
at us.

Express trains were roaring by on both sides, so I knew that some
how we had got on Alameda. I couldn t remember turning the steer
ing wheel. Maybe Pete had done it. Good old Pete. Maybe he d be all
right after all.

Now I dimly realized that he was barking orders: "Keep in the
right-hand lane. Ease her over more. Put out your arm!! . . . No!
No, your arm!"

I had stuck out my head.

"Trailer brakes! Trailer brakes . . . always the trailer brakes first.
Look out for the truck ... get in the left-hand lane . . . trailer brakes,
traaaailer braaaaakes." The voice seemed to be singing a long for
gotten melody.

Then everything turned purple.

I recall nothing further until we pulled into the driveway in front
of Number i First Avenue. I staggered out of the car and into the
arms of Ellington, the sales manager. He climbed in, backed the trailer
into place on our lot and helped me hook up all the various hoses and
cables.

Merle took me home, put me to bed and I slept the clock around.

5. BLOODY BUT UNBOWED

I AWOKE the next morning with a slight head
ache and sat up in startled wonder at Merle who was carefully
picking her way through a maze of packages, boxes, cartons, and
bags, and silently affixing a tag to each. I stared around at this forest
of material and with genuine concern inquired, "What happened?
Why are you marking everything?" I asked.

The tangible evidence of our fortnight s buying spree was spread
throughout the apartment. Merle was organizing, segregating, cata
loguing and marking each item with a letter of the alphabet. Patiently
she explained the procedure.

"All the items marked A/" she said, "are in that pile near the
foot of the bed. The BY are in the bathroom, C C station is in the
hall, T> in the living room and in my clothes closet."

It was significant that my clothes closet was marked "E-i." Since
the sale of my suits and shoes it was scarcely necessary to designate my
closet as containing anything.

The remainder of the alphabetical piles through "K" were scattered
throughout the apartment.

It seemed that my duties for the day consisted of gathering all the
articles in the pile marked "A" (which included Merle) and transport
ing them to the trailer. While Merle was packing away this assort
ment of goods, I was to return for the "B" load. The round trip to the
trailer, including loading and unloading, required forty-five minutes.
This was sufficient time, Merle judged, for her to stow each load
before I could make the round trip with more cargo.

After a cursory inspection of our purchases I leaned toward the con
clusion that we would have some difficulty cramming it all into one
of Bekin s oversize moving vans, let alone the trailer. I was afraid that

all these items, plus a deep breath, might burst the seams of our rig.
30

Bloody but Unbowed ^

But Merle assured me that she had gone over our future home very
carefully, and had taken into account every square inch of storage
space available. She was positive or reasonably positive, that everything
would fit into its proper place like a well-executed jig-saw puzzle, if
I would only hold up my end and deliver the cargo in the proper
sequence.

I deposited Merle and load "A" in the trailer. By the time I returned
with load "B," all of load "A* had disappeared into the walls. With
load "C," things were slightly different. There were a few items of
"B" still lying around and one or two fragments of "A" had mysteri
ously reappeared. By the time installment "G" arrived, our new home
was in the same state of disarray I had awakened to that morning in
the apartment, only things were piled higher and movement was re
stricted to ankles, feet and forearms.

Again I declared we were attempting the impossible that our trap
pings would leak out the back door as fast as we shoved them in the
front that the tons of stuff simply would not fit into the available
space. (We have since learned that the weight was thirteen hundred
pounds.)

Our switch from apartment to trailer was further complicated by
another item. I was addling my brain by continually smashing my
head into the top of the five-foot door. I never failed, on both ingress
and egress. Departures weren t so bad, since the manufacturer had
lined the inner side of the door with rubber for just such absent-
minded souls; withal an increasingly deeper indenture in my head was
becoming apparent to the naked eye and most apparent to the touch.
Merle tried to help me, but never got beyond, "Look out for the "

Whap! Right in the same crease.

Entrances were even worse. Merle wasn t always there to warn me,
and from the outside I was smashing my head into solid aluminum.
I was always unbowed and as a consequence, very bloody.

32 The Long, Long Trailer

Merle was most sympathetic, having cracked her own skull three
times, both going and coming. Serious as the head-knocking was,
worry about it vanished immediately when I discovered the cause of
our packing bottle neck.

Even before everything was placed in its predetermined pigeon
hole, Merle had decided to exercise the eternal feminine prerogative
of "rearranging." Now rearranging things in a trailer is fraught with
the same danger that attends the rearranging of a house. But in a trailer
it s worse you can get nicked to death.

Trailer rearranging calls for the movement of three dozen towels,
which must be forced into the space formerly occupied by a dozen
and a half glasses, which in turn displace the roaster, which goes in
among the canned goods. The canned goods are then held in the
arms awaiting disposal. It is a shift from cabinet to shelf to drawer
to closet. It is a never-ending process that goes on and on like a rounde
lay. Worst of all, there s no place to hide you just stand there hip-
deep in the stuff and pass it back and forth trying to get it out of
sight by the trial-and-error system.

In the midst of this feverish juggling o travel materiel, there came a
knock at the door. We both looked up startled. It was the first knock
on the new door of our first movable home. Merle motioned to me
to go to the door and at the same time whispered hoarsely that she
didn t want anyone to see the mess we were in and to "only open
the door a crack/

I opened the door a crack and there stood the all-encompassing per
sonality o Mrs. Jepson. She shook the trailer, and her massive frame,
fore and aft with her hearty welcome. It would be impossible for
anyone to view all of Mrs. Jepson through a crack in the door. She was
a gigantic woman.

Chin upon chin cascaded down to a bust that seemed to precede her

Bloody but Unbowed o?

by several feet. She waved one Zeppelin arm, snatched the door out of
my hand and slammed it open against the side of the trailer.

We had been informed or, perhaps, warned is a better word about
Mrs. Jepson. She was a loquacious, kindly, oversize individual who had
taken the entire trailer park all hundred and fifty families under
her ample wing. She was forever worried that somebody wasn t having
a "jolly" time, or that the "jolly" Van Schryvendykes hadn t met the
"jolly" Malsbenders. She was the park "organizer" who was never
happy except when organizing sewing bees or book-study clubs or
square dances or pot-luck suppers.

Nobody declined an invitation from Mrs. Jepson nobody belittled
her nobody ridiculed her nobody dared! It didn t take too brilliant
an imagination to visualize the carnage that could result from a clout
on the head from one of her hamlike arms swinging a sledge-hammer
fist. And Mrs. Jepson could strike an equally devastating blow with
her tongue.

The purpose of her visit on this occasion was to inform us of the
big pot-luck supper with home movies tonight, in the community
hall.

"You must come," she said. "We re going to have a jolly time.
You simply must come."

She delivered the invitation with such fervor that I assumed the
success of the event hinged on our acceptance. I opened my mouth
to tell her we would definitely be there, but closed it promptly when
I noticed Merle shaking her head negatively and pointing at the
stuff strewn around on the floor.

While Mrs. Jepson was taking a breath, I came to rny senses, "We d
like to come/ 3 1 said, "but we ve just moved in and things are in pretty
much of a mess."

Mrs. Jepson beamed indulgently and put one foot in the door. The

34 The Long, Long Trailer

trailer rocked gently, then became immediately rigid as she placed a
hand on either side of the screen.

"I know I just know how it is. Things are always in a mess when
you first move in." With this, she heaved her considerable bulk, bust
first, in the door without missing a syllable. "I remember the day we
moved in. It was jol "

Mrs. Jepson caught her breath, blanched perceptibly, and stared with
gimlet eyes at the premature stage o our rearranging. She was ob
viously a little startled at the advanced state of decomposition. I had
tried to prepare her for the messbut this must have been beyond all
reason. This was evidently the worst mess she had ever encountered,
in or out of a trailer.

Then she spied Merle and before I could affect an introduction she
burst out sympathetically, "You poor dear! You poor, poor dear!!"

With that, Mrs. Jepson took command of the situation and the
trailer. "Here you (meaning me) put all those sheets and blankets
under the bed. And dear (meaning Merle), you put all the dishes in
the cupboards over the green chair. I ll put the cooking utensils under
the sink/

And in no time at all, it seemed, everything was stowed not in
its prearranged location but nevertheless stowed, and out of sight.
With a sigh and a happy smile Mrs. Jepson reminded us of the pot-
luck supper. When Merle protested that she wouldn t have time to
prepare any food to bring, Mrs. Jepson brushed the protest aside with
an imperial wave of her hand.

"Just pick up a half-gallon of ice cream," she said, "and bring it
along. I know you ll both meet some wonderful people and have the
j oiliest time ever." With that she thrust herself against the door and
with a few deft wiggling movements, slipped outside. The trailer
snapped back into position as Mrs. Jepson delivered her afterthought.
"Oh! another thing. Your movies of some of your trips: if you ll just

Bloody but Unbowed 25

turn them in to Mr. Dahlstead he ll put them all on one reel. They ll
be shown tonight."

Under Mrs. Jepson s over-powering influence I was tempted to
break down and confess that I didn t have even so much as a snap shot
to contribute but I just nodded my head dumbly.

I closed the door in a trance. Mrs. Jepson had descended on us like a
barrage. Now that it had lifted, we both felt limp and weak. Merle
looked around hopelessly and announced that tomorrow every last
thing would have to come out of every closet, cabinet and drawer and
be rearranged. It wasn t a very bright prospect but I couldn t be too
concerned, I had to rustle up a half -gallon of ice cream Mrs. Jepson s
orders.

Several hours later, after Merle had made herself presentable and
I had rounded up the ice cream, we made our appearance at the
community hall and the pot-luck supper. We no sooner stepped in
the doorway when we were spotted by the ubiquitous Mrs. Jepson.
She surrounded us wild-eyed and happy. Waving, gesticulating and
pouring out her machine-gun delivery. Not by smashing it tissue-thin
could we get a word in edgewise. She fired volley after volley of
questions, but never once were we alert or agile enough to squeeze
in a reply. \

Again we were confused by her overpowering command of the situa
tion and we didn t want to be confused. Here was our first presenta-*
tion at court and we wanted to make a good impression.

We were first introduced to our right-hand neighbors, the Crom-
wells, then our left-hand neighbors, the Blankenships. While we were
exchanging pleasantries we found Mrs. Jepson was introducing us to
another group of trailerites. Introductions then came so thick and
fast we found ourselves merely marching around the hall nodding
our heads this way and that like a pair of automatons while Mrs.
Jepson supplied the conversation. This ridiculous procedure continued

36 The Long, Long Trailer

until the "organizer" spotted another strange couple at the door. With
a gushing volley of words, Mrs. Jepson dropped us like a hot potato
and made a beeline for the entrance.

We were on our own, but momentum and confusion caused us to
march another ten paces, stupidly nodding to right and left, before
we discovered that Mrs. J. had deserted us. While everyone returned
our nods, they seemed a little puzzled at our marching and nodding
as though we were equipped with swivel necks and rockers. Our
embarrassment on discovering what we were doing caused us to retire
hastily to the nearest corner and engage one another in animated con
versation. Our lips moved but we didn t say anything.

After returning to a state of near-normalcy we became engrossed
yes, even entranced, by the conversation of our surrounding neigh
bors.

One old grizzled veteran was describing his trailer trip up the Alcan
Highway to Alaska. He was given respectful attention. This apparently
was an unusual trip. He cleared a little space around his chair, the
better to re-enact some of the difficulties he obviously had encountered.
He executed, in pantomime, what we guessed was the towing of a
heavy trailer through deep snow. At one point, we concluded he must
have reached the North Pole, and after ripping down the insignia
attached to this structure by previous expeditions, had run up the
flag of the trailerite. His facial contortions, arm waving and body-
english indicated this, anyway.

We worked our way from group to group, listening to the thrilling
tales of the travelers. One foursome was recounting a recent trip to
the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico, all the way by trailer.

Two middle-aged couples were rediscovering one another after having
spent ten days together in a trailer park in Maine.

A pair of elderly but well-preserved gentlemen were exchanging
photographs of tarpon caught near Fort Meyers Beach, Florida, on

Bloody but Unbowed 37

exactly the same day. They were making plans to revisit the place
next year and do their fishing together.

We marveled at the crossing and recrossing of paths the careless
"See you in Miami in December," or, "Well be in Yellowstone in
June same place." Dates made six and eight months in advance, and
apparently meticulously kept. We were transported. The excitement
lasted right through the pot-luck supper, and movies and slides after
wards.

We walked back to the trailer feasting on the evening s revelations.
Soon we would be full-fledged members of this roving band. Soon we
would join in the tale-telling of these conversational groups without
the necessity of parrying pointed questions about our travels and lack
of trailer know-how.

We paused outside our home to look through the open front window
and contemplate. It is a picture window nearly two feet high by
five feet wide and matched an identical window at the rear of the
trailer. These two windows gave us complete through ventilation and
a view into and through the trailer.

We stood there for perhaps five minutes conjuring up visions of
the future and admiring the sleek, efficient interior of our rig. It was
a beauty all right. No question about that. The whole interior of
bleached mahogany glistened with wax. The twin beds with their
quilted coverings looked comfortable. (And were.) The ends of the
beds tilted up and down for use as a chaise longue in the daytime.
When used thus the six windows down each side of the trailer gave an
excellent view of the countryside.

Over each bed was a bookshelf between them a vanity, the lid of
which opened upward like a trapdoor and contained a plate-glass mirror
which completed the dressing table. At the end of each bed was a
full-length closet, the doors consisting of six-foot mirrors which, whea

38 The Long, Long Trailer

opened and locked in the center, isolated the bedroom from the rest
of the quarters.

Then the kitchen. It was a marvel of efficiency. It began with a long ?
narrow door which ran the full height of the trailer, permitting the
storage of brooms, dust mops, etc. Then a half-length closet with four
drawers beneath, all of which locked for traveling with the click of a
switch. Alongside the closet stood the four-burner butane range with
overhead canopy and exhaust fan. Next to that the twin sinks with
drawers and cabinets below. A porthole window was located exactly
over the sinks, and above that, suspended from the ceiling, another
row of cabinets for storage space. Opposite the stove was the electric
refrigerator (six-cubic-foot capacity) with a linen closet above.

The bathroom, which was oval shaped, was, by all odds, the most
impressive and most important room in the trailer. It contained a small
aluminum sink with splash guards that extended up to the medicine
cabinet a sand-blasted window with a mirror of exactly the same size
and shape directly above it an aluminum floor, which overlapped the
walls for six inches at the base, and slanted slightly toward the drain
a shower curtain that encircled the entire room and our mechanical
genius, Mister MacPherson.

While it was impossible for us to see all these items from our vantage
point outside the trailer the contents of the bathroom were so im
pressed on our minds, we were able to carry with us a perfect mental
picture of this most useful of rooms.

The living room we could see, since we were standing at the front
of our movable house staring right at it. It looked as inviting as a
banana split.

Two of our several ferneries formed the background, with green
leaves trailing almost to the thick yellow rugs. The green chair ex
actly matched the leaves. The utility table was folded down from
the wall disclosing a row of four shelves whereon reposed our green

Bloody but Unbowed 39

candles, pepper grinder and cocktail mixers with the compasses in the
handles.

The davenport (with quilted covering that matched the twin beds)
ran nearly the full eight-foot width of the trailer and was so constructed
that it could be converted to a bed in a matter of seconds. At one
end of the davenport was a concealed clothes hamper, on the lid of which
gleamed our twin brass lamps.

It was a remarkable home all right, that promised much in com
fort and future adventure.

Smug and content we unlocked the door and went inside. Merle
preceded me so I was able to catch her after she cracked her head on
the door opening. This head-smashing was becoming so commonplace
we scarcely discussed it any more.

While Merle rubbed out the V-shaped dent in her head, I began
the preparation of a pot of coffee over which to discuss the evenings
activities. The fact that we had failed to have the butane tanks filled,
stopped the coffee idea immediately. This didn t disturb us as much
as the discovery that all the water that ran into the sink promptly re
appeared as a small geyser bubbling out of the floor of the bathroom.
Apparently I had coupled together a few wrong connections, but even
this couldn t alter our rosy outlook as we worried the blankets and
sheets into place on the twin beds. Our first effort at making beds
in cramped quarters wasn t too successful but in spite of the little
knots and lumps, we slept the sleep of the weary and the just.

6. THE COCKTAIL PARTY

WE HAD been living in the trailer for a whole

week before we got around to the distasteful subject of finances. Out
came the little black book with the final accusing entry; a big four-
figured red-lettered deficit.

During the previous three weeks we had begun a collection of various
slips of papers listing additional items purchased and their cost. The
first thing that pulled us up short was the sales tax. Somehow this hadn t
been provided for in the budget, nor had the Sealomatic tubes for the
car, engine cooler, tools, hoses, license for both vehicles and the in
surance. The liability boys must have figured out the company presi
dent s salary and saddled it on me; it was that big.

We were uncertain about treating the insurance money as a capital
expenditure. Or perhaps, I should say I was uncertain. Merle convinced
me of my error.

"The money is in the bank, isn t it?" she said.

"Yes."

"We wrote out a check for it."

"Yes."

"The money s gone."

"Yes."

"Then it s an expenditure of capital."

There was no gainsaying this logic, so I entered it in the budget
book as a capital expense. The grand total was getting to be quite a
staggering sum, and we hadn t yet turned a wheel.

We were feeling a little low. Merle hit on the jolly idea of throwing
a cocktail party. It would lift our spirits and at the same time show
our friends, who thought we had gone off our rockers, that a cock
tail party could be accomplished in a trailer as easily as in our apart
ment.
40

The Cocktail Party 41

We planned the thing carefully. We invited twelve people. With our
selves that made a total of fourteen. We felt we had sufficient room
to accommodate everyone, provided at least two people stayed outside in
the deck chairs on the patio. Since it was July, the weather was warm,
so we felt safe on that score. We had carefully allocated the space in
the trailer. Two people on each twin bed that was four. One in the
green chair and one on the vanity bench six. Four people on the
davenport and two outside on the patio twelve. We would stand dur
ing the entire evening we would be the proper hosts.

But nobody stayed any place! They were either all inside, all out
side or all en route. It was bedlam. Merle would rush outside to invite
those on the patio into the trailer while I was inviting our guests in
the trailer to come out on the patio. The traffic jam at the door was
fearsome. With the trailer bucking and heaving it was like San Fran
cisco in the 06 earthquake. Having stampeded the herd once, it was
impossible to stop them. Merle and I were kept busy running from
starboard to port in an effort to keep the rig on an even keel I
still hadn t learned how to anchor the trailer securely with blocks and
jacks, and the slightest movement rocked it from stem to stern. This,
coupled with the cocktails, had a telling effect.

It was at this point that the battle of the hand-blown "green glasses"
was recalled. Having absorbed such a beating over the pepper grinder,
I was in no mood, a day or two later, to undergo a second Waterloo
over the green glasses. Merle found them in a glass specialty shop. They
were shaped like light bulbs without the necks. An odd shape, an ugly
shape, I contended. Merle declared they were beautiful. I disliked the
irritating bilious-green color; she said the color contrasted nicely with
the chair and curtains. I volunteered to make better glasses by sawing
off the bottom half of beer bottles any beer bottles. The clerk said
they were a steal at two dollars apiece. I shuddered at this and swore
that nobody, absolutely nobody, could hold a half-round glass like

42 The Long, Long Trailer

that in his hand more than thirty seconds without dropping it. Merle
said that nobody but a drunk could possibly drop the glass. We bought
them and everybody dropped them.

In fairness to our guests at the party it should be pointed out that
the rocking and swaying of the trailer had a great deal to do with it.
Glasses, the "green glasses" dropped right and left. Our rugs were soaked
with Pepsi Cola, sherry, scotch and soda and gingerale until the liquid
in the trailer seemed deeper than the rugs.

By and large, the party wasn t too big a success. With the broken
glass, spilled liquids and obstructionist viewpoint of some of our
guests, it might have even been termed a minor debacle. Some called
the affair a great triumph and a long stride forward in the era of
movable apartments. Others declined any further invitation to visit the
trailer. For our part we never again invited twelve people in one
group to share in the complicated mystery of life in our little nest
oa wheels.

7. IT MOVES

WITH the cocktail party safely behind us and
the trailer again put in some semblance of order, we were able to
turn our whole attention to plotting our first trip. Day after day I
was thwarted in my plan to take the trailer out on the highway for a
series of trial runs. We had so many visitors and attended so many
farewell parties, that at the end of three weeks I was as ignorant of the
intricacies of trailer-towing as I was the first day we conceived the

It Moves 43

Idea. True, I had towed the thing from the factory to North Hollywood
but because of a condition of shock and coma over the entire route,
my towing technique had been improved not one whit.

As a matter of fact, my feeble effort and the seeming perversity o
the trailer had served to instill in me a kind of quiet horror that grew
hour by hour. The conviction loomed large that I had completely lost
control of the thing, that this monstrous piece of aluminum was the
master and I the servant. The trailer took on life and character. It
seemed to become more sullen day by day as it stood there with its
jack-like legs braced against me, defying me even to think of moving
it so much as one foot.

I tried to be nonchalant and join in the conversations of the old trailer
hands but they would have no part of me. It was all too apparent that
my trivial experience didn t entitle me to occupy a seat among the
mighty. Then too, a good many of them had seen me in a state of
near-collapse as I staggered into the park with the rig, a few days
previous.

I tried to worm my way into the inner circle by asking advice,
but even this didn t work. The old trailer hands assured me there was
only one way to learn and that was by hooking on the trailer and tow
ing it. Even then, they declared, I wouldn t actually know anything
until I had rung up at least two-thousand miles.

Whenever the subject of backing a trailer came up, the old hands
would shake their heads quietly and sadly and walk away.

This business of backing up began to prey on my mind the pulling
straight ahead did too, for that matter, but there seemed to be some
thing special about backing a trailer.

Merle didn t help the situation any. In the strangest places and at
the oddest times she would burst out with, "Are you sure you can tow
that thing?" In spite of the brave front I affected, I wasn t sure at all,
I wasn t sure it would even move, since we had also added the weight

44 The Long, Long Trailer

of a typewriter, television set, small washing machine, vacuum cleaner
and two hundred pounds o canned goods.

I even toyed with the idea of having someone tow the trailer up
to the Mojave Desert in the middle of the night. There, on Muroc
Dry Lake, I would have room enough to perform all sorts of maneuvers,
including backing up. This idea progressed to the point of casually
mentioning the plan to Merle. Apparently I wasn t casual enough. It
only increased her already well-founded suspicions. She now accused
me, not only of being afraid to tow it, but being totally incapable of
towing it!

Those were dark days. I brooded a great deal. I was even happy
when our plastic hose blew up. The hot afternon sun had softened the
plastic, and the water pressure inflated it like a balloon. It took on
the size and contour of a boa constrictor which had swallowed, but
not digested, an enormous pig. While we were watching this phenome
non it blew up with a roaring hiss; spraying water all over No. 2 and
3 First Avenue, and as far as the Prairie Schooner at No. 4 Elm
Street.

The burst hose was replaced by a new half -inch copper line, which
eased the minds of our neighbors, but nudged the budget another
notch into red ink. During this trying period my only source of
pleasure and entertainment was perusing the Wall Street Journal
and reading about the consternation of Congress over the ever-mounting
national debt. I tried to apply the "what-difference-does-it-make-we-
owe-it-to-ourselves" technique to our own budget, but somehow it
didn t come off.

To add to my burdens, Merle was constantly badgering me to set
a date for our departure on the first leg of our journey. The more she
prodded the more I recoiled. The thought of towing a two-and-a-half-
ton, twenty-eight-foot monster, three hundred and ten miles to Modesto,
California, made my ulcer snap its patina.

It Moves 45

Finally I confessed there was nothing further to keep us from
taking off into the wild pavement yonder. We would leave in forty-
eight hours.

"Why forty-eight hours," Merle inquired. "Why can t we leave
right now?"

I was startled at this. "We ve got to pack/* I said. "We ve got to
pack everything that s movable or breakable."

I could tell by the expression on my wife s face that I had introduced
a hitherto unconsidered subject.

She pointed an accusing finger. "You told me that the charm of
traveling by trailer was the fact that we wouldn t continually have to
pack and unpack our things. Those were your very words."

"True," I said soothingly, "those were my very words. But it all
depends on your interpretation of the word things. "

Merle was not to be soothed with soft words, attempted smiles, or
evasions. She had had time to do a little swift calculating. "Do you
mean to say," she bristled, "that every time we travel for one day,
I ve got to spend two days packing and another day unpacking?
Do you mean to say it s going to take us four days to travel one
day?"

It did seem a little ridiculous put just that way. Still I clung to the
soothing delivery.

"Now wait," I said, "let s not get excited about this. It isn t necessary
to pack everything. Our clothes will hang right where they are in the
closets. We don t have to do a thing with the bedding, rugs or towels.
But the pots and pans, the fernery, dishes, lamps and glasses will have
to be packed."

I paused and then went on persuasively. "The trailer is going to
bounce around some and we don t want to take any chances on smashing
things up. Maybe, after we ve been on the road awhile, we won t have
to pack anything. But at first we ll just have to feel our way along."

46 The Long, Long Trailer

I paused again to see if the bait I had held out about eventually not
packing anything had any effect.

Merle was in a deep study. She had apparently assumed that the
trailer would just float along behind the car on a cushion o air.
That it would encounter bumps, railroad tracks and chuckholes, hadn t
occurred to her. Finally she shrugged her shoulders. "Okay/ 5 she said,
"let s start packing."

We started packing. We packed all one day and half the night.
I was kept busy hustling paste-board boxes, wooden boxes, suit boxes,
cotton, excelsior and old rags. I cursed myself heartily for an ignorant,
stupid, bull-headed nincompoop. In an effort to get a forty-eight hour
reprieve from the fearsome trailer-towing business, I had oversold
this packing thing. I had said we would have to pack everything mov
able or breakable. And it turned out that everything, without exception,
everything in the trailer was either movable, breakable, or both.

The glasses nestled in little tufts of snowy cotton; the twin brass
lamps were crated and packed till they could have withstood a jeep
trip over a plowed field. Even the pepper grinder was nested securely
in excelsior. We were packed beyond all reason. It would have taken a
major seismic disturbance with the epicenter located between the rear
trailer wheels, or an atomic explosion directly overhead, to have dis
turbed even the toothpicks which reposed in a two-ounce whiskey
jigger wrapped in Kleenex.

But even so thorough a job of packing had to end eventually. When
Merle announced it complete, the realization dawned that I had only
postponed the inevitable.

Now we were ready for the big push!

"D" day was Monday. "H" hour 4:00 A.M. It might just as well
have been 3:00 A.M. or 2:00 A.M. or even midnight. I lay in bed in a
cold sweat the entire night through. The slightest sound or movement
sent huge shots of adrenalin through my frame. The minute hand

It Moves 47

raced around the dial toward four o clock beckoning me to my doom.

Exactly on the hour. Merle raised her head and announced, "It s
four o clock/

Somehow I got into my clothes and somehow I found myself rolling
up the drains. I disconnected the light cord and turned off the water*

Merle stuck her head out the door. "The lights went out/ she said,
"and I can t get any water out of the faucet."

I stood in quiet contemplation for a moment, then reconnected the
light cord and turned on the water. Sneakily I reached in my pocket
and pulled out the list of things to do and the order in which to do
them. I didn t want Merle to know I was so weak-minded that I
had to write them down. I looked at the list. Right on top were "light
cord" and "hose." Mentally I moved them to the bottom. I held the
list in my hand while I unblocked the wheels, folded the jacks and
turned off the butane. I turned it on again immediately when Merle
shouted from inside the trailer that the flame under the percolator had
gone out.

After these three set-backs, I temporarily abandoned any further
work on the trailer and turned to the car. It had to be backed up to
the trailer so the ball on the car was exactly under the cup on the dolly
arm.

Six times I tried to get the socket and ball together and six times I
failed. I was either too far to the left, too far to the right, too close
or not close enough. I finally enlisted Merle s help. She stood inside
the trailer and directed the operation from the front window. She mo
tioned me back and back and back until crunch! The dolly arm
stove a big dent in the trunk lid,

I looked up at Merle with my most pained expression, but it was
wasted. She had disappeared. "The coffee was boiling over," she ex
plained later.

After fifteen minutes of seesawing I managed to get the car and

48 The Long, Long Trailer

trailer coupled. Out came the list again and in order: I twisted the
turn-screw, locked the socket, fastened the safety chain and plugged
in the connections. Then I turned my attention to the dent in the
car.

With a ball-peen hammer I was making good progress with the
dent until our neighbor s door flew open with a crash and a rugged
voice shouted. "For crying out loud, Mac, what is this, a boiler fac
tory?"

He was justified I felt, since it was only a bit after four o clock. I
put away my hammer and sauntered into the trailer. I was temporarily
defeated on all fronts, but my spirits rose in direct proportion to the
amount of coffee I consumed.

With the breakfast ritual out of the way, it was now safe to dis
connect the lights, water and butane. We were practically ready for
the advance. I consulted the list again. It said "turn on and check,
running, stop, and turn lights." I walked up to the car and flipped
the switch. The trailer lit up like a Christmas tree. Merle seemed to
think it looked a little gaudy, even in the half light of early morning.
I assured her that the lights, all of them, were a necessity dictated by
law. For a test of the stop and turn lights, I posted Merle at the rear
of the trailer and pulled the left-turn lever. "Is it blinking?" I called
out.

Her voice came back, "No."

Somewhat disconcerted, I walked back to the rear of the trailer.
She was watching the right-turn light. The left-turn light was blinking
merrily along. I pointed out the blinking light to her and went back
to the car to test the right-turn light. I turned back to the trailer again,
"Is it working?"

There was a pause, then Merle called, "It blinked a couple of times,
then went out."

Again I walked to the back of the trailer every round trip was

It Moves 49

nearly a fifty-yard jaunt, it was getting a little annoying and just as
I suspected, again the light was blinking in a rhythmic cycle.

"Look," 1 said, "why do you keep saying it isn t working, when it
is?"

She was adamant. "It isn t working," she snapped, "look at it. n
She waggled a finger at the left-turn light.

I pointed out to her that she was watching the left-turn light, which
we had just tested. "We are now," I said, trying to hold myself in
check, "we are now testing the right-turn light."

She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture that indicated she was
washing her hands of the whole affair.

"Right turn, left turn," she said scornfully, "why don t you turn
them both on and check them yourself!"

I got hold of myself, took a deep breath and circled the trailer once
more just to be sure we hadn t left any loose ends dangling, then
climbed into the car.

This was it!

I stepped gingerly on the accelerator the motor revved up but
nothing moved. My hands were sweating again. Maybe I couldn t
move the thing, after all. Maybe the weight was too much. Maybe the
tires had grown to the ground. I was getting frantic my foot plunged
the gas pedal to the floor. Flying gravel at machine-gun velocity clat
tered against the front of the trailer and it leaped off the lot like a startled
gazelle. There was a sharp thump!

We had cut across the corner of the cement patio then a sickening
rocking motion we had cleared the U-shaped dip leading to the high
way, but had accomplished it one wheel at a time. I wrenched the wheels
around and we seemed to be moving down Lankershim Boulevard in
a straight line. Momentarily at least, everything was under control.

For a full two minutes we rode along in complete silence ears
attuned for any tell-tale foreign sound that would give us our first

50 The Long, Long Trailer

warning of die imminent collapse of both car and trailer. Nothing
happened.

Here we are, I thought, on the road a good two minutes without
accident or breakdown. I was considerably bucked up by this miracle.
I even forced a sickly smile in Merle s direction it was a gesture of
conciliation over the turn lights. There was no response. Merle was
staring straight ahead, totally oblivious to the history-making drama
we were playing out. Clearly, everything was a great success. We were
skimming along the highway at a good eight miles an hour, the motor
humming effortlessly, and as yet, no untoward incident. I felt my wife
was carrying the turn-light thing a little too far. After all, this was an
occasion this was itl Another two minutes went by. The silence began
to pall.

"Rides pretty good," I ventured.

She noddedL

For a moment we listened to the swish of the tires on the pavement;
then I tried again. "Think I ll step her up to fifteen."

Merle nodded again.

I stepped the engine up to fifteen then twenty. I was too busy now
to worry about the argument over the turn lights. I had a death grip
on the wheel. I took a sly peek into the rear-vision mirror my
hackles rose again I felt that heavy charge of adrenalin. In the mirror
the trailer looked like a huge monolith, bearing down on us at break
neck speed. Quickly I looked away. It gave me quite a shock I didn t
realize the thing was so close. The faster I went, the faster the trailer
followed. Again I got the feeling that the trailer had taken over. We
were no longer towing it it was pushing us! I was afraid to put on
the brakes for fear the monster would come crashing right through
the car.

Then Merle shouted, "Red light! Red light!"

Instinctively I slammed on the brakes. The rear of the trailer started

It Moves ^i

to undulate. Then I remembered Pete s admonition "trailer brakes
first always the trailer brakes first." I pulled the lever and to the
accompaniment of the blood-curdling scream of dying rubber we
screeched to a stop, a good half block before we reached the red light.
If it did nothing else the sudden stop had abolished any further thought
of argument over the turn lights.

But it did uncover a new problem.

Merle voiced it, "That stop probably knocked everything in the
trailer loose." I hadn t thought about that point. I gently urged our
wagon train over to the side of the highway and fearfully we both
walked back to the trailer. We fully expected it to be a shambles.

We had reckoned without the manufacturer. He undoubtedly had
calculated in advance that a great many stupid people would be towing
his trailers and had built them accordingly. We looked inside. Every
thing was in place. No casualties no damage.

We started again, but every car track, every bump made me wince.
I drove as though we were transporting a carload of eggs. Even this
didn t prevent us from stopping every few miles to recheck the in
terior.

The constant starting and stopping gave me a new confidence.
Looking in the rear-vision mirror no longer held any terrors. The
fact that I had clear vision completely through the trailer turned out
to be a great comfort. It was possible to watch approaching vehicles
with ease and, thereby, avoid the nerve-wracking convulsion that always
seized me when a hitherto unseen car "whoooshed" by at sixty-five.
As a matter of fact, I planned to sit down and write the manufacturer
the moment we arrived in Modesto to inform him that this clear vision
through the trailer was one of the finest features of his product.

We had left Los Angeles at four thirty in the morning. Here we
were in Bakersfield at ten o clock. The trip indicator on the speedometer
read 104 miles. A little quick calculation told me we had averaged

52 The Long, Long Trailer

nineteen miles per hour. I was a little disappointed. There were times
when I had the feeling we were exceeding the speed limit, but ap
parently I had been wrong in this.

The July heat in this desert area was becoming oppressive. We had
dressed for the early morning chill. Now Merle ordered another stop,
while she changed to lighter things. It took a ten-mile search along
the highway before we found an area sufficiently wide and long enough
to accommodate both car and trailer. Merle changed clothes in the
trailer while I examined my watch.

At the rate we were traveling, I calculated, it would take us two years
to reach Albuquerque, New Mexico, at which point our vacation
would be over.

On the road again I decided I was sufficiently expert at trailer-towing
to step up our speed to twenty-five miles. I had no sooner made the
decision when a car whoooshed by at breakneck speed. I shuddered
and promptly slowed down again. I squinted into the rear-vision mirror
I couldn t quite understand why I hadn t seen it. While I was thus
occupied, two more cars roared by. They were equally nerve jan
gling. I looked again in the mirror I couldn t even see the highway!
I gasped, and sucked in a ton of air. My eyesight, I thought, it s
failing me at last. A thing I had feared for years, from having
spent too many hours in a motion-picture projection booth in my
youth.

I hated mentioning the tragedy to Merle; it meant the end of the
trip, of course. We drove along for perhaps five miles while I tried to
frame an opening gambit, the while bracing myself against the terror
of overtaking cars roaring by, most with horns wide open. I tried to
be gentle and unexcited about my vision.

"My eyes," I said, "they re very tired." I heaved a sigh. "I m having
difficulty focusing in the rear-vision mirror."

With this, Merle sat up ram-rod straight. I gave her a weak, "under-

Mob Psychology ~~

standing smile. Fm bearing up very well, I thought, under such tragic
circumstances.

Merle looked at me, then slowly turned and looked back at the
trailer. Then she looked into my eyes. "I forgot and left the blinds
down after I changed clothes," she said, "that s why you can t see through
the trailer."

We drove into Modesto in stony silence.

8. MOB PSYCHOLOGY

WE ARRIVED in Modesto at five o clock 308 miles

and twelve and a half hours after our departure from Los Angeles.
Merle s whole family was standing in the street, acting as a welcoming
committee. Since we looked like the second section of the Super
Chief, it was no trouble at all for them to spot us two miles away.

As we pulled to a stop, everybody congratulated everybody else.
From the gasps of amazement and oh s and ah s, we began to get the
feeling we had accomplished a feat at least equal to Byrd s South Pole
expedition and certainly far surpassing Lindbergh s flight to Paris.-

With the addition of the neighbors to the welcoming committee, the
little group had grown to sizeable proportions. While Merle regaled
the gathering with our hair-raising exploits, I tried to act the modest
little fellow who thought little or nothing o towing a two-and-a-
half-ton monster over three hundred miles.

"Nothing to it. Absolutely nothing to it," I kept repeating, until I
began to bore even myself.

54 The Long, Long Trailer

It was Pop who pulled us up short with the news that he had pre
pared a spot for the trailer. It was in front of the garage, at the end
of the driveway. He even had a water pipe run alongside and sewers
installed. A special connection to the garage lights would give us elec
tricity, without fear of blowing a fuse. He had thought of everything
or nearly everything. The garage was perched on the back of the
lot at the end of the driveway. The driveway itself was one-hundred
feet long and nine feet wide.

I put my stamp of approval on the set-up, but pointed out to him
that if I pulled into the driveway, the car would be trapped between
the garage and tie trailer. "And," I said laughingly, "we want to do
some driving around, don t we?"

Pop laughed with me, he thought I might be making jokes.

"No, no," he said, "you don t get the idea. We bac\ it in, then
unhook the car and you re all set."

I got the idea all right, only too well! ! I shuddered, and my knees
sagged perceptibly. Back it up, he had said. My mind was trying to
grasp the enormity of his proposal. Back up the eight-foot-wide trailer,
one-hundred feet down a nine-foot driveway? Me back it up! The
incompetent, who had never backed a trailer in his life was now ex
pected to embark on the rare adventure of thrusting the camel through
the needle s eye.

The congregation in the street had wandered up the driveway and
was following me like a returned war hero. They had all heard the
injunction to back the trailer and were selecting strategic locations
from which to witness this operation.

I tried to look efficient. I walked out in the street and viewed the
driveway from that angle k reminded me of the Burma Road, after
a paralyzing rain.

There was a huge climbing rose espaliered against the side of the
house next to the driveway. It had canes as big around as my wrist that

Mob Psychology e?

ran over the top of the house, but a goodly number had failed to make
the house and were hanging their thorn-encrusted arms over the drive
way.

"We ll have to prop up that rambler," I said, with what I hoped was a
ring of authority. I had no more than made the statement when there
was a great scurrying about in the crowd. Pop, the spectators and the rest
of the family immediately reappeared with hammer, nails, saw, two-by-
fours and a pair of long-handled pruning shears. In less than a minute
the rambler was pruned, propped, nailed and cut. I could postpone the
backing attempt no longer.

They had me.

I climbed into the seat of the car with all the alacrity of a hearse
driver and started the motor. The assembly again took up positions
around the driveway like vultures, I thought afraid of losing a bit of
carrion.

Since I had stopped on the right-hand side of the street, past the drive
way, my first attempt at backing was a complete failure. As one of the
spectators pointed out, I was coming in from the blind side. I managed
to get the left-rear wheel on the driveway, but the right-rear wheel
creased a four-inch deep furrow across the virgin lawn. In pulling
ahead, I cramped the wheels in the opposite direction and managed to
cut another four-inch-deep furrow, which left a V-shaped gash in the
lawn.

The neighbors quickly gathered around the ruined lawn to sympa
thize with Pop. Pop took it pretty light-heartedly and swore that he
could repair the damage himself by cutting out the wheel marks, filling
in underneath with dirt, then replacing the lawn. It seemed to me,
though, that his light-heartedness was just a little forced. Then I looked
at Mom. Her forehead was wrinkled in a frown but she said nothing.

The second attempt was a little better but produced no definite results.
By now I was being influenced by the majority vote of the mob. It was

56 The Long, Long Trailer

nearly unanimously agreed that I should turn around and have a go
at the thing from the left-hand side. Since I wasn t sure I could turn the
trailer around in a four-lane street, this necessitated driving around two
square blocks and returning to the street from the opposite direction.
This I did without incident and eventually got the trailer lined up, so in
backing I could watch the rear end.

This procedure was entirely logical and correct but very disconcert
ing. The rear end of the trailer always persisted in going in a direction
exactly opposite to my calculations. Repeated attempts to outguess the
rear end had, thus far, succeeded only in heating up the motor and
driver. Since the temperature was in the nineties, huge wavelets of
perspiration were streaming down my face and shirt.

A contributing factor to the overheating was the disturbing realiza
tion that the mob was no longer operating as a cohesive unit. It was
impossible to get a unanimous opinion on anything now. They had
first split up into segments, roughly, family against family. Now it was
every man for himself. Instructions came from everywhere and every
body. Since I had demonstrated my ineptness at backing up, they all
felt free to offer suggestions and issue commands by the thousands.

There was even one expert in the crowd. He had rented a small
trailer once (so he said), in which he hauled manure. "I ve backed
her up hundreds of times," he shouted, "and never lost a " He re
membered we were in mixed company just in time. I followed his
advice exclusively for perhaps five minutes but succeeded only in knock
ing down a small orange tree which had been planted the year previous.

I was becoming a little panic-stricken. For more than an hour the
rig had defied every attempt to get its rear end up to the garage.
The high-water mark was a distance of fifty feet but at this point the
trailer was practically crosswise of the driveway, so I had to pull ahead
again.

The suggestion came from Pop that I just sit quietly while he went

Mob Psychology 57

three doors down the street to get Mr. Poppolotomo. Mr. Poppolotomo
was a truck driver who had been towing a heavy truck trailer all his
life. The implication was that Mr. Poppolotomo could back the thing
in place in a twinkling. I seethed inside at this. The constant scream
ing directions, fired from the sidelines, had unnerved me, but the
insult of tossing in Mr. Poppolotomo, caused me to come completely
unglued.

I made one more brave attempt to pull myself together. I asked for
complete silence from the mob. After cramping the wheels to the
right, I calmly got out of the car to examine the front end. I would
trace back the action of this articulated monster from front to back.
From a front view, with the wheels turned to the right the rear of the
car would go to the right the dolly wheel to the left then right
the rear trailer wheels to the left and the rear end of the trailer to
the left. / had it! I had found the solution. I felt definitely superior.
I had the answer, even if it did come a little late.

I turned to the mob. "Now," I said, "I m going to take her straight
back all the way!" There was silence for a moment, then everyone
started babbling at once. I strode confidently to the car. "Stand back
now, everybody," I commanded, and put the car in gear. I looked at
Pop. He gave me a weak smile of encouragement and turned to look
at Mom. That sweet little lady was calm and serene, except for the
slightest trace of a puzzled frown.

Gently, I let out the clutch. The car and trailer moved smoothly
back, till the wheels of the car encountered the slope up into the drive
way. The rig almost came to a standstill. I stepped on the gas too
hard! The car leaped back I clutched the wheel and turned It a little
to the right.

"No! No! To the left!" somebody shouted.

This was followed by a cacophony of commands all of which I tried
to obey.

58 The Long, Long Trailer

"Turn left," "Right, right." "No, left now right/ "Watch it" "Look
out." "Hold it! hold it!!" "LooooJ^ oooout!"

There was a crackling of timbers falling a shudder went through
the monster and there was splintering, ripping and tearing that sounded
like a herd of wild elephants crashing through the living room. Then
there was deafening quiet.

It was at this point that Morn made the statement which she has
subsequently denied. I don t profess to report the remark verbatim,
since I was on the borderline between complete demoralization and
insanity, but, it is as accurate as my astonished ears could make out.

Mom rushed up to the car and hammered with her fists on the open
door.

"My rambler," she screamed, "my rambler. You tore down my
rambler with your Goddamn stinking trailer!"

The mob was so nonplussed by this outburst that one by one the
members slunk slowly away. Only a few of the really staunch friends
stood by a sufficiently muscular group to help me unhook the trailer
and push it into place in front of the garage. There we hooked up to
water, sewer connections and the electric outlet in the garage.

With relationships strained as they were, Merle and I even refrained
from complaining when anyone visited the garage. From force of long
habit these visitors always snapped off the garage light on departure.
And with every snap, the trailer would be plunged into darkness.
Disconcerting, yes, but, as I say, we didn t complain.

9. HOT AND COLD TRAILERS

OUR FIRST few days in Modesto were spent re
pairing the physical damage to the property and the mental damage
to the family. Mom was especially hard put trying to live down the
after effects of her counternatural outburst of profanity over the wrecked
climbing rose. Many of her friends and neighbors too many had
heard her use language which she herself never dreamed would pass
her lips.

We found the physical damage much easier to repair than the
shattered nerves.

Viewed objectively, the whole thing added up to a minor holocaust.
Several pieces of siding had been cracked and dented on the side of
the house. The climbing rose while it wasn t completely demolished
had been set back several years in its growth. A pretty severe pruning
operation was inaugurated and nearly half the outside wall, uncovered
by this undertaking, revealed a paint job untouched by the sun. It
was, of course, several shades lighter than the rest of the house. Pop
was particularly unhappy about this. Some consideration was given
to the idea of getting several buckets of paint, and as Pop said, pointedly,
"with everybody pitching in," perhaps we could again make the side
of the house one color. I favored the sun being allowed to fade the
bare spots but nobody agreed. We painted. We tore out orange trees
and replanted. We dug up the lawn, dumped in dirt and replaced the
sod.

We spent days getting the place back to normal, until I remarked
laughingly to the family, "If we spend enough time to put everything
back in shape, well have to spend our whole two-years vacation right
here." The reaction was electric. Everybody pitched in, from babies to
grandmothers, all wearing a look of quiet horror.

I didn t have to have a house fall on me (although it nearly did)

59

60 The Long, Long Trailer

to learn I was no longer a member of the clan in full standing. I was
tolerated just barely, and that s all

Even with all the various repair jobs under way, we found some time
to devote to the trailer. It had come through the baptism of fire, almost
unscathed. There were a few little scratches and dents here and there,
but we refrained from even commenting on these, in view of the
damage that was clearly visible all around us.

The problem of the trailer was purely empirical Try and discard
then try again. I eventually got it anchored, so it was possible to walk
from end to end without the use of sea legs. With a level (a recent
addition to our growing accessory list) I managed to get it on a reason
ably even keel. At least the sinks and shower drained fairly well, even
if the coffee pot did continue to tilt at a slight angle.

We found we had backed the trailer too close to the garage, thereby
destroying any possibility of through ventilation; however, there was
never any thought at any time of attempting to move it. The circula
tion of air was nil. Through the use of the compass in the handle
of one of the cocktail mixers, we learned we were parked due east
and west. But we didn t need the compass to tell us this. The tempera
ture was in the hundreds, and the sun beating down on our little
nest from dawn to dusk, created a roaring inferno inside. While the
aluminum exterior may have shut out the ultra-violet rays, it sent
something else flying through the trailer that resembled nothing so
much as tongues of flame.

I decided to do something about this heat problem. A tour of the
shops with Pop was in order. We didn t know exactly what we were
looking for we simply wanted something to keep a trailer cool. We
found the device in a drug store. It was called a "room cooler" and it
was a fairly ugly-looking affair, not unlike a square-cornered coffin,
only smaller. There were louvered openings at both ends. A small
electric fan was mounted inside of one end; a large pan in the bottom

Hot and Cold Trailers 61

for water, and a wheel in the other end that was supposed to dip up
the water, thereby permitting the fan to blow cool, moist air out the
front end.

Pop and I both agreed that, while it might not be the handsomest
device in the world, it was certainly the answer to the heat problem.
We hurried home with it, in order to get it installed and in operation
as a surprise for Merle. We sneaked it in the trailer, filled it with water,
propped it up with pieces of wood against the trailer s own ventilating
system (we felt two fans would be better than one), and started it off.

We even threw some ice cubes in the water pan, thinking thereby
to create a cooler breeze. This was a mistake though, since the wheel
that was supposed to dip up water also picked up the ice cubes and
slapped them around at an alarming rate. The two fans got hold of
what remained of the ice cubes and began throwing shaved ice out
the front end. While it did cool off the trailer at a rate faster than the
guarantee had anticipated, we realized that ice cubes flying around
might be as uncomfortable as the heat. We abandoned the ice-cube
business after managing to get a great deal of water and a not in
considerable amount of crushed ice on the davenport, rugs and wel
come mat.

Then we mopped up the place and called for Merle. We both stood
proudly over the cooler as she came in the door.

She froze hi her tracks. "What s that?" she demanded.

Since I wanted Pop to have part of the credit for the idea, I waited.
He said nothing. He s older and more experienced than I am. He
sensed what was coming, I didn t.

"That," I said with real enthusiasm, "is a room cooler. It will keep
the temperature down to "

Merle broke in, "Get it out of here!**

"But," I said, "we just got it in,**

"Then you can just get it right out!**

62 The Long, Long Trailer

"But we haven t tried it. We wanted to *

Again she interrupted, "Get that thing out of here this instant!
It s awful. It doesn t match anything in the trailer and it couldn t
keep a bird house cool!"

My eyes searched the trailer. It didn t actually match anything. "But
about keeping the place cool," I said, "I ll leave it to " I looked
around for Pop. He had slunk off. He had deserted me. I couldn t fight
the battle alone. I picked up the room cooler and took it outside.

It was an awkward piece of despised machinery. I had $23.39 (with
tax) tied up in the thing and apparently nobody wanted it.

I dumped out the water, loaded it in the car and headed for the
"ethical cut-rate drug" from which institution it had been purchased.
I found the clerk who had sold it to us and tried to make a quick ex
change of the machine for my $23.39. He was dubious about the re
fund and called the assistant manager, who went right to the point.
"What s the matter with it?" he wanted to know.

"Well nothing really," I said.

He could scarcely believe his ears. "Nothing s the matter with it
and you want your money bac%?"

I was definitely on the defensive. "It just doesn t fit in the space
I originally had in mind," I went on lamely.

"Then put it someplace else." He was a pretty positive fellow.

I tried another tack. "It didn t cool the room down very well," I said.

"What size room you got?"

"Eight feet by twenty-eight."

"Eight feet by twenty-eight," he snorted. "What kind o a house do
you live in? Is it a one-room house?"

I was trapped. "Yes," I said feebly, "a one-room house."

"Oh!" he sneered, "a trailer, huh!"

It was easy to ferret out the implication. People who lived in trailers
were the social equivalent of carrion.

Hot and Cold Trailers 63

He braced himself, and thumping me on the chest with his fore
finger said, "Look, Mac, i this cooler won t keep a trailer that size
cool, I will come down personally and build you an igloo of ice blocks."

I picked up the thing again and lugged it out to the car. All the
way back to the trailer I pondered the situation before I formulated
what I felt was a reasonably sound plan. The positiveness of the as-
sistant manager had convinced me that the device, though ugly, was
efficient.

I walked into the folks house with the cooler slung over my shoulder.
Mom was ironing and mopping her brow. I said nothing but placed
the gadget in a strategic location, filled it again with water (omitting
the ice cubes) and turned it on. Soon a cooling breeze was in evidence.
Mom sighed a sigh of relief. I sat down contented. I felt I had made
progress, yes, considerable progress on the road back into the good
graces of the family. Twenty-three dollars and thirty-nine cents worth
of progress.

We spent a great part of the month of July anchored to the spot
in front of the garage. It was a pleasant fortnight marred only by a
dozen or so minor crises. Among them:

(a) The persistent and conscientious people who continually turned
off our lights; (&) the efforts of the sun to melt the aluminum trailer
back to its original liquid state; (c) the foodstuff that turned doubtful
in the hesitant refrigerator; (d) the bathroom that became a torture
chamber because the hot-water tank was always cold; (<?) the depletion
of our medical kit by the headknockers, who smashed into the door
despite our warnings, and (/) the windows broken by the small boys
with slingshots who claimed they were aiming at birds.

10. ON TO NEVADA

OUR PLANS called for the next leg of our journey
to end In Idaho Orofino, Idaho, where we would visit my sisters.

Again we went through the packing operation, but this time we
made one or two concessions which cut the ceremony to a twelve-hour
job. Again the departure time was set at four in the morning. The
early hour was decided on for two reasons to rehearse my trailer-
towing while there was no traffic; and to avoid the mob, which I knew
would gather again if the word got around that I was going to do
a repeat performance with the trailer. Our explosive arrival had given
this group a great deal of table conversation; and, despite our precau
tion, I was afraid the news had got around that our departure was im
minent.

I was sure of this when I heard a nine-year-old in the block telling
one of his chums, "Pa says we gotta find out when he s gonna leave.
He says we don t wanna miss seein what this fella does to a trailer."
That alone was sufficient reason for the early hour.

I was almost positive I could haul the rig down the driveway with
a minimum of damage; but if worse came to worst, and I did knock
the house down, I preferred to do it in solitude.

We negotiated the fearsome hundred feet down the driveway with
out incident, unless you call the uprooting of a geranium (which I had
somehow missed on the backing in) an incident. With tears in her
eyes Mom assured me it was "Nothing at all. Just an old weed, really."

We paused in the street to wave our good-byes, while the thwarted
mob peeked out from behind drawn blinds. Then we quietly slid off
in the direction our compass said was north.

From the standpoint of traffic, the early start was a useless gesture.
Everybody in the world seemed to be already on the highway. It took
an hour or more to get the "feel" of towing the trailer again. I learned
6 4

On to Nevada 65

to fear slow-moving trucks. And I demanded a clear highway for at
least five miles both fore and aft before I would attempt to pass even
an old man with a wheelbarrow.

It was a slow march into Sacramento and a fearful trip through
the city streets. It was the city driving that prompted us to form the
partnership of pilot and co-pilot. Since a car traveling parallel to the
trailer on the right-hand side was totally invisible to me, we installed
long extension mirrors on both sides of the car. This permitted me on
the left and Merle on the right to get a clear view of traffic on either
side of the trailer.

I had learned that traveling in the inside lane of a four- or six-lane
highway was equivalent to being stranded on an ice floe in the North
Atlantic. But even more terrifying was the thought of nudging our
forty-five-foot rig from the inside lane to the outside. With Merle
established in the co-pilot s seat, we hoped to overcome this difficulty.

We even set up signals. I was to ask the question, "Is there a car
on the right?" Merle was to look in the mirror, judge the distance to
the nearest car, then answer "Yes" or "No." If "No," I would very
cautiously creep into the outer lane ... if "Yes," I would wait for
further instructions.

It was a pretty neat arrangement and worked to perfection. We were
totally dependent one on the other, and knew it. The great feeling
of confidence between us was evidenced by the smooth manner in
which we had negotiated the last fifteen or twenty blocks, and right
through a maze of red lights and stop signals too.

What prompted me to deviate from our agreed upon procedure I
will never know. The changed form of the interrogation will haunt me
the rest of my life. Time and again I had asked the question, "Is there
a car on the right?" The answer, "yes." I would wait for the "all
clear," then pull to the right.

This one time, and this one time only, I changed the question. It

, 66 The Long, Long Trailer

came out without the slightest knowledge of what a changed word or
two could do to a trailer. I said, "Is it dear on the right?"

Merle squinted in the mirror, and from force of habit said "Yes."
I pulled to the right. There was a screeching of brakes.

Merle shouted, "No! No! There s a car there!! Get back to the
left!!"

I started to turn left, it was too late, there was a car on the left
crowding me. I turned back to the right. A nimble man in a Chevrolet,
neatly cleared the curb and made for the sidewalk. He rounded a
telephone pole, found an opening between two cars and returned to the
street in front of us. We both stopped.

Merle stuck her head out the window and screamed at him, "You
were driving too darn fast/

I tried to calm her down and hastily prepare several alibis at the
same time. He was approaching us with a firm step. He may have
been nimble, but he was big too. Too big! He had the mien and un
pleasant features of Gargantua.

Merle needled him again, "Why don t you look where you re going,
you you stupid individual!!" It was the most pungent epithet she
could muster.

I remember Max Schrneling s scream of pain as Joe Louis socked
one into his midriff, and flexed my stomach muscles in preparation.
Merle leaned far out the window and shouted something I couldn t
understand over the roar of the traffic. Gargantua s pace seemed to
quicken. I thought of Jess Willard s face after Dempsey had deftly rear
ranged his features on another hot July day in Toledo. I thought of
David and Goliath, but I couldn t for the life of me find any comfort
in any of these encounters.

Somehow I sensed what Merle expected me to do. She was looking
at me with her "We ll show him" glint. I know she expected me to
calmly get out of the car, give Gargantua the old one-two, dust off

On to Nevada gy

my hands, step disdainfully back into the car and drive off leaving
the bleeder lying in the gutter for the emergency hospital boys.

The nimble man was right on me now. He stuck his face in the
window, his features distorted and stared me right in the eye, not
two inches away. I swallowed a huge lump in my throat while he
waggled a menacing finger under my nose and exploded sneeringly,
"apple knockers!" With that he turned and calmly walked away!

Making the big climb to Donner Summit is a thriller, especially so
when you have two-and-a-half tons pulling on your rear and urging
you back to your starting point. We ticked off the elevation. Auburn
1400 feet. Emigrant Gap 5250 feet. Donner Pass 7135 feet. Then sud
denly the top, and the sharp drop down the other side.

It looked like a ski run. The highway lost fifteen-hundred feet in
what seemed less than a mile. We went into low then put on the
trailer brakes then the car brakes. I longed for an anchor. Now we had
something to brag about.

We coasted into Reno where the city council must have had advance
warning of our arrival. They had selected this day to repaint the white
lines on one side of the highway through the city. It s difficult enough
running a Pullman car down the main street with both sides open to
traffic. But with only one side open, and traffic going both ways, it
presented a problem we were able to solve only with the perfect opera
tion of our pilot and co-pilot system.

The trailer parks, of course, were all on the left-hand side of the street;
the council had probably taken care of that. The street marking didn t
let up until we were gently urged through and out of Reno and into
Sparks. There we finally spotted a trailer park which was attainable. We
stopped. I investigated the place for booby traps such as the necessity of
backing up. It was wide open, so we pulled in and parked.

I hastily got out my corrected list of things to do and the order in

68 The Long, Long Trailer

which to do them. I connected the lights and water and went inside
to test them, while Merle was outside shaking the rugs. Even through
the trailer walls I could hear a raucous female voice bellowing, "Well
well well!" I looked out the window.

The raucous voice, it turned out was owned by the over-enthusiastic
wife of a construction worker who had lived in trailers all her married
life. The constant search for something better prompted her to in
vestigate every trailer she saw. She was completely carried away with
our rig, and vowed she would have one just like it.

Her curiosity was insatiable. I laid on the floor under the bed with
her for hours on end, while I explained the operation of my tank in
vention. Then I would lie there operating the valves while she stood in
the bathroom watching Mister MacPherson. She thrust her head out
the door and yelled for her husband. The whole operation had to be
repeated. The demonstration went on for so long, and eventually
attracted so many people, that we had to call a halt. Then, too, I
was exhausted from crawling back and forth under the bed.

After a half -day rest, we left Sparks without seeing much of Reno.
We decided we were temporarily tired of people and longed to "get
away from it all." Our next day s travel would give us ample op
portunity for solitude. We were headed north on U.S. 95 through a
sparsely settled section of Nevada.

At Lovelock we filled one tank and at Winnemucca, the other. At
McDermitt we bought groceries and headed for the desert. At dusk,
when we were fifty miles from nowhere, I made the dramatic an
nouncement: "This is the place."

We pulled off the highway over an old, little-used road, then onto
the desert itself. Our front yard was a hundred square miles of sage
brush and sand. Our bedroom window framed a towering mountain
range and the fast-sinking sun,

Here we were on the desert alone. Here was our golden oppor-

On to Nevada 69

tunity to determine If the trailer was a complete self-contained unit.
The sun finally went down and pretty soon a cool night breeze crept
over the desert.

We were ready. The lights in the trailer came on. The floor furnace
was lighted. The oven became busy and there was a friendly clatter
of pots and pans. We prefaced the evening with a martini, while the
wine was chilling in the refrigerator. This was living! Everything
worked. The bathroom, lights, water pump, butane and even my
self -concocted reading light, which operated from a battery.

The moon sent a pleasant glow through the window and urged the
wind to move along a little more briskly as we lay there reading. Soon
the final click of the light switch and all was quiet.

It must have been about three o clock in the morning when I felt
the "clutching hand" on my arm. It was Merle. This wasn t my first
experience with the clutching hand. Several times each year during our
whole married life, Merle has brought me to a leaping-standing posi
tion on the bed in this manner. At night especially, she seemed to
acquire a grip like the bite of a horse, and I always came roaring out
of a sound sleep with the feeling I had just lost an arm to a crocodile.
This occasion was no exception. In that sepulchral tone she effects
when she wants to stunt my growth and see gray hairs pop out
at the temples, she rasped, "Listen!" I listened. There was a weird
howling just outside the trailer.

"Wolves," she breathed.

I could almost see the ugly, dripping fangs of the beasts, but breathed
back, "There are no wolves on the desert."

"Then it s snakes," she whispered.

"Snakes don t howl," I whispered back.

But she wouldn t be downed. She switched to her "Voice of Doom"
tone. "Then it s coyotes, that s what it is coyotes! Get the, gun!"

I had almost forgotten the twenty-five caliber pistol we had pur-

70 The Long, Long Trailer

chased in Modesto. It was a snub-nosed, wicked-looking, little thing,
which I had tested on a beer bottle while standing carefully behind a
tree. My observer, whom I had stationed fifty feet away, had in
formed me that because of the inaccuracy of the sight and the shortness
of the barrel, I would have some difficulty hitting an elephant at five
paces. This discrepancy in the gun now made me a little uneasy. On
top of that, I had taken it apart and distributed the pieces throughout
the trailer, merely as a precautionary measure. Reassembling it in the
dark seemed like an impossible task and I so informed Merle.

But she was insistent, and the weird siren-like howls were becoming
more pronounced and seemingly closer. I slipped out of bed and toured
the trailer for gun parts. The grip was in the vanity; the barrel in the
half closet; the clip in the chest over the refrigerator and the box of
shells under the davenport.

While I was assembling the gun, Merle developed a plan of attack.
"The moon is so bright," she whispered hoarsely, "that we can see
everywhere. We ll look around near the trailer first."

My hair stood on end. "You mean well look around from inside,
don t you?" I said. She nodded. Reassured, I started a tour of the win
dows, gun at the ready and Merle close behind me. She has eyes like
binoculars and spotted so many imaginary coyotes in a matter of
seconds that, had I shot through the walls at every other one, the
trailer would have looked like a machine gun target, after heavy prac
tice.

Merle s sharp eyesight posed something of a problem; I never was
quite sure when her imagination might turn into a solid, substantial
wolf or coyote. Under her prodding the urge to pull the trigger was
most compelling; only a mental picture of the sieve-like trailer pre
vented it.

On the other hand my nearsightedness complicated the situation
further. I have some difficulty distinguishing a frying pan from a dime

Dress Rehearsal on the Desert 71

at any distance beyond arm s length: This nearsightedness of mine
coupled with Merle s farsightedness, left the middle distances open
for the beasts outside to do their prowling without fear of detection.
In the end I was forced to demand that the hunt be postponed until
I located my glasses.

With our field of vision widened by the addition of the glasses,
we then completed the round of the twelve windows no coyote.

"But I can still hear the howling/ Merle insisted.

There was no denying that. The howling was there and close. Then
she pointed to the bathroom.

"The bathroom window we missed it."

She was right. We had skipped the bathroom window on the tour.
Cautiously I approached the bathroom and carefully opened the door.
The howl leaped out at me. It was coming from Mister MacPherson
the wind was whistling up his pipes I had forgotten to put out the
drain hoses.

We went back to bed, but not to sleep. We lay awake all night
listening to the coyotes in the bathroom.

11. DRESS REHEARSAL ON
THE DESERT

THE EARLY blaze of the morning sun, plus a

sleepless night, left the jolly breakfast we had anticipated something
a little less than jolly.
The dozens of lonely desert night sounds are easily converted by the

T 2 The Long, Long Trailer

imagination into substantial elephants trying to up-end the trailer, or
lions and tigers stealthily creeping from greasewood to mesquite clump.

Then there were the footsteps that marched around us the whole
night through. I investigated. There was no body attached to them
the footsteps marched alone.

While I tried to anticipate the unusual number of clutching hands,
several times Merle caught me unawares and my hackles rose and fell
throughout the night with the regularity of a bilge pump.

The activity of these denizens of the desert was punctuated spas
modically by the howls from Mister MacPherson. We liked the howls
best. We knew what they were.

In spite of all this it was difficult to be glum over a sizeable portion
of ham and eggs. While Merle did the dishes, I took my morning
constitutional on the desert.

It was while thus occupied that the plan came to me. Spread out
before us was a vast expanse of desert. I recalled an earlier proposal
to Merle that we have the trailer towed to Muroc Dry Lake on the
Mojave Desert so I might practice turns, stops, starts and above all
backing up.

This desire to learn to back up properly and accurately had become
an obsession since the Modesto disaster. The flame inside burned
brightly. I pictured myself time and again pulling into a trailer park,
casting a practiced eye over the available spaces, then with a few deft
movements, whipping the trailer around and into place, while the
old trailer hands stood by in awe and wonder at this genius who had
mastered the training of the most difficult of all animals the long
trailer. With the trailer lined up beside the cement patio as though
with a surveyor s transit, I would then stride into the office to sign
the register, while the manager bowed and scraped.

Merle broke up this day dream with a shout from the trailer. "YouVe
got to bury the garbage!"

Dress Rehearsal on the Desert 73

It was a pretty rude awakening from the pleasant reverie but I
didn t mind too much. I had a wonderful idea. I ran all the way
back to the trailer, burst in the door, and pointed dramatically to the
desert.

"Look," I said. "Look out there!"

Merle leaped a good foot off the floor. She thought at first I was
pointing out coyotes. She followed the sweep of my index finger. "I
don t see anything."

"Desert," I breathed. I caressed the word as though I were saying
"emeralds," or "mink," or "gold." Merle nodded. Then I went to work.
I reminded her of the "Muroc Plan." I enthused over the wonderful
opportunity that had been dumped right in our laps.

"Here is the desert, hundreds of square miles no white lines
no houses no driveways no ramblers. We can do quick and slow
starts. We can rehearse stops. We can even," I took a deep breath, "learn
to back up!"

Merle looked pensive. The backing up seemed to take effect. She
was undoubtedly reviewing in her mind the carnage wrought in
Modesto.

I went on with enthusiasm. "We can practice backing for miles
if necessary," I pointed out. "Ill get so good I can back the thing up
to the garage next time and right around the house without bruising a
single rosebud."

I felt I had ended on a pretty triumphant note.

Merle was a little wary. "What," she said, with just the barest hint
of suspicion in her voice, "do you want me to do?"

I tried to be casual, but I guess I was a little elaborate. "Do?" I
said, "Why nothing. Of course it would be helpful if you d just
follow the trailer around the desert and tell me how Fm doing
that s all."

"That s all," she shrilled. "That s all! You want me to run my legs

74 The Long, Long Trailer

off leaping over cactus, falling down gopher holes and maybe stepping
on snakes? No!!"

I calmed her down by reminding her again of the havoc wrought
at Modesto. I painted pictures of wonderful side trips we couldn t
take because we were unable to handle the rig properly. I pictured
beautiful trailer parks we couldn t enter because we had never learned
to back the trailer. I agonized over the ignominy of being sneered at
by our fellow trailerites because I was too weak or too ignorant to
master the few simple movements necessary to control the thing in
reverse. I poured my whole heart and soul into an entreaty against
the inanimate monster that would go only where it wanted to go,
not where we wanted to take it. And, in the end, Merle relented and
agreed to follow the thing around and tell me what I was doing
wrong.

I carefully laid out the agenda. We would first rehearse stops and
starts then turns, then backing. I determined on this order of business
because the matter of starts and stops required very little activity on
the part of the observer. The turns might be a shade more difficult,
and with the backing up almost anything could happen. I didn t want
Merle to get discouraged before we completed the experiment.

With Merle standing fifty feet or so off to the side of the trailer,
we began our "dry runs." We did starts and stops slow fast medium,
until I was proficient at getting the rig rolling and bringing it to rest
without the agonizing succession of jerks we had encountered thus
far. Jerks that resembled the backlash of an overloaded freight train
trying to get under way on a steep grade.

Whenever Merle detected the slightest flaw in my towmanship,
the maneuver would be repeated. With the starts and stops mastered,
my confidence rose and we switched our efforts to Point II on the
agenda turns, or as we elegantly termed them, "chandelles."

We were even profligate with our use of the desert. Because we

Dress Rehearsal on the Desert 75

had made so many sitzmarks and wheel tracks in one area, we shifted
our operations to a fresh, untrammeled section; the better to observe
the wheel action, or, as Merle put it (after the operation) so she could
insert her starting blocks a little deeper in the soft sand, the better to
catapult herself at the trailer with the first pop of the exhaust. It
really wasn t quite that bad, or, at least it didn t seem so from the
driver s seat.

The turning operation consisted of wide, sweeping circles, which
encompassed an acre or so of ground, but which required the ob
server to run alongside the hitch between the car and trailer. The
wheels were cramped a little more, and the circle tightened with each
revolution, in the manner of a watch spring. It was my hope that
we could eventually line the car up at right angles to the trailer, which
would give us a turning diameter of thirty-one feet.

Long before we reached this stage, four stops were required
twice, to give the observer a rest; once, to permit the emptying of sand
from her shoes; and the last, which was by far the most tragic and
important, when she stumbled and fell into what I staunchly and
romantically declared was a buffalo chip. But after that Merle refused
to have anything further to do with the trailer rehearsal until I agreed
that the observer could do her observing from a stationary point fifty
feet away. It wasn t a completely satisfactory arrangement, but the
labor pool was at the very minimum so there was no thought of arbitra
tion.

The left turns were a great success. We found we could turn the
trailer wherever we could turn the car. Not so, the right turns. I
cramped the wheels hard to the right, thinking there would be no
difference. Merle discovered otherwise.

"The pipe/ she screamed, "the pipe!! It s wrinkling!!"

I stopped the trailer and leaned over the car. The pipe, indeed, was
wrinkled. The fan tail was mashed into an unrecognizable ball and the

76 The Long, Long Trailer

exhaust bent at right angles to the car. I had forgotten that the exhaust
outlet was on the right-hand side.

A few harsh words passed between driver and observer. I pointed
out that the observer should have been running in circles beside the
hitch. The observer retaliated by insisting that she had run in circles
for some twenty-odd years now, and it was time she had a rest.
Further, anybody should know that all cars have exhausts, and they
have to stick out some place and why didn t I look.

The verbal exchange was a mistake. It caused me to lose my observer
completely, right at the most important point on the agenda backing
up. No amount of persuasion could get her to resume her post.

The situation now required a little improvising. First of all, I had
to have markers of some sort to use as guide posts. A search of the
immediate area turned up one old beer can probably the only sur
viving evidence of the efforts of some other harassed trailerite. A
pioneer, no doubt, who had discovered early in his career the necessity
of taking the obtuse monsters into the wide open spaces for taming
and training. A more careful scanning of the desert floor failed to
uncover any more beer cans. This posed the problem of a second
guide post to mark the opening through which to rehearse backing
the trailer.

In desperation I placed the beer can nine feet to the right of the
buffalo chip and had my first go at backing up. After cleaning the
right-rear wheel and a small section of the trailer, I moved the beer
can to the left-hand side, so the buffalo chip was thereafter in full
view and if I found my calculations incorrect, I could stop and realign
the trailer without having to do a complete wash job each time.

I worked at this backing-up business carefully and earnestly. So
earnestly in fact, that it was some time before we noticed a sizeable
line-up of cars gathered on the highway, less than a quarter of a mile
away. The occupants probably thought they had discovered the last

The Monster Performs 77

of the covered wagons, which at some obscure and confusing corner
had made a wrong turn and thereby missed the Oregon Trail.

Curiosity must have got the better of these spectators since an emissary
was sent out ostensibly to inquire the distance to McDermitt on the
pretext that he was low on gas. This brave soul approached us with
a "Doctor Livingstone, I presume" attitude, but on seeing the endless
circular wheel marks on tie desert, and observing the guide posts set
up for the backing operation, beat a hasty retreat to the highway.

Soon U.S. 95 was again a cleanswept ribbon of black top, slashing
across the desert, without evidence of a car for five miles in either
direction.

While the desert rehearsal had taken nearly two hours from our
travel time, we felt it was more than worth both time and trouble.
We could now start, stop, turn, and back up, and all this after only
787 miles of trailer-towing.

12. THE MONSTER PERFORMS

THE DESERT rehearsal was comforting stuff. We
had a new confidence on the highway as we cut across a small corner
of Oregon and entered Idaho.

It was here we had our first encounter with concrete paving, which
in turn, was the worse for its first encounter with quick-frozen ground.
The first spring thaw sent broken ripples of concrete along the high
way for miles on end. The car galloped along in three-quarter time
the trailer persisted in essaying a march tempo. The bucking car

78 The Long, Long Trailer

and reluctant trailer furnished no little amusement for the natives in
the small towns that guarded the highway; they weren t aware of
our constant vigil against cracked spines and broken teeth.

We jerked our way over rump-sprung paving, through dust and
freshly graveled roads into the Payette National Forest. Here the majestic
timber growth and cooling evening breeze took our minds off some
of our troubles and directed them toward searching out a place to
park. There were many wide turnouts on the highway where we
could have stopped comfortably, but Merle wouldn t permit it.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the elbows are too sharp."

It was several miles and fifteen minutes later before I fathomed the
mystery of the "elbows." She meant shoulders. The shoulders did
drop down sharply from the highway into deep canyons on either
side and Merle pictured the trailer sliding down these inclines in the
night, to wind up in the bowels of the earth, bottom side up.

It was a good two hours past our normal driving stretch. For the
first time we turned on the car and trailer lights while under way.
Merle looked back at the trailer and shuddered. The amber running
lights on the side did make us look a little like a fast motor freight.
The appearance of the trailer didn t disturb me, but the absence of
a place to park for the night did. Time after time we passed wide
turnouts, which I felt were ideal for parking, but which always drew
a veto from Merle because of the elbows.

At a small wayside inn we were told that a quarter mile ahead a
trailer park had been prepared by the forest service. We headed for it
with high hopes. Sure enough, in a two-acre grove of trees, a half-
dozen small vacation trailers were dozing comfortably. I got out to
reconnoiter. It was a beautiful spotfor small vacation trailers.

The park service apparently assumed that nobody would be stupid
enough to want to park a train in their forest; consequently, all the

The Monster Performs 79

trees had been preserved, standing tall and defiant at regular intervals,
like chessmen. To attempt to wind in and out o this maze with our
forty-five-foot rig would have been suicide. We would either have to
back in, or back out. Even with all my backing experience on the desert,
I didn t feel equal to this intricate job. It was a crushing defeat, after
having been carefully prepared for victory.

Apparently, in order to be absolutely certain you could park a trailer
anywhere, it required a dozen rehearsals. One of these, of course,
should take place on Paracutin during an eruption. Another on Pike s
Peak. The Swiss Alps, I felt sure, would be an excellent place
to get a little experience. I was frustrated, and bitter, and brooding
again.

We drove on and on, past more turnouts, until I declared defiantly
that I would turn off onto the first forest road I spied regardless of
where it led.

I was to regret this rash avowal. As it turned out, the road didn t
lead any place. It was just a road twenty-five yards long with a sheer
drop of twenty feet at the end. I spotted it in the dark and quickly
swung onto it and just as quickly grabbed for the brakes. As we
thumped and bumped to a stop, Merle crammed a ten-minute tirade
into a blazing, "Well!"

This time I had apparently done the thing up brown. As I struggled
to get one of the doors open I thought fondly of the days when my
only problem had been a rambler rose. The sharp angle of the trailer
had sealed tight the rear door. It wouldn t budge. The front door gave
some promise of opening, so I devoted my efforts exclusively to it. Five
minutes work with my Boy Scout jack-knife and I had it open. Merle
stepped inside and promptly fell to her knees. The peculiar gliding
movement required to maintain equilibrium inside the trailer resembled
very much the mincing steps of a fat lady embarking on her first
escalator ride.

8o The Long, Long Trailer

I tried to determine our angle with the level, but the little bubble
sneaked completely out of sight.

The preparation of dinner was a hazardous affair. Pots and pans
slid off the burners and leaned against the side of the trailer whenever
either of us attempted the dangerous journey from front to rear.

We lurched through dinner by clutching our plates with one hand
and using a fork in the other, to the exclusion of all other implements.

We finally arrived at after-dinner coffee. It was the demitasse that
really pointed up the startling pitch of the trailer. Merle held the
cups while I poured the coffee. Then she set them down on the
table. Half the coffee in each cup promptly rolled out into the saucer,
thence onto the table and cascaded into our laps. The dregs dripped
on the yellow floor rug.

Fortunately, we had decided that, while traveling, we would leave
the beds made up.

I shudder to think what might have happened, had we attempted to
wrestle sheets and blankets with the trailer bobbing and swaying and
the floor gyrating with the uncertainty of a limber diving board.

Merle s bed was on the low side of the trailer, while I was on the
high side. I pointed out her fortunate position. It would be impossible
for her to roll out of bed into the narrow passage between not so
with me. Being on the high side I was very conscious of the distance
from bed to floor. All through the night I clung tenaciously to the side
of the trailer to forestall a broken arm or leg.

I concentrated so intensely on the angle of the monster from star
board to port, I completely forgot that my feet were considerably
higher than my head, due to the foot and a half drop fore and aft.
As a consequence, every time I shifted position, the better to obtain
a grip on the side, I would slide forward and deal my head a resound
ing thump on the end of my clothes closet

The Monster Performs 81

These head thumps continued throughout the night, broken only by
a metallic sound, as Merle, trying to maintain her position in the center
of the bed, but failing, would slam against the opposite side of the
trailer, rattling the screen door and lock in the process.

I finally evolved an S position which permitted me to get a leg scis
sors near the foot of the bed and a full-nelson on the pillow. This gave
my head some relief from the continual thumping. It is best described
as a standing-sitting-crouch.

Morning brought little change. The difference was we could see
the things we bumped into, as we traversed the tilted trailer, instead
of groping for them in the half dark.

It would be inaccurate to report the gigantic, bumbling operation we
underwent backing the trailer out of the ruts, over the mounds and
onto the highway, as typical of our entire day it definitely wasn t.

We managed to come out of the backing maneuver (by sheer good
luck) unabraded, unchafed, uncontushed, but unglued.

Merle stood afterwards in a ferment of twitching glorying in the
victory. One more victory like that and I would have been ready for
surrender and the booby-hatch.

While it s true we did open and close the day on a pretty blue note,
in between we traversed a beautiful wooded countryside, with the
Little Salmon River keeping us company for fifty miles or so.

Time and again we pulled up alongside the stream to bury our noses
deep in its cooling waters. We couldn t understand why everybody
in the world wasn t doing the same thing. We gulped in huge draughts
of the sparkling mountain nectar, several times nearly gagging over
the absence of the variety of chemicals the watchdogs of the Los Angeles
water supply seem to think necessary to keep palate and entrails prop
erly attuned

82 The Long, Long Trailer

Lunch was a heart-warming experience. The menu was perfection
itself and the surrounding countryside the most impressive dining room
we had encountered.

The car top came down and we dallied along the Little Salmon
into Riggins, where we met the main Salmon River. The width and
speed of this torrent, plus its bad manners in high water, forced the
highway to climb the side of the mountain. This engineering project
called for a narrow, two-lane road bed, which, while it didn t make for
longevity, repaid us two-fold with spectacular scenery.

We rounded mountain after mountain with the highway suspended
above the river, until the swift-moving water ducked down a canyon,
while the highway, a little heady from the rarefied atmosphere, decided
to take off right up a perpendicular hump without so much as nosing
around to find a less tortuous route.

We were a good mile into the grade before we knew what was hap
pening. Merle realized it first and with a shriek pointed ahead or
rather up I "Loo^l Look at that!"

There, stretched out before us was a series of double-hump, hairpin
turns that ascended the mountain vertically in giant strides, then seemed
to disappear in a layer of cirrus clouds; I had never realized before
that you could get to Heaven on US. 95. Merle snapped me out of
this thought with the clutching hand.

"What are you going to do?" she asked shakily.

I noted the use of the pronoun "you" I felt alone. Obviously the
thing was no longer a joint enterprise. Merle had divorced herself from
any participation in the decision. The least she could have done, I
thought, was to offer a suggestion which I could dispute. Now, the
whole thing rested on my shoulders.

Actually, it wasn t too complex a decision. We couldn t turn around
we couldn t back down the steep grade there was only one thing
to do climb the mountain.

The Monster Performs 83

Merle shuddered and I shifted to a lower gear. The motor was labor
ing hard, trying to yank the two-and-a-half-ton trailer almost straight
up. I watched the temperature hand slowly move into the red danger
zone. Trembling, I reached for the engine-cooler button and switched
it on. Almost immediately the indicator moved out of the red zone. I
offered up a little prayer for the manufacturers. The switchbacks were
coming thick and fast. There were switchbacks inside of switchbacks.

I was trying to push the accelerator right through the floor boards.
There were times when I was sure I was staring the tail lights of the
trailer straight in the eye. We had thought that Donner Pass was a
climb this was something we could really brag about, if we came
out of it alive. The road was rough and rutted. The occupants of the
few cars we passed headed down hill, sat up in startled wonder as we
thundered by.

Merle added a funereal note by counting the cars piled up in the
bottom of the canyon. Occasionally a switchback would permit a
quick glance at the route we had traversed. It didn t seem possible we
could have towed the thing up that winding ribbon. And still the
road went on and on and up and up!

The reason was obvious now why everybody in the world wasn t
sticking his nose in the Little Salmon.

A quick glance at the gas gauge told me we were losing gas as
fast as we were gaining altitude. In second gear the motor was gulping
down the precious fluid with the appetite of a -36.

Forty-five minutes later, with the gas indicator leaning against the
empty mark, we reached level ground and started down a long incline
into Grangeville. We stopped at the service station in a trailer park
and filled up with nineteen and six-tenths gallons. (The tank holds
twenty.) The owner was an affable gentleman, who wanted to know
where we came from. I nodded in a southerly direction and said,
"From the south, and over quite a hill too.**

84 The Long, Long Trailer

The owner straightened up with a startled look and sprayed gasoline
all over the rear fender. "Not Whitebird!" he said.

I looked a little superior, "We didn t inquire the name, but it was
quite a pull."

His mouth was gaping open. He snapped it shut and said, "You re
a damn fool, that s what you are."

I was a little taken aback at this. After all, I was the customer. It
was my money he was shoveling into his pocket. But I soon got his
explanation.

"Look," he said, "little trailers, even little trailers, wait till night to
come over Whitebird. Big trailers don t come over it at all" I gulped.
He went on. "The last big trailer that tried it is in the bottom of the
canyon." Then, he fired a question. "And you came over it in the heat
of the daywith this?" He tapped the side of the monster with his
forefinger.

My mouth was too dry to swallow, but I managed a nod.

"You re lucky, that s all I gotta say you re just lucky."

With that he turned and marched in to the cash register leaving
me as limp as a string of wet spaghetti. I tottered after him into the
office and registered for the night. Under the circumstances I didn t
feel equal to towing the trailer any farther that day.

The bright summer morning cast a whole new light on our exploits
of the previous day. I began to enjoy my position as the local hero
who had towed the heavy monster over Whitebird Hill. Trailerites in
the park gathered around our rig to admire and be advised. While
the manager still thought I was a little "touched/* I passed it off as
jealousy.

He was losing disciples by the dozens and his loss was my gain.
I was the new oracle. I was the new wise man from the south. I
was the new authority on trailers and how to tow them. Even the

The Monster Performs 85

waitress in the little restaurant across the highway greeted us with
awe and treated us with deference. The word had been passed along
pretty fast and I left no stone unturned to make certain everybody
knew 7 was the one who had accomplished the feat.

The waitress tried to draw me out into a lengthy explanation of how
I had negotiated the nine-mile haul, but I was too smart to be pinned
down to specific answers. I gave out off-hand, evasive replies to ques
tions, which carried the implication that we weren t at all surprised at
Whitebird. It was all in a day s drive. I even insinuated that we en
countered a Whitebird or its equivalent every day sometimes several
times a day. I iterated and reiterated this point so often that I began
believing it myself, and when I opened up with, "Now you take
Donner Pass " Merle called a halt.

She was pretty disgusted with my attitude and wanted to go back
to the trailer. I tried to explain what exhilarating stuff I was feeding
on. For the first time, somebody was asking me about trailers, not
telling me. I went into great detail to explain to her that this was
mead and manna to the trailer-tower that this was the elixer of
life in this new world of movable houses. She listened patiently, but I
guess women don t understand men very well; the best I could do was
to persuade her to remain in Grangeville another day while we cleaned
up the trailer.

The map indicated we were only a few hours drive from Orofino
and, since this was my first visit with my sisters in ten years, I felt
we could make an impressive entrance with a sparkling, spic-and-span
trailer. It wasn t a difficult job convincing Merle, since, in addition to
being the world s finest cook, she is also the world s most meticulous
housekeeper.

My job, of course, would consist of washing and polishing the rig
on the outside. The outside, I reflected warmly where I would be
available to my subjects where I could pass "the word" to all who cared

86 The Long, Long Trailer

to listen. Unfortunately I got a little carried away, even to the point
o alienating some of my newly-won disciples who promptly returned
to the ranks of the manager. But I salved these wounds by imagining
the deserters being threatened with sanctions and monetary reprisals
probably last month s rent or the light bill or some such thing.

With all these defections, I still held a tight little group who hung
on my every word. My most devout subject was Mr. Bonham whose
fierce loyalty and devotion exceeded even that of Mrs. Bonham. His
home town was Sioux City, Iowa, where he had been in civil service
for thirty years. Ten months ago he had retired. The Bonhams had
long ago decided to spend their retired years in a trailer but they
were very unhappy people especially Mr. Bonham. They had gone
through much the same experience we had encountered in setting up
their home-on-wheels, only Mr. Bonham, or the trailer salesman,
had committed a grave error.

He had purchased or been sold too much trailer. About ten feet
too much. He had bought a thirty-six foot trailer that weighed nine
thousand pounds and resembled a blimp on wheels. He was deathly
afraid of it. He was even a little afraid of his car, but with the four-ton
trailer attached to it he became panic stricken.

His eyes would shine with pathetic ecstasy as I told and retold the
story of Whitebird. He followed me everywhere to be certain he had
absorbed the trailer-towing lecture to the dregs.

His story was pathetic. The Bonhams had established a three-point
credo fishing, hunting, and avoidance of snow. But they had spent the
ten months since his retirement negotiating the distance from Iowa
to Idaho. He had carefully calculated his rate of travel and determined
that he would be more than a hundred years old before they could
complete a trailer trip from coast to coast. The fact that Mrs. Bonham
would still be in her nineties only made Mr. Bonham more morose.

With quivering voice he unfolded the whole sordid story. He not

The Monster Performs 87

only hated to tow the trailer, he was afraid to tow it. Their traveling
was done only on Sunday mornings between five and ten o clock, when
the highways were clear of traffic and construction equipment. Once
they had stopped, it took them weeks to beef up their courage, attach
the trailer, and start again. The Bonhams wanted to spend their sum
mers hunting and fishing and their winters lolling in the sun, but the
seasons were proving too short, or more accurately, the trailer too
long.

Since it didn t seem possible Mr. Bonham would ever be able to drive
coast-to-coast (or to any coast, from Idaho) with his present horse
power or courage; the only thing I could urge was the purchase of a
ten-ton truck to haul the thing a suggestion which nearly dropped
the poor man in his tracks or turning in his thirty-six foot mansion
for an eighteen-foot cottage. This he swore he would do either that,
or he would saw his trailer in two and give half of it away.

Mr. Bonham was so grateful that he rounded up three other disciples
and the four of them assisted me with the washing and polishing opera
tion. The four huskies took over the sides and ends while I wielded
the mop on the roof.

It was a pleasant, fruitful two hours and even Merle was impressed
with the speed and quality of workmanship on the rig. Since she had
been inside all the while, she didn t hear the two-hour trailer lecture
that accompanied the job, or it might have taken the edge off her ap
proval. Nevertheless, it was done, and done well Now, we were ready
for Orofino.

13. IRRESISTIBLE FORCE-
IMMOVABLE OBJECT

EARLY in the morning we got out our maps

and traced out two routes to Orofino. One was imprinted with a
heavy red line, which was the main highway, and the other a thin
black line. One route seemed to be considerably shorter than the other.
I decided to talk to the manager.

He was pretty surly at first, but warmed up a little when he learned
I was asking his advice about routes. He made the most of his op
portunity. He spent an hour going over the route inch by inch. He
advised me about every turn, highway marker, hill, fence, town, curve,
signboard and chuckhole. I felt I was losing a little prestige among
my followers, whom he made sure overheard every word. The manager
had still more advice to offer but I cut him short with a cool but
polite "thank you," and retired to the car and trailer. They were both
poised and shining and ready for our departure.

My subjects were gathered around our rig waiting to wish us
bon voyage. We climbed into the car and I surveyed the scene. The
rent-delinquents were standing in a sullen little knot around the mana
ger. My army was twice as large and twice as happy especially the
Bonhams. Mrs. Bonham was waving her handkerchief, and shouts
filled the air. The scene had all the color and excitement of the departure
of the Norman die on her maiden voyage.

I stepped on the accelerator and we glided forward to the accompani
ment of "See you In Yosemite," and "See you in Florida," and "See you
in New Orleans."

The manager was pointing at us and calling, "If I were you I d
watch-"

"Still trying to bask in my reflected glory," I thought, as I froze

Irresistible Force Immovable Object 89

him with a waggling of my finger. I gave him a very formal nod as
I stepped a little harder on the accelerator. The car was moving heavily
something seemed to be holding us back. I shifted into low and
stepped on it again. There was a sickening, sinking feeling and the
car and trailer came to a staggering, squashy halt amid the gasps of
horror from my followers. I got out and looked at the trailer. It was
mired axle-deep in the soft earth. It was immovable.

The manager, calm and satisfied, was saying, "I tried to warn you.
That s new fill there and the water you put on it when you washed
your trailer softened her up."

I looked around. Half my followers had apparently deserted, they
were now standing beside the manager.

Mr. Bonham, a little sadly, still remained true. He was a very loyal
fellow. For his sake I affected an efficient, "situation-under-control"
look. It was a little difficult. I fumbled in the back of the car for my
GI collapsible shovel. I was all thumbs trying to unsnap the canvas
cover. It was obvious to my detractors that the instrument was an un
familiar, unused piece of equipment. The olive-drab paint had never
even been scratched. By the time I had the shovel unscrewed and in
working order I had lost all my subjects except Mr. Bonham.

I dug a few shovelfuls of dirt from around one wheel the trailer
sank a little deeper. One of the deserters remarked snidely about my
Boy Scout shovel. There was a general tittering in the crowd and the
manager disappeared into the garage. Before I could do further damage
with my digging he had returned with a hydraulic platform jack, two
planks and a large shovel. He took out two scoops of dirt from under
a cross beam, inserted the jack, hoisted the wheel and placed the plank
over the rut. He repeated the operation under the other wheel. I fol
lowed him around in abject humility. It was all over in less than two
minutes.

"Now," he said, "y u>re ready to go."

90 The Long, Long Trailer

Humbly I crawled into the car. Merle again wasn t speaking. I
looked around and waved feebly to the crowd. Most of them were
standing by the manager. Even Mr. Bonham was standing halfway be
tween the trailer and the manager. I couldn t tell whether or not he
had deserted me. He did wave back but there was no enthusiasm
about it no spontaneity.

We pulled over the planks and the manager held up his hand. We
stopped. He preened himself as he delivered his final statement.

"You can take State Route 13, which is fifty-seven miles of hills
and a bad road, or you can take U.S. 95 which is 112 miles and a
good road," Then he threw in bitingly, "Prudence would dictate the
good road."

My ignominy was complete.

We took the good road and "Prudence" should drop dead. For
thirty-five miles the road was under construction. There were ruts,
chuckholes, rocks, dirt, muck, oil, gravel and sand. The fresh oil
covered the front of the trailer and flying rocks pitted the aluminum.
The chuckholes cut the tires and dust was everywhere. After clean
ing and polishing our wagon train we now looked like a "Sooner"
who had made a late start at the Cherokee Strip and was forced
to eat the dust of the front runners.

Our entrance into Orofino wasn t nearly so impressive as we had
planned. We looked pretty beat-up. As we glided over the bridge which
spans the Clearwater River, I wondered how the years had treated my
sisters. I recalled one idiosyncrasy of my sister Effie, which I felt I
should call to Merle s attention. Effie s emotions were very close to the
surface and she loved to cry. To her, arrivals and departures were es
pecially touching and to be properly celebrated called for buckets of
tears. For several reasons I warned Merle about all this so she could
be prepared,

The element of surprise wasn t involved. Sudden arrivals and de-

Irresistible Force Immovable Object 91

partures didn t give Effie time to work herself up to the proper emo
tional pitch. On departures, this was fine, but with arrivals, the "delayed
action" was sometimes most disconcerting.

Then too, there was the monster. Some people have a terrible
aversion to trailers and I wasn t at all certain how he would be received.
Especially since he had taken a pretty severe beating over the last
hundred miles and for the first time the man in Sacramento could
have been right. We looked like a couple of apple knockers unem
ployed.

To circumvent the possibility of "delayed action" I had warned the
family of the exact day and approximate hour of our arrival.

A small boy on a bicycle directed us to the house and we no sooner
turned the corner onto the street when I spotted Effie standing in the
middle of a vast expanse of lawn, sobbing her heart out. She couldn t
have caught more than a quick glimpse of the trailer since we were
several blocks away, so I was reasonably certain the tears weren t for
the bedraggled monster. It must be that she had just stepped up her
output and was now able to elicit tears at just the thought of people
arriving and departing.

I was right on the stepped-up-output theory. At a block away I
noticed a tear trickle down Merle s cheek. At fifty yards I saw my
other sister, Dora, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Ap
parently Effie had achieved the ultimate; she was now able to project
her emotions a distance of a block or more. Either that, or her eye
sight had improved and she had seen the oil-and-muck-spattered
monster, and the tears were for her prodigal brother returning home
in a discarded box car, after having wasted ten of the best years of
his life.

It was all pretty confusing.

Before we came to a halt, Merle burst into heart-breaking sobs.
Dora was no longer making any pretense with the handkerchief, and

92 The Long, Long Trailer

Effie had pulled out all stops. It was, beyond question, the saddest
arrival I had ever participated in. Sheer weight of numbers forced me
to become moist-eyed too. As a mixed quartet we stood on the lawn
sobbing so heartily that the neighbors could only conclude we had all
lost a mutual friend probably an ancient family retainer, or at the
very least, a faithful old dog who had come to be recognized as one
of the clan. Certainly no one would have suspected it was the joyful
reunion of brother and sisters after ten years.

We left the trailer standing in the street and blubbered our way
into the house, where we staged another lachrymal demonstration over
a cup of coffee. After the sobbing had subsided so everyone could be
heard, we turned our attention to the trailer and a place to park it.

It was a sequel to the Modesto story. The spot selected was the
driveway, with the trailer backed up to the garage. There were cer
tain things about this driveway that were more appealing than the
one in Modesto. It was only forty feet long for one thing. There were
no climbing roses and no buildings set up as hazards.

There were certain other things about it not so appealing it was
narrower and so was the street. We eventually got the trailer in place
all right, but not before the big stinker had dug another furrow in
another lawn. This one was a shade more serious. Since die heavy rains
had softened the ground, the trailer dug an eight-inch-deep trench this
time instead of being satisfied with the four inches attained in Modesto.

At the rate I was chewing up lawns, I expected at any moment to
receive notification that I had been voted the favorite son of the
Landscape Gardeners Association.

The trailer created an unusual amount of interest in Orofino and we
instituted a regular tour that took place every afternoon from three to
five. Since that area of Idaho is a sportsman s paradise, the tours pro
duced an amazing amount of provender. We were kept abundantly
supplied with fresh trout pheasant venison elk and doves. The mon-

The Old Home Town 93

ster took on weight too. We stuffed him with tons o home-made jams,
jellies and pickles all tokens of appreciation for the tours.

Because of Orofino s location the community had an ever-present fear
of two hazards. Fire and flood. The fires were kept pretty well under
control that season, but the river got out of hand and clawed up the
countryside, forcing the merchants on Main Street to do business in
boats. This happened just often enough to cause some of the local
wags (who had taken the tour) to consider importing hundreds of
trailers and moving the townsite to the top of the mountain, which
caused other local wags to flip coins to decide whether they d rather
be burned at the stake or drown.

The fire and flood talk made Merle a little uneasy and she began
rearranging drawers and cupboards. This was always a sure sign we
were going to move on. This time I really looked forward to the
move the objective was my old home town of Hope, Idaho.

14. THE OLD HOME TOWN

WE WERE becoming more efficient. Packing op
erations were cut to six hours, but it was still a huge job getting the
monster in perfect shape for a trip. Again I washed and massaged
the outside while Merle waxed the interior. I pumped its veins full of
life-giving fluid with a recently acquired grease gun. It took three
hours just to scrape the oil and gravel off the front end.

The long process of preparation for leaving, gave Effie ample op
portunity to bring all her tear ducts to bear on us and work up a plenti
ful reserve of liquid ammunition.

94 The Long, Long Trailer

Breakfast was moist.

The humidity rose 100 per cent on our slow, sobbing march to the
trailer parked at the curb. If she had been dissatisfied with the scene
at our arrival (and I m sure she was) she must now have felt that
what that greeting lacked in ardor was compensated for ten-fold
in the demonstration she was staging at our departure. We were
inundated. Neighbors on either side, concerned over the heartrend
ing cries of anguish, rushed to their front porches, only to burst
into tears at the sight of the forlorn little group huddled beside the
trailer.

After five minutes of sobbing at high pitch, during which time it
seemed we would all dehydrate ourselves, Effie, beaming through
swollen eyes, permitted us to climb into the rig and work our tear-
stained way out of town.

Red-eyed and exhausted, even before we started, we spent a troubled
hour re-perfecting our trailer-towing technique and pilot, co-pilot sys
tem.

Our five days of actual travel had taught us one thing about lunch.
Unless we could find a tavern beside the road with at least an acre or
so of parking space available, we were confined to the trailer at noon
time. We had attempted just once to find parking space in a small
town, but gave it up as a bad job when we discovered it took nearly
a city block to get in and out of a spot conveniently. Since it was
more fun (and better food) having lunch in the trailer, we weren t in
the least disturbed about this.

As a matter of fact, this was to be the day of the big experiment with
food in the rig. We had agreed that two hours from our destination
Merle would leave the car and climb into the trailer. There, while we
were coasting along the highway to our destination, she would prepare
dinner. We would pull into the old home town and by the time I had
the drains hooked up, wheels blocked and lights plugged in, dinner

The Old Home Town 55

would be on the table and we would have the entire evening to our
selves.

Merle was pretty, enthused about this plan and had loaded up with
kitchen staples in preparation for the event. She would wash and peel
the potatoes cut up the string beans and peel and slice the apples for
an apple pie. She would even make the crust en route, so that on our
arrival at Hope all she would have to do would be to pop the pie into
the oven.

We would open the eyes of our fellow trailerites there, whoever they
might be, and show them an innovation in the comforts and con
venience of this modern travel technique. We became so wrought up
over this idea that I even drew up mental plans for an intercommunica
tion system between car and trailer. There would be phones on either
end complete with a buzzer system for signals. But, of course, this was
all for the future. Right at the moment we agreed that three knocks
on the front of the trailer would be the signal to stop*

We pulled up for gas just outside the city of Spokane, which we
judged was the proper distance from our destination. Merle transferred
to the trailer and I watched with pride while she got out pots and
pans, potatoes and string beans, flour and pie tins. I could almost smell
the lush, thick, juicy apple pie.

It was just a little strange operating the monster without a co-pilot;
I had to constantly keep on the extreme right-hand side of the high
way. Again that desperate feeling came over me whenever I was
forced into the inside lane. There was nobody to tell me now when the
right-hand lane was clear. This was a source of worry, staved off only
by the thoughts of hashed brown potatoes, tender, succulent string
beans slathered with butter, a thick steak and apple pie. I drove along
for a half hour or so completely immersed in these gourmet s delights*

I worked up such an appetite just thinking about dinner, I decided
that, in spite of the fact that I hadn t received any signal, I would pull

g6 The Long, Long Trailer

off to the side, peek in on the cook, and offer her a few words of en
couragement.

At the first opportunity I pulled the rig up to a smooth stop on the
shady side of the highway and trotted back to unlock the door of the
trailer,

I was horrified. The place was a shambles. Merle was flat on her
stomach on the floor with a death grip on the deep pile of the rugs.
Tears of anger were streaming down her flour-covered face, and the
mixture was making little blobs of dough on her cheeks.

I rushed in to help her to her feet but she brushed me off with a
jerk of her arm and looked at me coldly.

"You," she said with great emphasis, "you and your grand ideas!!"

There were bruised and battered apples, rolling all over the trailer.
Some were covered with the flour intended for the pie crust. The beans
were crushed on the floor directly below the sink. This was apparently
where Merle had first slipped. Potatoes were everywhere. The pie tin
was in the bathroom and the largest pot, which must have at one time
held the potatoes, was now in the bedroom. Merle was regaining her
composure and her tongue.

"What s the matter," she said, "can t you hear? God knows I pounded
hard enough."

When I tried to convince her that I had been poised waiting for
the slightest sound from the trailer, she pointed to the front wall
near the window, and held up her knuckles. Both were a little the
worse for wear.

"I pounded," she said, "till I nearly stove a hole in the crazy thing
I tried to open the door and holler, but the wind slammed it shut
this place is a mad house the wind howls past the windows and the
floor rumbles like thunder. I fell down every time you went around
a curve and slammed against the wall whenever you put on the brakes."

She sobbed out the pitiful story. I had sense enough to keep still. It

The Old Home Town 97

was a long time before the whole sorry tale was finally told. Apparently
a stationary trailer and a trailer under way, are not one and the
same thing. Since Merle had already placed the potatoes, beans, apples
and flour out on the drain board, we hadn t gone ten feet before she
was desperately trying to rescue one or the other of the ingredients
from crashing to the floor.

In her scramble to save the potatoes she knocked over the box of
flour and in attempting to save the rugs from becoming flour drenched,
had dropped the beans and stepped in them. The slippery beans were
really what caused her downfall, literally and figuratively. She slipped
to the floor and thereby lost all the groceries. The groceries then became
a secondary matter anyway, since we were now traveling at a rate of
speed that made flying pots and pans and rolling apples and potatoes
dangerous to life and limb.

She had staggered to the front of the trailer and hammered on the
wall, but the wind had carried the sound away from the car. It was
then that she decided the only thing to do was to lie on the floor,
clutch the rugs (which had rubber backs and were almost immovable),
and cry.

We had a boiled ham sandwich and coffee for dinner that night.

The cleaning-up job after this experiment was quite a sizeable un
dertaking. It consumed our first day in the old home town completely.
Merle put me to work digging bits of apples and potatoes out of the
floor furnace. The linoleum had to be cleaned and rewaxed crushed
string beans can be quite a mess. But by far the biggest job was- to
recapture the flour. Some of it had fallen into the beans and the
juice of the mashed vegetables mixed with the flour had formed a
thin, slate-gray gravy. But the flour itself, under Merle s trampling,
plus the rocking and swaying of the trailer, had formed a light cloud
which settled on everything.

Merle, a jot queasy about my housekeeping abilities, assigned just

58 The Long, Long Trailer

two tasks into my keeping: waxing the linoleum, and polishing the
leaves on the philodendron which reposed in our thirty-five dollar solid
copper fernery "all planted with fresh dirt." / rather li\cd the grayish
coaling the flour had given the leaves and suggested letting it remain.
Merle looked at me scornfully. Since (as she herself claims) she has a
green "finger," she informed me that the coating of flour prevented
the "leaves from breathing" and had to be removed promptly. I took
her word about the "breathing leaves" and polished each one in
dividually back to its lush-green brilliance.

Because the trailer was in pretty much of a mess, I took advantage
o the opportunity to do a little more experimenting with my tank
Invention. Filling the tank through a funnel from the outside, normally
took about fifteen minutes. I felt that both method and time could be
improved upon. Another thing that prompted me to search for im
provements was the dirty looks of gas station attendants.

When we pulled into a service station with our rig, we usually
blocked all the entrances. When our unit was operating under a full
head of steam we blocked the whole service station. We kept the gas
pump, air supply, water supply and rest rooms all busy much to the
consternation of the boss over the loss of business while we had his
whole staff performing at peak capacity supplying us with water, air
and things.

The plan I had evolved necessitated tearing out all the check valves
in the system. I then installed hand valves. It worked perfectly. While
we were hooked up to the water supply in a trailer park, all I needed
to do was open the valve and water flowed into the tank through the
regular copper lines in the trailer. As the tank filled with water, it
compressed the air. I was killing two birds with one stone.

Even Merle appreciated the ingenuity of this device and mentioned
my cleverness to our neighbors. They were all agog to see it in opera
tion, which forced us into a series of demonstration runs that rivaled

The Old Home Town gg

our experience in Sparks. The demonstration did aid in enlisting two
o the neighbors to assist in washing the trailer, so the time was well
spent.

With both the inside and outside of the rig shining and polished,
I was ready to show Merle the little town of Hope and tell her some
thing of its, and my, past history.

The inspection of the town did little but point up the fact that I
hadn t gotten any younger. Merle s enthusiasm was slightly less than
mine, so the tour was cut short in order that I might revisit an old
school chum who had built a sumptuous resort and restaurant at the
edge of the lake.

He took such pride in his establishment that I was conducted on a
complete and exhaustive tour of every nook and cranny. This expedi
tion reached its apex in the walk-in ice box. There hung huge slabs
of meat, turkeys, chickens, pheasants, hams and bacons. There, also,
hung a ripe, ten-rib prime roast of beef. The rib roast caught my eye.

Since the advent of the trailer, the shopping for food has been thrust
upon my shoulders. As a consequence I was ever on the alert for new
and startling viands. The roast seemed to fit into that category so I
prevailed upon my chum to sell it to me. As I look back on the
transaction, I can see now why he bridled a little and seemed hesitant
over the deal. He mentioned something about "banquets" and "serving
a number of people" which at the time made no impression. The light
didn t dawn until some time later*

The ten-rib roast was a monstrous thing and the trailer seemed to
sag a little as I carried it in the door. Merle looked a little puzzled as I
unwrapped it, in order that she might feast her eyes as I had. I don t
know what she expected me to take out of the package, but whatever
it was, it was not "Good God in Heaven" a ten-rib roast.

She took one horrified look. "What," she said, "do you expect me to
do with a side of beef?"

ioo The Long, Long Trailer

I thought her remark was a little exaggerated and told her so. "It s
not a side o beef/* I said, "it s just a roast."

She walked to the kitchen and opened the oven door. Slapping the
sides of the oven she said with heavy irony, "Tell me please, how I m
going to get that cow in there!"

I had forgotten that we were now operating with an apartment-size
stove that wasn t built for banquet-size roasts. But it wasn t only the
oven problem that seemed to be bothering Merle, it was also the volume
and weight of the meat.

"What are we expected to do/ she said, "eat roast beef from here to
Florida?" She mentally apportioned the roast into meals and determined
that we would be eating prime ribs of beef for the next twenty-six days.

I thought I had the answer to all her objections. First of all, I pointed
out, I could whittle down the roast till it would fit in the oven. Secondly,
it would shrink. I wasn t entirely on safe ground here, but I had read
somewhere that meat did shrink while cooking, and since there was no
objection from Merle, I was certain I had scored another point. Thirdly,
and of great importance, was the impending departure for Montana.
The wilds of Montana, I was sure, called for a well-stocked refrigerator
and provisions which would last several days, u just in case."

Merle wasn t happy, even after I cut the roast in two. It required nearly
six hours of cooking to do the things, and she complained bitterly all the
while over my inability to do the shopping properly. At one point she
even muttered something about cutting a hole in the end of the trailer
and setting up stools outside so we could dispense hot-roast beef sand
wiches at various points along our route, thereby paying our expenses.

The tension eased a little that evening when we sat down to a wonder
ful dinner. If nothing else, I was right on one thing the quality of the
beef. The only disquieting note was my effort to consume as much of
the roast as possible in order to prove to Merle that we actually
only had sufficient meat for a day or two at most.

Wide Open Spaces 101

The gastritis pains were excruciating, but Merle was never the
wiser.

We fastened the remains of the two prime rib roasts in the refrig
erator with rubber bands in preparation for our exploration of Montana.

15. WIDE OPEN SPACES

WE CLIPPED another two hours off our packing

time. The packing job ceased to be the nightmare that first confronted
us. We threw away nearly all our pasteboard boxes in which we had
packed most of our dishes and glassware. Pots and pans stayed in the
cupboard, with a little paper stuffing to keep them in place. The twin
brass lamps reposed on the rug. The fernery was bolted to the shelf.

We were learning and fast.

During the night we manufactured large blocks of ice in the re
frigerator, to keep that instrument cool while we were traveling. Rub
ber bands kept the two rib roasts and three dozen smoked silver trout
from clashing with one another.

The filling of the tank was now as simple as turning a handle. A
few extra pounds of air at the service station, and we were ready to
take off.

Roast beef for breakfast seemed a little odd, but I didn t comment.
I could consume an enormous amount of meat and felt sure I could out
last the roast beef both of them.

The highways left a little something to be desired, but the great
green wonders of Montana more than made up for the rugged stretches.

102 The Long, Long Trailer

We were pretty well occupied too, with another department. Every
trallerlte we had encountered thus far had attached a name to his
trailer. These ranged all the way from "Rancho en Escrow" and
"Dun Roamln " to "Ramblin Rover" and "Bide-a-Wee." We couldn t
stomach any of these.

To date we had used various appellations and epithets, which varied
with the behavior of the beast. Among them were "The Monster,"
"Stinker; 5 "Elephant," "Wagon Train," "Thing," and just plain "The
Rig." None of these seemed to quite fit the animated piece of aluminum
we were towing around the country.

We will always be grateful to Montana, and to Missoula especially,
for supplying the name. We had heard it applied to the monster before,
but never with quite the fervor and explosive deep-seated wonder ex
pressed by a man standing on a street corner in Missoula. He followed
the rig for half a block with disbelieving eyes. As we pulled abreast
of him his eyes popped, he shifted his hat to the back of his head
and exploded "Gee-sus key-rial. a whale!" He rolled out the word
with such thunderous awe, that we accepted it on the spot as the key
to the only fitting title we could possibly use in our christening cere
monies.

While the monster was now officially "Moby Dick," we couldn t bring
ourselves to drop his nickname. Instead we promoted it to a proper
noun and referred to him thereafter as The Monster.

We pulled up for lunch alongside the Bitterroot River in Missoula.
Lunch consisted of smoked trout and roast-beef sandwiches. Merle was
continuing my tutelage in roast beef.

We found the parking spot we were looking for outside of Deer
Lodge, Montana. A nice wide area, just off the highway. No trailer

park tonight we were on our own-

Wide Open Spaces 203

I blocked the wheels, lowered the jacks and was just turning on the
butane when Merle rapped on the window. I went in.

She was standing at the bedroom window, pointing to the huge
structure right in our back yard; an impressive edifice with the profile
of a medieval castle.

"What s that building?" she wanted to know.

I squinted out. "That/ I said, with a certain amount o pride at hav
ing the answer at tongue s tip, "is the state penitentiary of Montana."

I might just as well have said it was the Black Hole of Calcutta
or the Snake Pit. Merle s reaction was electric. "Unblock the wheels,
we re getting out of here right now!!"

She blurted out the command so quickly she caught me unprepared.
"Wait a minute," I said. "What for? We just got parked, besides it s
getting dark* What do we want to move for?"

She pointed excitedly out the window. "The prison !" she gasped,
"the prison! We re not going to stay here. There was a prison break
right there, less than a month ago."

She was right there had been a prison break just a short time ago.

Despite my growing concern, I decided to be the Gibraltar type
and reason with her.

I rationalized calmly, "If we drive around the country avoiding
all the jails, lockups, prisons and penitentiaries, we can t go anywhere
except maybe some lonely desert spot, and even then we run the
chance of being blown up by somebody or other experimenting with
an atomic bomb."

She wouldn t be convinced.

She painted a picture of a prison break that very night. What could
be handier for a desperate escaped life-termer, she imagined, than to
find a fully-equipped trailer parked right outside. With one deft move
ment of his right hand he would crack my head with the iron bar he

IO4 The Long, Long Trailer

had sawed from the window. With the left hand he would search
my pants pocket for money and keys. In the meantime he had gagged,
tied and raped Merle, leaped Into the car, towed the trailer to a lonely
spot and dumped us both OUL

"After he s dropped us in some ditch," she dramatized, "hell take
the gun our own private pistol and murder us!"

I couldn t help but think that he d have to stand very close with the
pistol, because of Its extreme Inaccuracy. There was no humor In the
thought though.

Merle had conjured up such a grisly ending to our trailer trip that
I was hard-put trying to sustain my argument in favor of not moving.
Without too much enthusiasm I nodded in the direction of the prison.

"There are guards," I said, not very convincingly, "walking all around
the walls. 5 *

Merle looked me right In the eye. "There were guards walking all
around the walls during the last prison break too."

I had to confess she was probably right, but to save my self-respect
I waited for one more prod. It wasn t long in coming. Merle put her
foot down. "I absolutely refuse to stay here tonight!!"

Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. That s what Fd been waiting
for. Her gruesome story had unnerved me a little, but as a man and
husband I had to put up a bold front. Now the time had come for
honorable surrender.

"I think it s foolish not staying here tonight," I said. "But if you
want to go on, we ll go.**

I unblocked the wheels, folded the jacks and we started again. It
was dark by now and I disliked driving at night. I disliked even more
the thought of being hit on the skull with an Iron bar.

It wasn t until we had passed the Anaconda Copper mine and mill,
where the huge stack was burning a hole right through the night,
that Merle announced she felt we were now out of range of the

Wide Open Spaces I0 -

would-bc murderer and could stop and park The Monster any time.

She made this announcement, of course, while we were on a two-
lane highway, struggling through the mountains in second gear, with
a line-up of cars behind us at least a half mile long. On every straight
stretch I would blink the lights and urge a dozen or so cars to pass.
It was Sunday night and the traffic was heavy enough to remind us of
Los Angeles. We were headed for Butte, but felt that the traffic would
thin out after we turned onto Highway 91 toward Salt Lake. After the
turn, the traffic became even heavier and it wasn t until we added up
the day, the time, and place, that we found the answer. We were on
the Continental Divide and everybody in Silverbow County was out
to enjoy the winter sports, on Sunday.

We thought we had been getting colder but not that cold.

We were ready to settle for any wide place in the road when we
suddenly popped into Melrose, Montana, and caught a service-station
operator about to close for the night. I shivered my way into the
station and inquired for the nearest trailer park.

The station operator jerked his thumb in the direction of the
vacant lot next door to the station, and allowed that we could park
there for the night. He also proffered the use of a water pump a block
or so down the road, and his small house in back, which was marked
"Ladies Only."

I thanked him profusely and declined the use of anything but park
ing space on the vacant lot. We circled the station and pulled up along
side. It was bitter cold outside, so our first operation was to turn on
the floor furnace. The second operation brought no results. Stunned,
I crawled under the bed to check the gauges on the tank. Half the
water and all the air had leaked out. Here was real tragedy.

So swallowing our pride we had to make use of his little house and
Merle stood guard so I wouldn t frighten some female believer in signs.

The September chill was bone penetrating; it was nearly as cold

io6 The Long, Long Trailer

inside the trailer not from any lack o heat, but because of the pointed
remarks Merle made about the installation of certain hand valves
and the fiddling with my invention which had gone on in Hope.

Then the trailer lights went out! All my waggling of wires and
fumbling with connections couldn t bring them to life again. We were
ready for such an emergency and immediately trotted out the candles.
I declared I liked them even better than the lights Merle wasn t so
sure.

With two strikeouts against us, we were getting a little wary and
a good thing, too. On the third pull our water pump broke down.
Disaster was piling on calamity. Nothing worked. The pump failure
forced me into four long, cold trips to the water pump a block away.
On each trip I would fill two vessels. We had to have enough drinking
water, enough water for two sponge baths, enough to make two pots
of coffee and enough to wash the dishes.

A stranger walking into the trailer could only have concluded that
we were water hoarders. There were pots and pans of the stuff every
where.

Some of the luster of our gay, carefree life rubbed off during the
evening and I couldn t help but think we should have stayed in Deer
Lodge. We could have used the support of any mechanically inclined,
escaped life-termer.

Roast beef for dinner (the third time that day) didn t exactly add
to the gaiety of the evening either. Although I ate with gusto, it was
pretty obvious to Merle that I, too, finally realized we were over
stocked with roast beef.

Heating water in four pots was a long tedious process. By the time
we were ready for bed, conversation had come to a halt. I opened the
usual number of windows the usual height. A numbing blue norther
hurled itself through the trailer the whole long night. Neither of us
would close a window we just lay there and froze.

Wide Open Spaces 107

Morning wasn t much better, except that we could get along with
out the candles. There was frost on the car and trailer, and the repeat
performance with the pots and pans at the water pump was just
as cold as it had been the night before.

The manager eyed me disdainfully as I disappeared behind the
"Ladles Only" sign.

It was a fairly quiet trip Into Pocatello, Idaho, the sole subject of con
versation being parking places and trailer parks. Merle held that my
judgment on whether a parking spot or trailer park was good or not
was slightly warped, and hereafter it would have to be a joint decision.
We would park The Monster outside tour the park, and if we both
decided it was satisfactory then, and only then, would we pull In for
the night.

Our first opportunity to try the new plan was in Pocatello. Dutifully,
I stayed with the car and trailer while she examined the park. When
she returned, I went in and talked to the manager. He asked about
the length of the trailer and when I informed him it was twenty-
eight feet, he declared he had only one space big enough to take that
size trailer. He pointed it out. I plotted my course and pulled into the
park.

I no sooner started to back into the space when Merle set up a cry
of complaint. "This isn t the lot I picked out!"

I informed her that the lot she had selected would barely hold a
small baby buggy, and what difference did it make anyway since it
was all the same trailer park.

Merle insisted it did make a difference. "Look at those broken-down
trailers all around us," she said scornfully, "And on top of that, this
isn t the adult section it s the children s playground."

I looked around. Some of the trailers were pretty beat up, and there
was an unusual number of children in the area.

io8 The Long, Long Trailer

The most dangerous group seemed to be playing some kind of a
war game. One small overalled girl held a short length of pipe which
resembled a bazooka. A second girl lighted a match and held it at the
end of the pipe. This I assumed was equivalent to setting off the charge.
A third warrior yelled "boom!" at the top of his voice, while the
fourth threw handfuls of dust into the air.

On the third charge, the party we eventually identified as Maw,
slammed her trailer door open and reached out far enough to deal
the nearest youngster a resounding whap with a yard stick, accompanied
by, "Goddamn you kids, git away from the trailer if you re gonna play
cannons. I m sick and tired a cleanin up your dirt! An* Thelma, keep
away from them butane tanks with matches they might go off."

We cringed. It wasn t a pleasant demise to contemplate. We would
be blown to Kingdom Come as Thelma touched a match to our butane
tanks, unless, of course, we weren t previously buried alive under the
several tons of dirt the cannonading quartet was now tossing in the
direction of our trailer.

As I hooked up the drains, I noted the evidence of another, slightly
older, group of kids at play.

People, it seemed, had children pretty recklessly around here. This
group had written names, initials and slogans all over the opposite
side of the trailer. And writing in the dust on aluminum, with the oil
of the human hand, is equivalent to carving it there with a jack-
knife. It comes off with steel wool almost nothing else.

I was beginning to believe Merle had been right about taking that
particular lot, when I spied a Vagabond parked nearby. It was brand
new and polished and waxed to a shining brilliance. The only odd
thing about it was its colorfuchsia. A brilliant, flagrant fuchsia. The
nail-polish people would have called it "shocking" or "scandalous" or
"appalling." While the color was most unusual, there was no doubt the
owners took a real pride in it. That was obvious just from the amount

Wide Open Spaces 109

o work that had gone into the waxing. Here, I thought, is my proof
to Merle that the trailer park was a good one. Here, right near us,
were people who took as much pride in their rig as we did in ours.
They had parked in this trailer park, and if it was good enough for
them, it was good enough for us,

I hurried through rny chores with The Monster, the quicker to get
inside and point all this out to Merle. Then I took her to the window
and directed her gaze to the Vagabond.

Merle sniffed and stuck to her guns. She wanted to pull up im
mediately and go search out another spot.

I was stubborn; I felt the necessity of proving my contention that it
was a first-class park, full of wonderful people. So I took the step.

"The minute those people come home," I said, "I ll walk right over
and invite them in for a drink. Ill prove to you we have nice neigh
bors."

I no sooner made the statement when the owners pulled up beside
the rig and parked. I beamed. "Look! A Cadillac, and all polished up

Merle stared in wonder. "It s fuchsia!" There was incredulity in her
voice. I looked again it was fuchsia. Their whole layout was a flaming
fuchsia from end to end. Car and trailer matched.

I had gone too far now to back down just because our neighbors
were queer for fuchsia. I sauntered over to the Vagabond and intro
duced myself.

The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Culpepper and their two
sons, Clifford, five, and Clark, eight, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Yes, they thought the park was lousy. No, they weren t old hands
at trailering. Yes, they would love to drop over for a drink and meet
the missus.

When the Culpepper family arrived we placed them on the daven
port with the two boys next to the door. They sat there like little

no The Long, Long Trailer

gentlemen while the pllmsoll line on the bottle of bourbon disappeared
from sight.

A rosy glow permeated the atmosphere. It seemed the Culpeppers
exuded fuchsia.

By the time we had finished the bourbon and were ready to start
oa the King Edward Scotch, Joe (they were no longer Joseph and
Annabelle, but Joe and Belle) came up with what he called a "wunner-
ftil Idear."

It seemed that he and his wife had two traits which dove-tailed to
gether beautifully. Belle hated to cook and Joe hated to eat. They
would put the youngsters to bed and Joe and I would go down to the
delicatessen and pick up some deviled eggs, some leiderkranz, some
camembert, some rnonterey jack, some limburger and some smoked
cheese. Joe informed me he was "hell" for sharp cheese, and I be
lieved him. We would also get some crackers and anchovies and a half-
dozen other ingredients for hors d oeuvres. Merle just looooved their
cute southern accents, and they just looooved hors d oeuvres. We
rounded up enough hors d oeuvres and canapes to supply a moderate-
sized Rotary banquet and launched into the Scotch.

About two o clock in the morning we all became very confidential.
Joe and Belle, it seemed, had owned a tavern in Baton Rouge. Belle
played the piano and entertained while Joe bossed the place and acted
as head bartender. They had sold their house and bar for fifteen thou
sand cash. This was at two o clock.

By three o clock the price had been upped to twenty-five thousand
cash. Not to be outdone, I had expanded my five shares of General
Motors stock to a syndicate operation that tied up Merrill, Lynch,
Pierce, Fenner and Bean for a solid week, just keeping me in quota
tions.

We progressed slowly and smoothly from story-teller to fibber to
prevaricator to deceiver to damn liar.

Wide Open S faces m

Joe s car had 195 horse power mine jumped to 280. We were lying
to one another about everything.

The hill he towed his trailer over coming out of Denver had a thirty-
five per cent grade and was twenty miles long. I tipped up Whitebird
into an absolutely vertical pull, and lengthened it to thirty miles.

By four o clock the green glasses began to drop and the Scotch bottle
was empty. Joe had another "wunnerful idear." Before he sold his
tavern (which by now had grown to a combination of the Stork
Club and Giro s) for a "hunnert thousan ," he had loaded the rear end
of the trailer with several cases of bourbon, gin and Scotch, and he
would now produce a bottle of bourbon, the likes of which we had
never laid tongue to. There must have been some element of truth
about the well-stocked trailer because he returned in less than a minute
with armfuls of Scotch, bourbon and gin.

By now I wanted nothing so much as the Culpeppers to please go
home so I could go to bed.

Joe averred that it was only the shank of the evening and since they
were leaving for California tomorrow, while we were heading for
Albuquerque the following day, we might never see each other again.
This devastating thought made Joe and Belle a little morose.

It was a touching scene. "You-all sure are fine people," Joe kept re
peating. "You-all sure are."

Joe s prize bourbon had gone untouched, we felt it would defile
the intimate fraternity with which we had just been blessed. We didn t
sign anything in blood, but we came very close.

With a bottle of gin in one hand and the other bottles under each
arm, Joe made his misty-eyed way back to the Vagabond Belle dragged
along. Before departing I had assured Joe ("old pal" "old chum") I
would be up and waiting to assist him hook up his rig the following
day.

At eleven o clock the next morning I regretted the rash statement

112 The Long, Long Trailer

about helping Joe ("new-found friend* ) with his hooking up. Little
King Edwards were hammering viciously on the inside of my head.
Merle had awakened me and told me Joe ("big bore") was preparing
to leave. I couldn t muster the strength to dress myself 3 so I appeared
as Joe s helper in my bathrobe.

Joe and Belle were bright-eyed and cheerful. They proffered me a
can of cold beer, which made my insides quiver, but which I took
after Joe assured me he had "had three already this morning," and felt
fine. After another good heart-to-heart talk, inspired by several beers,
Joe and Belle were ready to leave. It was nearly one o clock before
Merle and I waved them good-bye and the "fuchsia job" disappeared
down Highway 91. I promptly took a shower and was back in bed
at one-ten.

16. DISASTER

FIFTY MINUTES later, at exactly two o clock, I
was snatched back into the land of the living with the clutching hand.
It was Merle. She was standing at the bedroom window, mouth agape
and peering out wide-eyed at what I could only conclude was an
apparition. A little "fogged in" still, I pulled myself up to the window
beside her. It was an apparition. Either that, or the Culpeppers were
back. The "fuchsia job" was right there in front of us. There couldn t
possibly be two of them alike in the whole world.

It was the Culpeppers all right. The two boys Clark and Cliff leaped
from the car and raced into the trailer shouting, "We re back! We re

Disaster jj-

back! We re not gonna leave till tomorrow!** They had left a little
trail of brown footprints in their wake. We walked outside to meet
Joe and Belle.

Joe wore a broad, beerish grin. "Dog-gone," he said, *we jus got
a few miles down the highway when Ah said to Belle, Look honey,
we don* have to leave today. Les go back an* leave with those nice
folks tomorrah. So we re goin with you-all, an heah we ah! w

An they sure as hell-all were!

I was speechless. My thinking apparatus refused to manufacture a
single intelligent thing I could say.

Merle finally came up with, "Oh, that s fine. That s just fine."

Even without my mind operating, I knew this was wrong. It definitely
wasn t fine. It was anything but that. For twenty-four hours I hadn t
had anything to eat but sharp cheese and crackers and bourbon and
Scotch and anchovies and crackers and more sharp cheese. I wanted a
big thick steak and hashed-brown potatoes and beans and peas and
carrots and apple pie without cheese, and

Joe broke up this line of thought by announcing that Belle was in
the trailer making gin fizzes, and they had picked up some eggs that
Belle would hard-boil and we could get some more cheese and have
a big time tonight. It all sounded mighty nauseating.

Joe had another "wunnerful idear." Before it got too late we would
go down to the market and load up with a couple of cases of beer in
preparation for the trip tomorrow. At the same time we would pick
up the sharp cheese and more crackers and anchovies and hot dogs.

I nodded dumbly. The thought of more cheese and the sound of
the gin fizzes rattling in the trailer made my stomach a little queasy.

We disappeared inside The Monster to dress. Merle wasn t speak
ing There was no question, this was definitely my fault. I had made
the opening move.

Nervously I got out our maps and traced our route. Just below

H4 The Long, Long Trailer

Salt Lake the highway divided. Since the Culpeppers were headed for
Los Angeles, they would have to take U.S. 91 at that point, while we
would turn off on US. 89. They would leave us before tomorrow night.
I was cheered mightily by this thought. We would again be alone, and
I could eat. The thought of another twenty-four hours on cheese, beer,
bourbon and crackers wasn t exactly uplifting, but the thought of
tomorrow night was. It was a bad deal, but we d simply have to make
trie best of it

Merle was getting a little worried about the rugs. The continual
tramping in and out of six pairs of feet, two of them youngsters, had
turned the yellow rugs a deep orange In spots.

After a few gin fizzes, Joe and I headed for the store to do the shop
ping. En route we plotted our course for the next day. I would lead
the way and the "fuchsia job" would follow. Whenever a stop was In
order, Joe would blink his lights. This would mean that, at the next
turnout large enough to accommodate two trailers, I was to pull over.

Joe came up with another startling revelation. He had a gas re
frigerator In his trailer which he left turned on while traveling. We
could put the beer, or anything else we wanted to keep cold, in his
refrigerator.

Since the refrigerator was operated with butane, I made a mental
note to stay far enough ahead of Joe to avoid the percussion of the
explosion when the refrigerator Inevitably blew up In a geyser of trailer
parts.

Dinner was a repeat performance of the night before, except that I
confined myself to two cans of beer. Not Joe, however; his vascular
system absorbed only alcohol and his Interior was a complete vacuum.
Either that, or his training while he owned the tavern was now stand
ing him In good stead. His capacity was enormous, and it wasn t limited
to beer and bourbon either. He could eat a whole box of crackers, two
cans of anchovies, dozens of eggs and innumerable hot dogs. This

Disaster 115

was his Idea of a double-special blue-plate dinner. Joe, it seemed, could
eat anything but substantial food.

We donated the roast beef to the boys. They were a little wary
of it at first, having assumed that sharp cheese and anchovies and
crackers was a normal diet for five- and eight-year-olds. They later did
condescend to sample it, even if we were Yankees.

At my insistence we all got to bed fairly early that night. I pointed
out that we always liked to get an early start when we traveled.
Actually we didn t. But I was taking no chances on not having suf
ficient time to reach the fork in the highway below Salt Lake City.

We did get off to an early start and it wasn t nearly so bad as we
anticipated; for the first hundred miles or so. After all we were alone
in our rig, and by late afternoon we would be pulling up somewhere
to buy the thick, juicy steaks I had been looking forward to for two
days.

We stopped by the roadside for lunch, washed down with a can of
beer. Lunch consisted of monterey jack, longhorn cheese, anchovies,
crackers and deviled eggs. It was a little hard to stomach, but we
managed it.

After lunch Joe s lights seemed to be blinking continuously. At every
wide place in the road, the lights came on and we would pull over
for a beer. The stops became so frequent I was beginning to worry
about reaching the turn-off before dark. I stepped up the speed a little.
I had other reasons for this, besides the worry over the destination.
Joe was driving so close to me that I could no longer see overtaking
cars in the rear-vision mirror. Again they were whoooshing by with
their horns wide open and sending a cold chill down my spine*

Another worry was the nearness of Joe s butane tank. I didn t have
too much faith in his idea of operating the refrigerator while under
way. While butane is safe enough when used properly, you don t
light a match and look in the tank to see how much gas you ve got left.

i*6 The Long, Long Trailer

I wondered if an exploded butane tank left any radiation, and thought
dismally of Gelger counters.

We followed the beer route into Salt Lake City and out again. We
were nearlng the fork of Highways 89 and 91. 1 began to think kindly
of Joe and Belle and their two fine young sons, Clark and Cliff. They
were nice people. We wouldn t soon forget them, and we would have
an experience to recount to the folks when we got home. We only
had to stop for one beer between Salt Lake and the fork in the road.

At Springville we pulled up to say our good-byes. Beaming we got
out of the car. Beaming we met Joe and Belle. They were beaming
too. Joe had a "wunnerful Idear." He had been checking the map
with Belle.

"Dog-gone you-all," he was saying, "we caln t leave you heah. Looka
heah on the map. We can go along with you all the way down to
heah/* He stabbed his finger at a spot on the map that seemed a million
miles away.

Hastily I tried to calculate the distance in days. It must be two days
at least. Two more days of sharp cheese and anchovies and beer and
crackers.

A sudden thought struck me and I grasped for it. "But Joe," I said,
"what about Los Angeles? We don t want to put you out. You ll be
going out of your way."

But It seems that Belle had toted up the mileage and it was only
twenty miles longer. "What was twenty miles?" Joe wanted to know.
He told us not to worry about it. They would still be in Los Angeles
on time. They would drive along with us to Mount Carmel, then take
State Route 15. It wouldn t be any trouble at all and we weren t even
to think about It. The thing to think about now was how to get hold
of a couple of cases of beers. The frequent stops along the highway had
made great inroads In the stock and "we don wanna get caught short
do we, huh?**

Disaster ny

We were trapped. I wondered darkly what Bloody Mary would
have done under the circumstances.

We got more beer. We got more eggs and sharp cheese and anchovies
and crackers and hot dogs. We parked alongside a little stream while
Belle whipped up a concoction she called "Coneys." It consisted of a
boiled hot dog placed inside a long bun with a thick soup-like sub
stance poured over the whole thing. It was repulsive. It was even more
repulsive after Belle, who lost some of her southern charm and dainti
ness when full of beer and bourbon, dumped a whole platter of the
soup-like stuff in my lap.

Trailering was losing some of its fascination. I was full of sharp
cheese, and miserable. Merle was also full of sharp cheese, and miser
able, but mostly because the rugs were now changing color again, from
orange to burnt umber.

Somehow we got through the evening and on the road again the
nest morning. I drove a little faster, but not fast enough to get away
from Joe s blinking lights.

At one turnout Clark and Cliff waded through what must have
been a half-acre of tar. The tar reappeared on the rugs, which were
now mahogany-color, polka-dotted with tar. The only consolation we got
came from Joe, "Active little buggah s ahn t they?** We agreed.

Twice we had to stop. Once for more beer, and once for cheese and
anchovies and hot dogs and crackers. Belle was by now hoarding the
roast beef for the "little buggahs.**

The only wide place we could find to park the trailers for the night
was an outdoor dance pavilion, alongside the Sevier River, several miles
from the nearest town. It had been recently used. The piano was still
in the shell and there was evidence of wrestling matches having taken
place in every nook and cranny. We hated the place. Joe and Belle
"loooved" it. We stayed. We ate hot dogs and anchovies and sharp
cheese. We became very disenchanted.

1 1 8 The Long, Long Trailer

The only hope was the next day. That was the day we would pass
the turn-off onto State 15. The Culpeppers would have to turn there
or change their destination altogether. The very thought that this could
happen soured my stomach and produced a choleric reaction in my
liver that induced horrible nightmares.

In a funk I timidly approached Joe and felt him out on the possibility
of changing his destination. His answer was exhilarating. It almost
caused Merle to shed tears of gratitude over the possibility of salvaging
a thread or two of her formerly yellow rugs.

Far s far superior to adrenalin for hypoing the circulation was Joe s
statement, "Ahm sorry awful sorry but we really got to get to Los
Angeles." Our enthusiasm was tempered only by the thought that they
were "really" going to leave us twice before. Our faith had been
shaken but there was always hope. Charity had long since been over
worked.

While Merle was deviling eggs and Belle making Coneys we tried
out my pistol on beer cans thrown into the river. We couldn t even
hit the river. Joe got out his gun. It wouldn t even fire. After a half-
dozen attempts to make the thing work, we discovered that several
parts were missing. Discouraged, Joe threw the gun at a beer can in
the river, and missed again.

We sat down to the Coneys and deviled eggs while the youngsters,
who by now had discovered the palatability of beef, ate thick prime
rib sandwiches and raw carrots and tracked mud into the trailer
and onto the rags.

That night Merle and I held council in the trailer. Darkness always
Increased our apprehension. We had spent three miserable days being
pushed around. Not just from here to there, but from state to state.

The council was conducted in hushed tones.

"Why don t we get into the car right now," I whispered, "tear

Disaster ng

off someplace at top speed hide for a few weeks, then come back
and pick up the trailer?"

Merle looked disgusted. "That s ridiculous. Besides, I won t leave
the trailer."

"Then why don t we hook up the thing and quietly sneak away in
the middle of the night?"

"You know it s impossible to snea\ any place with a trailer."

I was getting desperate. "Look," I said bravely. "Why don t I walk
right up to Joe and say, *J e > we re leaving now and leave?"

Merle lifted her right eyebrow. "Yes! Why don t you?"

She knew I couldn t bring myself to do it. After all, / was the one
responsible for this ripening friendship I had made the opening move.
The Culpeppers were minding their own business until I came along.
It really wasn t their fault we were trapped into this Cook s tour of
misery; it was mine.

Besides every day hope was held out that it would be the last
day, but something always postponed our separation. Tomorrow, we
felt, was definitely the last day. Joe had been positive in his assertion
that they had to turn off on State 15 for Los Angeles, otherwise it
meant a trip of several hundred miles off their route. The council
lasted well past midnight but we went to bed mightily cheered, cling
ing desperately to the slender thread of hope that tomorrow was defi
nitely the day.

My frenzied nightmare that evening was especially gory. I thrashed
around in bed until Merle brought me to a leaping position with the
clutching hand. I looked at her wild-eyed while she tried to calm me
down. It was six o clock. I could hear the tinkling of a piano. I
asked Merle if she heard a piano, and was relieved at her affirmative
noc l ^ wasn t insanity after all. It must be Joe and his portable radio,
searching for the early-morning news. We weren t that lucky. The

I2O The Long, Long Trailer

piano was doing finger exercises that quickly developed into "The
Twelfth Street Rag" which in turn merged into "Kitten on the Keys,"
out of which came "Nola." "Nola" can be pretty revolting at 6:00 A.M.
I peeked out the window. It was Belle, seated at the piano, in the shell
of the dance pavilion. She was rehearsing the stuff that had made her
such a hit in the tavern in Baton Rouge. There seemed to be no end to
the disturbing things the Culpeppers could contrive. Before launching
into "Bumble Boogie/ Belle finished a can of beer and tossed it on the
floor alongside the other two empties. She had fingered her way through
three cans already. There were three more full ones sitting on the
piano. We tried to calculate the piano mileage of three cans of beer and
got ourselves so thoroughly awake, that there was nothing to do but
get up.

We were greeted by Joe and, "Doggone you-all, we sure are havin
a good time." With that he presented us with two cans of beer he had
fished out of the river where they had been cooling. He could have
cooled them in the refrigerator but the picnic spirit made him drop
them in the river.

Beer at 6:00 A.M. can be as revolting as "Nola.**

The piano concert lasted a good two hours and caused us to get a
late start. We weren t too worried though, since the turn-off onto
State 15 was less than 150 miles away.

We were slowly coming to regard this fork in the road as the
dividing line between life and death. State 15 represented the road to
peace and happiness it was the pathway to heaven and contentment.
Our visions of what lie beyond this equator were heart-warming. Our
child-like faith in the powers of State 15 to change our way of life
was a thing pitiful to behold.

Again we were in the lead, and again Joe s blinking lights pulled
us up time and again for a beer. I was feeling bitter toward the high
way department for building highways on level ground, where two

Disaster I2 i

trailers could park almost anywhere. I was also bitter about food. The
diet that had been forced on me for the past seventy-two hours wasn t
sitting too well. I insisted that lunch this day must be eaten in a restau
rant. Surprisingly, everybody had agreed.

Near noon, we were passing through a town when I spied a restau
rant. Here was my chance. I hesitated momentarily, recalling the pre
vious occasion when we had stopped inside the city limits for lunch.
While we were in the restaurant two cars had blocked us in to the
curb. They had parked fore and aft and it took a half-hour of maneuver
ing to free The Monster. I didn t want to be sucked into another trap
like that.

Slowly we patrolled the main street until I spotted a good half-
block of open parking space. I pulled the trailer to the curb and nosed
the car to the intersection. Nobody could park in front. It was wide
open. Culpepper pulled in behind me. The spot was several hundred
feet from the restaurant, but this was a minor item. I would gladly
have walked several thousand feet for some real food.

Everybody piled out. I urged them to go ahead to the restaurant
while I took care of the parking meters. I even gave Merle specific in
structions what to order for me.

It wasn t until everyone had disappeared that I took stock of the
situation that confronted me. Signs on the curb said, "Diagonal parking
only." We, of course, were parallel to the curb. This didn t bother me
too much because I could easily point out to any minion of the law
that, had we parked diagonally, we would have blocked the whole
street.

What I hadn t reckoned with, was the parking meters. Standing at
the front of my car, it looked to be a good eight-iron golf shot to the
rear of Joe s trailer. The row of parking meters resembled a picket
fence. I counted them up. There were fourteen. This was going to
be an expensive lunch.

122 The Long, Long Trailer

I started down the row of meters slipping pennies In the side and
clicking the flags down. At number eight I ran out o pennies and
ducked into a hardware store for change. The proprietor couldn t spare
twenty-five pennies but gave me ten and fifteen cents In change. I
finished up the remaining six meters.

By the time I had concluded this operation, only two minutes re
mained on the first meter. I did some swift calculating. At the rate I
was operating I was losing five minutes of time from number one
meter to number fourteen. I d have to change my tactics. I d have to put
three pennies in each meter.

At a candy shop I got fifteen more pennies and beginning with
number one, started pushing in three pennies per meter. At the third
meter Merle appeared on the sidewalk In front of the restaurant and
shouted that my lunch was getting cold. I waved back and assured her
I would be there momentarily. I stuffed two more meters with pennies
before the flag on number nine shot up. It said "Violation," in big
red letters.

I needed more pennies. The Power and Light Company office had a
neat little sign at the cashier s cage that said "Sorry no change." I
trotted out of the office and next door to a meat market. There I got
twenty-five more pennies.

By the time I got back to the sidewalk, meters number ten and
eleven read Violation." I had stepped up my pace to a dog trot by
this time and was beginning to perspire. I started with number nine
to slip one penny into each of these bottomless pits to keep them quiet
until I could get back to number six and put three pennies in each.

Merle reappeared on the sidewalk, this time accompanied by Joe.
They both gestured violently for me to hurry up and Joe shouted,
"Quit foolin* aroun and come on! Man, you re missin a fine lunch."

I was tempted to tear off one of the meters and heave it at Joe,
but I just waved and smiled as they disappeared inside the restaurant.

Disaster 123

These continual interruptions weren t helping me any with the meter
situation.

I finally finished up the remaining meters and looked down the line
no flags. I ran back to number one just to be sure I had time for
lunch. There were four minutes left on number one.

I wasn t getting any place with pennies, I reasoned. What I needed
was nickels.

I raced across the street and halfway down the block to the bank.
There I got twenty nickels and arrived back at number one meter just
before the flag flipped up. I felt I was gaining on the things now.

Quickly I went down the line with the handful of nickels. I was
pretty adept at inserting money in the meters by this time and it
seemed only a matter of seconds stuffing the maws between one and
fourteen.

But just as I was about to slip the nickel into number fourteen. Merle,
Joe, Belle and the kids came out of the restaurant and marched toward
me in a body. I indicated with a wave that I would be right with
them but got no response.

Joe nonchalantly sauntered up to the curb picking his teeth. Belle
said something about "Wasn t I hungry?" and Merle handed me a
hamburger sandwich.

Lunch was over.

We got silently into the car and drove off, while I sulked and
munched the hamburger. It was about on a par with Belle s Coneys.

In spite of all the bad luck though, I wasn t really too discouraged.
By the time I had finished the hamburger, my spirits had risen con
siderably. We were nearing the turn-off. Paradise was only a few
miles away.

My foot became a little heavier on the gas pedal We moved along
briskly into the little town of Glendale. There we gassed up and
headed for State 15, briskly still. We outdistanced the fuchsia job,

124 The Long, Long Trailer

and when we arrived at the fork, the Culpeppers were nowhere in
sight.

It gave us time to think again kindly of Joe and Belle and their
two lovely children Clark and Cliff, There was no question but what
they had all had a wonderful time. Merle and I felt big and expansive
and generous. Especially so, with State 15 right there in front of us. I
could even get out and pat the road marker with the big 15 in a
circle, if I were so inclined.

Then I got to thinking about the other fork in the road the one
out of Salt Lake and became a little panicky. Could it be that Joe
and Belle were even now parked alongside the highway, examining
maps 5 looking for another route to Los Angeles? Was that the reason
they had dropped so far behind? Panic was giving way to terror. We
had waited a good ten minutes. We had a clear view of the highway
back of us for five miles or more and the fuchsia job was nowhere to
be seen.

I convinced myself we couldn t wait any longer. We pulled out and
headed for the Grand Canyon. It was a good fifteen miles later before
we began to breathe easier. The shackles began to fall away. We were
free. No more sharp cheese no more beer. We could eat where we
liked and what we liked. Tonight we would have dinner in the Grand
Canyon. Tomorrow we would drive to the north rim where we
could watch a spectacular sunrise. The day was brighter the highway
smoother.

Near Fredonia we entered Arizona and started the long hard pull
up to Jacob Lake. Our kindly thoughts toward the Culpeppers in
creased in direct ratio to the distance between our wagon train and
State 15. We liked them again, immensely. In spite of the fact that we
were in second gear and struggling hard toward the summit it was a
great day. Our pilot, co-pilot system was called back into operation
this time to keep too many cars from piling up behind us. At every

Disaster 125

straight stretch we would wave a half-dozen cars on their way toward
the crest.

As we neared the top, the grade became even more pronounced.
Our speed slowed to a walk and we were able to urge each car to
pass individually as it overtook us. I would lean out the side wave to
the car behind then pull over to allow them to pass. The motorists
appreciated this and usually waved us a "thank you" in passing. We
would wave back. Good fellowship was rampant. We loved everybody
and everything.

Again I leaned out and waved to the car behind. This time the
driver pulled abreast and waved back. Then I nearly leaped out the
car door.

Merle screamed, "It s the Culpeppers!" Moby Dick seemed to stag
ger to his knees. It was the Culpeppers. The blankety-blank Culpeppers
sans trailer.

Joe stood up in the car and shouted, "Man, we been drivin* a hunnert
miles an hour tryin* to catch you~alL I got a wunnerful idear pull
over!"

For a moment I regretted that cute, little Thelma hadn t dropped
the match in our butane tank. It would have been a joyous experience,
compared to this. Then I considered driving The Monster right over
the nearest cliff. It seemed the easy way out. I mentioned it to Merle.
She was all for it. The situation had now gotten so far out of hand
that it seemed to call for the most drastic of all measures. As we strug
gled up the grade, searching for a place to pull out, my mind began
probing the future.

Ten years twenty yes, even thirty years hence we would be stag
gering up hill and down dale trying to shake off the Culpeppers but
never quite achieving this blissful, isolated state.

Joe always hove into sight with a wheel of sharp cheese slung over
his shoulder.

126 The Long, Long Trailer

Cliff and Clark banged through the trailer forever and a day, track
ing in tar and mud and muck.

Belle beat out the now loathsome rhythm of "Nola" in every
key, on every piano, in every state in the Union, as she sipped beer
and bourbon. Anchovies swam in barrels of beer, defying us to con
sume them as fast as they could propagate themselves. It was a terrify
ing phantasm that haunted me even after Merle pointed out a wide
place in the road where we could park.

Joe was bubbling with enthusiasm. It seems he had run out of gas,
which was the reason for dropping behind. He had parked the fuchsia
job at the crossroads of US. 89 and State 15.
With a little prodding from Belle, he unfolded his plan,
**I got a wunnerful idear," he said. "A wunnerjul idear. Tomorrah
mornin we all get up at five o clock and drive out to the north rim
of the Canyon and watch the sun come up." He delivered the speech
as though he were unfolding a formula for outmoding the hydrogen
bomb.

Suddenly we were no longer interested in the sun or the north
rim, or the south rim either or the Grand Canyon, or, for that matter
life itself.

We both stood there fidgeting with juvenile uncomfortableness. If
we were ever going to make a break, it had to come soon.

"Look, Joe/ I said with quavering voice, "we ve changed our plans.
We ve got to get to Phoenix right away!" I tried to make it sound
urgent as though we had just been the recipients of a message from
an omniscient God.

Joe brushed aside the heaven-sent message and the Phoenix trip by
pointing out that it was getting dark and that we had to stay some
place tonight. As a matter of fact, we wouldn t lose any time at all. We
would get up early in the morning; watch the sunrise, then they would
head for Los Angeles and we could go on to Phoenix.

Disaster !2y

We had heard this plan to separate and go our various ways before,
but that Utopian state never quite materialized. I was persistent,
"Joe," I said, "what about your trailer? It s sixty miles away."

This didn t bother Joe. He allowed he could whip back there and
get the thing in nothing flat.

He turned to Belle. "Honey, you won t mind stayin with them for
just a few hours, will you?"

We were aghast at that statement.

But Belle guessed she wouldn t mind and Clark and Cliff seemed
overjoyed at the favorable juncture of circumstances, which allowed
them to get in a few more licks at the yellow rugs which were now
ebony, bordering on jet black.

We weren t given the opportunity to issue an invitation or even deny
the Culpeppers the pleasure of our company. The whole thing seemed
to have been settled.

The thing to do now, Joe indicated easily, was drive to the sum
mit, park the trailer and have a couple of bourbons for the road.

As two agnostics we Twisses parked the trailer, and Joe had a
couple of bourbons for the road. Belle had several bourbons, just for
Belle.

I was now the baby sitter.

In order to save the rig from complete destruction, I organized a
contest to see who could gather the most pine cones for the outdoor
fireplace. This game began to pall after a short time and a how! was
set up for cokes and pop. That meant a half-mile walk to the little
store and back, while Cliff and Clark finished their work on the rugs.
The next cry was for something to eat. Out came our canned goods
and we had a dinner of beans and brown bread.

Belle just had a few more bourbons.

Four hours after our arrival, Joe was back with the fuchsia job. He
had to have several bourbons before he could stomach the beans and

128 The Long, Long Trailer

brown bread. Then he helped us get Belle into the fuchsia trailer and

Merle put her to bed.

Things had come to a state!

The situation was grim. I outlined my position to Merle. I would
not be a baby sitter. Neither would I consume any more beer, bourbon,
sharp cheese, anchovies or crackers. The notion that we were going
to watch the sun come up over the north rim or the south rim or
any other rim, here, anywhere, ever, was fustian twaddle. And if Joe
thought so it was a whimsey; a caprice; a vagary; it was sheer utter
nonsense. It was a stinking cockeyed lie; because we weren t. We were
leaving bright and early in the morning.

At four o clock we arose. At four-thirty I was folding the jacks.
Shortly thereafter I started the motor. At the sound of the starter
the door on the fuchsia job flew open framing Joe and Belle in their
nightshirts,

Joe looked incredulous, "You re leavin ?**

I nodded.

Belle added the crusher, albeit a little thickly. "Humph," she humphed,
* an* after we drove all this way! A fine thing! A fine gawd damn thing!!"

With that she slammed the door and we haven t seen the Culpeppers
since.

17. TO PHOENIX OR ANY
PLACE

WE WERE a little disturbed by the attitude of the

Culpeppers. So disturbed that I became momentarily confused and

To Phoenix or Any Place 129

headed The Monster back down the route we had just traversed. The
Culpeppers watched us from their bedroom window. To this day
they probably think we retraced our steps just to throw them off the
scent.

We didn t regret leaving with them the case o pop for the kids
or the roast beef or the dozen or so cans of food. But we did regret
leaving behind one of our best Revere copper pans. Still we felt it
added up to a small price to pay for freedom.

Our hasty departure had forced us into the briefest packing period
to date. Practically nothing was packed. A towel was thrown over the
dishes and glassware. Other breakable items were merely placed on
the floor. Even if we broke all the dishes and lamps, it would still be
worth it not to have to eat sharp cheese, anchovies, beer and bourbon
twenty-four hours a day. Even the rough rugged roads over the Paria
plateau seemed smooth as glass.

We searched out a little roadside inn and ate everything in sight.
Our enormous capacity for food startled the waitress into striking up
a conversation. It was one-sided though. We had learned our lesson.
We spoke to nobody.

The Painted Desert was never more beautiful. The muddy Colorado
was beautiful. The Vermillion Cliffs were beautiful; the Indian hogaits
were beautiful; everything was beautiful. The rain was beautiful and
so was the trailer park in Flagstaff where we stopped for the night.

It was beautiful in spite of the fact it was located alongside a mill,
and soot covered the trailer from end to end. Even The Monster looked
beautiful in his now black overcoat.

It was even pretty humorous when I fell with the coffee pot smash
ing that glass instrument into a thousand pieces and dumping coffee
over the formerly yellow rugs. The coffee seemed to lighten the rugs
a little and we considered dipping them in the stuff and changing
the color scheme.

130 The Long, Long Trailer

The rough roads and chuckholes we encountered into Prescott dis
turbed us not at all.

We had a real lunch in a most unusual rock formation called Granite
Dells a structure undoubtedly built by gnomes and inhabited by pixies
and fairies. It was beautiful.

On the edge of the Prescott National Forest we encountered a dupli
cate of Whitebird. The highway winds along the edge of Yarnell Hill
and ends on the floor of the desert below.

At the bottom of the hill we observed a sign which read "Geronamae
Likes Potato Chips." It sounded completely harmless, so we investi
gated. Geronamae turned out to be a lady donkey who actually did
like potato chips, popcorn and doughnuts. We filled her up with all
three and held communion with the first living thing we felt invulner
able to since our encounter with the Culpeppers. A kdy donkey may not
be the most fascinating companion in the world, but at least she didn t
leap into her trailer (she had one) and stalk us into Phoenix munching
doughnuts, potato chips and popcorn.

We hauled our draggled wagon train all over Phoenix before we
selected a trailer park on Thomas Road. It was a happy choice, brand
new and slicked up to the nines.

The gigantic undertaking of washing and waxing our colossus, in
side and out, was interrupted only by the occasional necessity of
staying our operation while we knocked a scorpion or two on the
head

The thoroughness of our ablution uncovered a casualty a bent axle.
The chuckholes had taken their toll. At first blush a bent axle may not
seem like too serious a matter. From the standpoint of the axle itself,
it isn t. But the arrangements for the repair job require some careful
calculations and no little ingenuity.

We learned there is a vast difference when calling the plumber or
electrician or carpenter or cabinet maker to do some work on your

To Phoenix or Any Place 131

trailer instead of your house. In the trailer world, these gentlemen all
expect you to bring the mountain to Mohammed.

This poses a problem. How do you pack the thing for tilling at a
thirty-degree angle from starboard to port? What do you do with the
milk and butter and eggs and meat in the refrigerator while the trailer
is rocked from side to side? What keeps the springs and mattresses
from sliding off the beds? And most important: what do you do with
your wife?

It s a simple matter for the mechanic to say, "Bring it down and well
put in a new axle," It s not such a simple matter to move your only
house into the repair shop for goodness knows how long.

We could have struck up an acquaintance with a neighbor, and
Merle could have wormed an invitation to tea, but we ruled this
speculation out aborning. Even the thought of another cross-country
chase that might entangle us with wheels of cheese or anchovies or
even tea, was enough to send us darting into the trailer, locking the
doors and pulling the blinds there to crouch in cowardly apprehension
until the hallucination passed,

We decided on a more mundane operation as a cover-up. Merle would
do the washing in the utility room while I took Moby Dick down to
have his legs straightened.

A full eight hours were required for the job, and I returned home
to find the laundry long since finished and Merle suffering from a
slight case of malnutrition. We had forgotten about food. Since trailer
parks are usually located miles from civilization, no restaurant was
available, and Merle was too proud to go begging and too chary to
strike up an acquaintance.

With The Monster back in traveling order, we settled down for a
pleasant few days in Phoenix. The thermometer bullied its way past
the hundred mark and we were miserable again. We had some difficulty

132 The Long, Long Trailer

getting used to the Idea that our house was portable. We suffered with

the heat for nearly a week and complained bitterly until somebody
suggested we move to a cooler climate.

It hadn t occurred to us before, but we were free. Not only from
the Culpeppers but from everybody and everything. We could go when
and where we liked.

We made this discovery at seven o clock one evening and left for
Albuquerque at seven o clock the next morning. It was as simple as
that. While the weather reports in the newspapers told us that the
temperature was ten degrees cooler in Albuquerque, there was no
mention of the raging sandstorm along our route across the desert.

Piloting our forty-five-foot rig down the highway in a forty-mile
gale was like dragging a full-rigged schooner through a wind tunnel.
The sides of the trailer made great targets for the wind that ebbed and
lowed like the tides. With every ebb we d gee. With every flow
we d haw. We lurched through the desert with the yaw of the trailer
a frightening action to behold.

We crossed the Continental Divide again (the thing seemed to be
following us), and staggered into Las Graces, New Mexico, where we
found an extraordinary number of sympathetic souls. The city was
struggling to glorify its Centennial, But the wind was pushing us
both around.

Our service-station attendant poured out the story of the terrible
predicament of the Centennial Celebration Committee^ of which he
was a member.

Four times, he told us, the committee had erected the scenery on the
gigantic stage, as a fitting background for the pageant, and four times
the wind had blown it down and chewed it up. He added that the
wind must have bothered us "some" crossing the desert. It was the un
derstatement of the year.

We left the service-station attendant bemoaning the fate of the

To Phoenix or Any Place 133

Centennial and pursued our way through the dips o the main street.
Everything was proceeding as normally as possible under the circum
stances, when Merle suddenly burst out with, "Let s go to El Paso in
stead of Albuquerque!"

There was no time to think out a decision. The highway was right
there. One arrow pointed toward Albuquerque and an arrow in the
opposite direction indicated El Paso. The blare of horns from the line
up of traffic behind us urged a quick decision.

We headed for El Paso.

Merle was enthused. She had never been in El Paso and, since we
weren t sure we would be in the vicinity again soon, felt this was the
proper time to include this border city in our itinerary. While I went
along with the idea, since it was only a matter of some forty-odd miles,
I wasn t completely at ease. I hadn t had an opportunity to consult
maps of either the highway or routes through the city.

The wind had changed directions, which helped some, but I was
still worried that I would become confused and lost in the down-town
traffic.

In the hills above El Paso we were relieved to find a fork in the
road with an alternate route plainly marked, "For Trucks and Trailers."

We took it.

We should have gone to Albuquerque,

The further we pursued the trailer route, the more obscure became
the directions. There was some construction under way on the by
pass, which necessitated temporary tours down side streets. Sometimes
we would immediately work our way back to the highway sometimes
not. On one detour we became hopelessly lost. We went up one street
and down another until I spied a highway that bore some resemblance
to our route. It was carrying heavy traffic which we joined. It was
late afternoon. Not dark enough for lights, but not light enough to
make the highway markers readily readable.

134 The Long, Long Trailer

In less than two minutes the front bumper of the car was nosed
smack dab up to the International Bridge leading to Mexico,

Here was a new situation. Here was potential disaster.

Merle pointed at the bridge, "I didn t know we crossed the Rio
Grande to get to El Paso."

Her voice startled me. I began to quake. I tried to frame an answer,
search out a place to turn around and prepare for the customs officials
all at the same time. There wasn t room on the highway to turn
around, and the parking lots on either side were filled to the overflow
ing.

The fleeting seconds it took to make this observation sealed our fate.
Cars piled up behind us. That shut off our escape in the rear. Horns
were beginning to honk. My heart honked right back I could feel
It and hear it!

The customs official waved us into the dock. He was tremendously
cooperative and polite. He first asked us if we had any baggage.

Merle said, "Yes," I shook my head "No." He looked a little
surprised at this clashing of answers and his right eyebrow raised
ever so slightly. I squirmed uncomfortably and gave Merle my "pointed
eye" look, which means that I am to do all the talking, then turned
back to the official I tried my best to explain to him that we probably
had baggage, but not in the sense that the word "baggage" is generally
used.

The sham of my casualness was apparent even to Merle, and the
official seemed a shade unhappy with the explanation. One or two more
questions brought equally confusing replies.

Then he came up with the Interrogation I feared most, "How long
are you going to be in Mexico?" he asked quietly.

I took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye. "Five
minutes," I said.

To Phoenix or Any Place 135

His head snapped up. "Five minutes! You want to go to Mexico in
a trailer for five minutes?"

I gave him a sickly smile that quickly developed into a dry, cackling,
nervous laugh.

Merle, in spite of my warning, re-entered the conversation. "Yes,
you see it s all a mistake. We really don t want to go to Mexico not
really." Her voice was quaveringly elegant.

The official was stunned. He repeated her words. "You don t want
to go to Mexico?" He was now beginning to get the impression we
were either idiots or eccentric millionaires out on a lark.

I decided to foster the latter notion saying, "Ha-Ha! Ha. You see we
just want to turn around, HA-ha."

After Fd said it I had the feeling the remark was more in the idiot
category.

The customs man looked angry, puzzled then blank.

I tried again, "We re just going to Mexico to go around the block,
then we re coming right back. We just want to turn around."

It had all seemed fairly simple when I first embarked on the ex
planation, but now I was beginning to feel that I had somehow drifted
from the subject and was discoursing on the theory of nuclear fission
or relativity.

The honking of the cars behind us was becoming louder and more
insistent.

The official shook himself, then fired what we thought was a pretty
ridiculous question.

"Why can t you turn around in the United States? or Texas?" he
asked.

Ridiculous or not, I was hard-put for an answer. After all there was
quite a bit of room in the United States, or Texas, in which to turn
around. There was even plenty of room to turn around less than a

136 The L*Qng, Long Trailer

hundred feet away but it might just as well have been on Saturn as
far as we were concerned.

My delay in answering the official s last question caused his face
to change expression, and his voice to acquire that silky elegance I
have always imagined an FBI man assumed, just before pouncing on
the underworld leader o an international smuggling ring.

* 4 Why ? " he asked shrewdly, "do you want to go to Mexico to turn
around?"

I had visions of customs officials by the score leaping on the trailer
with tin snips and blow-torch, and taking it apart splinter by splinter,
in search of the million dollars in contraband we undoubtedly had
stashed in the walls and ceiEng.

The thing was so rapidly developing into a potential international
incident, that all three of us were becoming visibly nervous.

There was only one way out. We threw ourselves on the mercy of
the customs officials. I no longer attempted to save face. I poured out
the whole ludicrous story. That we were neophyte trailerites that we
were in a strange town that we were on the bridge only by mistake.
I promised to be out of Mexico, not in five minutes, but two minutes.
If it would help any we would leave El Paso immediately and go back
west.

I would even have offered to leave Texas, but that feat takes several
days in a trailer.

It was a sincere, heart-rending plea and it brought cooperation and
results.

We went to Mexico took a four-block tour of that country re
turned to the bridge, and again went through customs.

Our whole foreign hegira had taken less than three minutes. We
were so unnerved by this time, we headed right back to Las Cruces
as we pondered the two records we must have set: (i) The shortest
tour of Mexico in the long history of that country and (2) the first

To Phoenix or Any Place 137

trailer in the world to visit a foreign nation just to turn around.

It was a fairly quiet drive back to Las Cruces, where we decided we
had better stop for the night.

The moment we arrived we began probing here and there for a
certain trailer park which was supposed to be near the Rio Grande,
Our nosing around wasn t very productive in the twilight we couldn t
even find the Rio Grande. We spent so much time in our search that
darkness overtook us and we again had to turn on our lights. This
wasn t a very fruitful operation either. After fifteen minutes of driv
ing, our lights went out all twenty-six of them. We had just passed a
service station with some pretty slovenly trailer hook-ups and remarked
about the unfortunate trailerites staying there. We hurried back to
the slovenly hook-ups and joined the unfortunate people.

Morning dulled my concern over the lights and I insisted to Merle
that, since we would do all our driving to Albuquerque in the day
light, it would be best to have them repaired there.

We started right into the teeth of the forty-mile wind.

We hadn t gone two miles before I noticed the ammeter showing
"no charge." Having burned out a generator once, under similar cir
cumstances, I promptly turned around and headed back for a little
shop I had spied alongside the highway.

The sign outside said, IGNITION EXPERT. I unhooked the car,
drove it into the open-front garage and searched out the ignition
expert. He was a southern gentleman who informed me he was loath
to work on Sunday but since we were up against it, he allowed he
might help us. His wife invited Merle into the little cafe, which
seemed to be her domain, for coffee. Mr. Ignition Expert must have
been the inspiration for the original walkie-talkie. His constant jerky
movements were matched only by his incessant profane babble.

I tried to bring him up to date on the action of the lights but he

138 The Long, Long Trailer

brushed me off with the admonition that he was the expert and he
would find the "jeezly" trouble. He propped up the hood and stationed
me behind the wheel to watch the ammeter. He jabbed and poked
and twisted and pulled one wire after another. This was accompanied
by a thirty-minute lecture on the evils of all ignition systems.

Then he shifted his base of operations to the dash board and delivered
another thirty-minute lecture on ignition systems generally and this
one in particular. This was accompanied by more yanking, pinching,
twirling and cranking of wires. The lights had now come on, but
damned if he knew why.

There was only one thing to do now (he said), back out the car
and run her over the pit. So he could fiddle away more time under
neath, I gathered.

His lecture from the bottom side of the car was louder, but just
as non-productive of results. The pit being closer to the cafe where
Merle and Mrs. Ignition Expert were having coffee, it was no trouble
at all to hear Mrs. Expert, who was also a garrulous old bag, holding
forth on the evils of marriage.

The lights had now gone out again, and our man was still damned
if he knew why. Every yank on a wire was accompanied by "J e rf>ez
Cripzee" (pronounced with a long "i") and a loud command to "watch
the ammeter- watch the jeezly ammeter!!** It was never quite clear
to me how I was going to accomplish the repair job simply by watch
ing a dial on the dashboard, but I cooperated and watched the "jeezly"
ammeter.

Mrs. Expert was now decrying the fact she had married Mr. Expert.
She had had "plenty" of opportunities just "simply gawddamn plenty/*
and why she married him she didn t know. She could have married,
for instance, Mr. Bessemer who was loaded with dough, and gave her
a diamond ring once "as big as a horse well, it was plenty big," eight
carats, she guessed.

To Phoenix or Any Place 139

Having accomplished nothing underneath the car, Mr. Ignition
Expert now wanted to look in the trunk.

I was quite aware that the rear end of the car was a mess, and too full
of tools, dolly wheels, jacks and junk. It was with some misgiving
that I unlocked the thing and threw up the lid for Mr. Expert s in
spection. That was a mistake. He nearly popped a stifle as he leaped
back with a resounding "Jeebez Cripzee." His lecture on the evils
of cramming the trunk too full was more vehement and longer.

Didn t I know that when I filled the trunk too full of stuff it rubbed
against the wires and sometimes caused a short? Now you take a case
he had last year

I should have had sense enough to depart right then. But I didn t.
No, I just sat there watching the "jeezly" ammeter while he wiggled
wires and told me about the time he found the cold solder joint or,
on second thought, he guessed it was a hot solder joint seems it caused
no end of trouble.

Then with a final waggling of wires he slammed closed the trunk
lid and thrust his head through the car window. I had my eyes hope
fully glued on the "jeezly" ammeter and Mr. Expert startled me by
bellowing, "No thin 1 wrong with the ignition system not a jeezly
thing!"

I sat a few seconds in quiet contemplation. "Nothin* wrong," he d
said. Nothing wrong except the ammeter still showed "no charge,* 9
the battery was running down and the lights wouldn t work.

What eke can happen to an ignition system with "nothin wrong**
with it? I wondered morosely.

I took a deep breath and turned to the expert prepared to blow my
top. He was scowling darkly at The Monster.

"Must be the gawddarnn trailer," he said.

With that analysis he took the few steps to the trailer parked in
front of the garage. He walked up to the dolly wheel and gave

140 The Long, Long Trailer

that inoffensive little doughnut three resounding kicks on the tire. I
winced. He walked to the side and kicked a rear tire. I winced again.

"If he kicks the other tire," I thought, "I ll march into the trailer,
get our pistol and standing red close, kick this fellow in the human
equivalent of the dolly wheel, then blow a hole in him and look at
his ignition system."

I got some satisfaction from that bellicose thought, but he didn t kick
the other tire. Instead he announced we would have to connect The
Monster to the car and go through the waggling of wires all over
again.

I watched the "Jeezly" ammeter once more Mr. Expert waggling
the wires nothing happened. His lecture from beneath the trailer was
almost a total loss because of distance and the roaring wind and sand.
His tone finally changed to a whine that could compete with the wind,
and he informed me he was getting a crick in his back. He also in
formed me he hated to work with the wind blowing sand this way.
It bothered the rheumatism on top of that, "it was Sunday," and he
always got time and a half on Sunday and he felt the charge was un
reasonable.

After he had established the fact that I was sucked in to the tune
of $3.75 per hour, he burst out with, "Jeebez Cripzee, I hate to say it
but I can t find anything wrong."

I couldn t resist. I let him have it. "But you tried, by Jeebez Cripzee,
you tried!"

I got a little satisfaction out of Mr. Expert s startled look.

I rescued Merle from the clutches of Mrs. Ignition Expert, after pay-
Ing a thirty-five cent coffee bill, and $9.38 for two-and-a-half hours of
profane conversation. Then we started the motor. Surprisingly the
lights worked and the ammeter worked but damned if anybody knew
why.

With one eye on the ammeter, one eye on the road and a death

To Phoenixor Any Place 141

grip on the steering wheel, we fought our way through wind and
sand into Albuquerque. There the welcoming committee consisted of
three runaway horses. It was a toss-up as to which caravan was the
most frightened. We herded the beasts nearly into East Central, where
the law took over, and we chalked up another first. We assumed
(and probably rightly), that this was the first roundup ever conducted
from a trailer.

We headed up East Central toward Nob Hill, where our confreres
in Phoenix had informed us we would find all the snazzy trailer parks.
There were parks there all right dozens of them, and good ones.
But they were all full to the overflowing. In some cases, the rigs
were parked so close together that a trailerite opening his door to step
outside, stepped instead right into the trailer of his next-door neigh
bor.

We wanted a little more elbow room than that, so we continued on
out to the edge of town, to the very last trailer park this side of the
mountains. It was a fine, isolated spot, but so new the owners hadn t as
yet installed water connections. And since we expected to stay in a
trailer park for the night, we hadn t filled our own water tanks.

Filling two twenty-gallon water tanks through a small funnel, out of
a two-gallon pail in the teeth of a forty-mile wind is quite a feat
one I never accomplished. I did manage to spray the desert with con
siderable water, and saturate myself from head to foot. The tanks had
to be content with five gallons apiece.

It was a stormy night on the edge of town with the wind doing
its best to blow us back to Phoenix. The Monster dug in and held on
tenaciously, riding out the assault with admirable grit

We awoke the next morning to a calm, clear day.

18. FAME AND BAD FORTUNE

OUR STAY in Albuquerque was confined to only

a few days sufficient time to investigate some o Its history and ex
amine the unusual new architecture incorporated in the better homes
on Nob Hill

The Indian motif, combined with tons of glass bricks, intrigued
us. (Merle especially.)

In spite of our difficulties to date, I was slowly beginning to develop
a feeling of pity for the unfortunate people with stationary houses. It
made me uncomfortable to realize they had no wheels under them.
They were immovable. Their neighbors, good, bad, or indifferent,
rarely changed. They had to put up with the same scene out of the
same window year after year.

Merle was beginning to share my feeling about immovable houses,
Her concern over the glass bricks didn t stem from any desire to get
back Into a house. She was only trying to develop a scheme to in
corporate some of the bricks Into the trailer.

After we had hooked up the rig and were ready to leave for Carls
bad, New Mexico, Merle insisted we tour the residential section again.
She wanted to get the trailer closer to the glass bricks in order to arrive
at a decision over their use.

Her Insistence made me a little nervous. It seemed to me I had
enough trouble towing an aluminum trailer around the country. I
certainly didn t want to be handicapped further by lugging a glass
house attached to our rear.

Nevertheless we took a turn around the residential district, and much
to my relief, Merle decided the plan she had In mind was impractical.

Unfortunately, however, it took her so long to arrive at this de
cision that we had been drawn far afield and were momentarily lost.

I got out my field glasses and found a ribbon of traffic, several
142

Fame and Bad Fortune 143

miles away, which undoubtedly was our highway. I found also a wide
boulevard that seemed to lead to the highway.

After fifteen minutes of intricate maneuvering we finally got The
Monster nosed down the boulevard and headed for the highway. It
was an excellent piece of brand new black-top four lanes wide and
smooth as glass. We were clipping along unconcernedly, and so en
grossed In our discussion of glass bricks that we drove right past
what turned out to be a half-completed guard house.

The biggest, boomiest voice In the world cried, "halt!" I slammed on
the car and trailer brakes and skidded to a stop. A rugged-looking
gentleman In uniform, carrying what looked to be an anti-tank gun,
walked snappily up to the car and wanted to know where I was going.

I pointed to the highway, now clearly visible, and said, "Over there.
To route 66."

He looked unconvinced. "Why do you want to come through here
to get over there?" He waved in the general direction of the high
way.

The answer was obvious it was a good boulevard, and shorter.

He was a disbelieving soul, and his steady piercing gaze made
me fidget a little and look guilty. Knowing that New Mexico was
famed for bomb experimentation, I began to surmise that possibly we
had wandered into verboten territory.

The guard asked If I knew where we were. The answer "Albu
querque" didn t seem to satisfy him.

Then he wanted to see my pass. The only pass I could produce was
for the NBC parking lot in Hollywood. This made the guard extremely
unhappy and Increased his distrust ten-fold.

From his undue discomposure, I could only deduce that we had wan
dered onto consecrated ground devoted to the cooking up of a mess
of something which held, not only the possibility of blowing the bejesus
out of the earth, but which with luck and a good batch, might be able

144 The Long, Long Trailer

to destroy the entire universe. After that we became as uneasy as the
guard.

We both had to come up with our very best honest, open-faced,
straight-forward countenances, before we convinced him we were ac
tually only looking for a highway.

The guard watched us suspiciously all the way back to ILS. 66,
where we crawled out of town gently and carefully in order not to
unduly disturb whatever the men of science were cooking in their
pots, in the basement of what our guide book later told us was the
new Sandia Base.

We were happy to get out of range of the men of science. We had
both become a little nervous and upset over the encounter with the
government and badly needed a cup of coffee to quiet our nerves.

We were about to puM up and make a pot of coffee in the trailer
when we spotted two of our fellow trailerites parked in front of a
large building.

A trailer parked in front of any building is a very liquid indication.
It means the presence of (a) water, () gasoline, (c) coffee, or (d)
rest rooms. In this instance it meant all four and more.

We were in the Longhom Museum, a huge, rambling, ranch-type
structure, that contained a remarkable memorabilia of the early west.
After consuming our coffee we joined our fellow trailerites in drop
ping a quarter in the turnstile. It was the best twenty-five cent in
vestment we d made to date. The museum was loaded with interesting
relics of the early days. Every type of gun slug powder horn
coffee mill moustache cup and spinning wheel was on display. Jim
Brady s twenty-two-carat gold dinner service reposed in one of the
cases.

Everything was listed, catalogued and meticulously dated. Every
thing, that is, with one exception: an old Chinese gold scale was simply
and dramatically marked, in true western style "Old as Hell!"

Fame and Bad Fortune j^e

The visit at the museum had cost us two hours driving time and,
perhaps, the chance o reaching Carlsbad before dark. Nevertheless we
turned off Route 66 and headed south*

For the next fifty miles we saw neither human nor animal. There
was no sign of even a building anywhere and we had passed only one
car in an hour s hard driving. I was beginning to fear that perhaps
The Monster had disturbed a boiling cauldron of something or other
at the Sandia Base, and all civilization was being quietly wiped out
as we drove along. Reassurance on this point finally appeared in the
form of little towns along our route.

On the edge of one of these little towns we spotted a trailer park
and stopped to examine it. The place could have been mistaken for
the city dump. We decided to look for another park, and drove to the
other end of town. We found what we were looking for that is, a
trailer park but this one was the city dump.

Deciding the first one was the lesser of two evils, we returned to it
and parked, while I went in search of the manager. The only sign of
life came from an individual who was lying on the ground flat on
his back, removing the pan from an early-vintage Plymouth.

I bent down and called, "Fm looking for the manager."

"Yep,** came up from below.

"Are you the manager?" I asked.

"Yep/

"Do you have an over-night space?**

"Yep." This monosyllabic gentleman was no waster of words, that
was certain.

"How much?" I asked.

"Dollar and a quarter/ came out of the earth.

Now, I was as aware as the manager that a dollar was the standard
price for over-night parking, and I didn t hesitate in telling him so,
I even shrewdly suggested that I knew there was a trailer park at the

146 The Long, Long Trailer

other end of town and rather than be burglarized for a dollar and a
quarter, we would drive across town and park there.

This threat seemed to disturb the manager not at all. He unscrewed
another bolt from the Plymouth s Innards before he deigned to reply.

"Yep/* he said, "there s another park on the other side of town, but
hell charge you a dollar and a quarter too." An oil-begrimed face
appeared below the running board. "And," he said, letting me have it
with both barrels, "you ll have to walk fifty yards further to the
toilet."

With that he went back to taking bolts out of the Plymouth, while
we climbed back In our rig and drove on to Carlsbad.

In Carlsbad we discovered one of the best-landscaped, most modern
parks we had encountered on our travels, and the weather was of the
kind Californlans always boast about. Merle and I were as pleased as
punch and we were both looking forward to a visit to Carlsbad
Caverns.

We spent several days preparing ourselves for the entry into what
Merle constantly referred to as Carlsbad Taverns. I corrected her after
she had committed the error for the third time, but she was pretty
Irritable about the whole thing.

"Caverns Taverns, what s the difference? It s a hole In the ground!"

Her Irritation probably stemmed from her experience in Phoenix,
where she had pointed out several times to our trailerlte neighbors the
"Consternations 5 flying overhead* She was able to Identify them Im
mediately she said, because they were built by Lockheed Aircraft right
near our park In Los Angeles. My success in trying to put her on the
right track there, was about on a par with my Carlsbad efforts.

We looked forward to a good two-day rest In order to be in proper
physical condition for the long hike underground. We would have
achieved it too, If It hadn t been for "Windsock."

Windsock was the coal-black Persian cat tethered under the Ander-

Fame and Bad Fortune 147

son trailer next door. We both have a weakness for cats and Wind-
sock was a cat among cats. He had never known any home except
a trailer and was fully aware of the hazards of mobile living. He was a
character.

As a kitten he had failed one day to clear the trailer door on one
of his many hasty exits. His tail, forever after, bore the marks of the
assault. It was flattened out and bent skyward, then turned north
about six inches from the tip. In his youth this appendage was so flat
and formed such a perfect right angle, that he appeared to be carrying
a carpenter s square attached to his rear end. After he had attained
his full brush, the animal looked like a cat towing a windsock. His
master promptly discarded his original name "SquarebutT* and re-
christened him "Windsock."

Windsock was a big, husky fellow who loved to roam, especially
at night. To curb these nocturnal peregrinations it was decided he
should be put on a leash, and the leash fastened under the trailer.

This kept Windsock at home all right, but it certainly didn t keep
other cats from coming to him.

The battles that took place next door had all the aspects of a Roman
holiday. They kept us awake all night and In the morning when we
delivered Windsock his breakfast tid-bit, we usually found him lying
on the ground, groggy, exhausted, and licking his wounds, while he
looked at us in bleary-eyed gratitude for the breakfast that would give
him the strength to get through the day somehow and be ready for
the next night s carnage. Windsock was a perennial short-ender.

While a heavyweight and a better-than-average battler, he was a bad
tactician and further handicapped by the length of his leash.

His adversaries discovered, long before Windsock, the circle circum
scribed by the leash. Warily his opponents would creep up on him,
always staying outside the circumference of this circle, until Windsock,
no longer able to countenance this Invasion of his territory would leap

148 The Long, Long Trailer

mightily, but the leash always pulled him up short. He would turn
several somersaults IB the air and come down with a splat, usually
on his back and entangled in the leash easy prey for the marauders
who would then dart in and give Windsock what for.

It was a very unhappy situation and Windsock was philosophically
absorbing his nightly beatings as a matter o course, until Merle took
a hand. She supplied the balance of power.

Whenever the night sounds were drowned out by snarls, spits and
howls. Merle would leap from the bed race to the front door
open the bottom drawer of the cabinet which contained our reserve
food supply, and whenever Windsock got into trouble (which was
always) she heaved canned goods, baking powder and spices at his
opponents until he could regain his feet.

Life became much easier for Windsock, but more difficult for me.
I scarcely averaged four hours sleep per night. It was my duty to get
up at five o clock every morning to retrieve all the canned goods Merle
had pitched out the door during the night. Her throwing arm leaves
something to be desired and I never once recovered all the ammunition
she used during her regular nightly barrages.

The materiel, she argued, was expendable and replaceable. I agreed
on this point but it was always a little difficult explaining to the park
manager why he was continually running onto canned peas, Arm and
Hammer soda and bottles of vinegar while cutting the lawn and
trimming the hedges.

Since it didn t seem possible that either Windsock or Merle would
ever permit me to sleep at night, I resorted to taking naps in the day
time to store up enough energy to tackle the long trek through Carls
bad Caverns.

The exciting trip through the cave should be a must on every
traveler s list. The late afternoon flight of the bats (millions of them

Fame and Bad Fortune 149

come pouring out o the entrance) was topped only by the pulse-
quickening grandeur o the Cavern itself.

After the several-mile hike through the cavern, we spent a few days
(the nights being devoted to Windsock) resting up before taking off
across Texas.

We left Carlsbad two days sooner than we expected. It was right
after the trailer park manager fouled up his gas-powered lawn mower
on a can of onion soup which Merle had aimed at a big noisy torn cat.

Then we spent several hours huddled in the trailer trying to keep
out of sight. Finally when we were sure the manager had loaded
his mower on the truck for his second visit to the repair shop in as
many days, Merle sent me shopping for replacements and supplies for
our Texas trip.

Our no-packing experience while fleeing the Culpeppers taught us
a worth-while trick. Preparation for travel now took less than an hour
and was completely satisfactory especially so on Texas highways
which are wide and well surfaced. Texas also has another feature
that could well be emulated by other states. (Some do.) They have
roadside parks, intermittently spaced, carefully located and wonderfully
landscaped. Texas brags but Texas delivers too. These little islands
draw the praise of every traveler through Texas, with or without a
trailer.

Our trailer mileage had passed the four-thousand mark and we felt
we were no longer tenderf eet. We were certain we had at least earned
our second-class badge. The Monster was becoming more tractable day
by day. He had taught us some valuable lessons but there were more
to come.

We had made our way from Carlsbad to Fort Worth, Texas, and
were proceeding slowly but nevertheless proceeding through the
business district of that city.

150 The Long, Long Trailer

In cities Merle is in charge of turns while I watch the traffic lights.
We were doing nicely until we ran into the effects of a misplaced
comma.

It seems that there is considerable difference between "turn, right
here," and "turn right, here." Merle claims she spoke the three words
without any comma. I am equally certain I detected the comma after
"turn right."

Anyway I turned right. Merle contends I didn t give her a chance to
complete her instructions, which she swears to this day were going to
be:

"Turn right here to the left.**

The right turn put us on an excellent, wide, one-way boulevard,
but we were proceeding against the traffic. After a withering look at
Merle, I fought my way up the street trying to hang on to the right-
hand lane. I intended to make a right turn at the next cross street
and get back to our route but got caught in the inside lane and
couldn t make it. The second street was also one-way. A sign pro
claimed NO RIGHT TURN, traffic was moving to our left. We had
to negotiate another block against traffic.

It isn t possible to report the remarks of the driver of the pie
wagon who had to make a grand tour around us and the four-letter
words strung together by the Texan in the big hat, driving the gray
Cadillac convertible, are equally unprintable. All in all, we left in
our three-block wake a surprised, irritated, open-mouthed group of
Texans, who, almost without exception, shouted some pretty uncom
plimentary remarks about trailers and Californians Californians es
pecially.

It was a rough three-block tour, brought about by the failure of our
pilot, co-pilot system. We had a definite understanding, while driving
through city streets, that I was to watch the signals while Merle
watched the highway number and turn indicators. Her sharp eyesight,

Fame and Bad Fortune 151

it seemed to me, made this a logical arrangement. But I was always
nonplussed at her inability to find a "Dallas That Way" sign in
three-foot letters, and equally nonplussed over her ability to describe
the little applegreen dress with the shirred waist, coral buttons down
the front and picoted hem, which she had seen in some obscure dress
shop window we had passed.

After the encounter with the one-way street, we hurried into the
first trailer park we came across. I personally selected the spot
unaided. Merle had been very quiet since she had shouted "Tura
right, here."

It was an excellent park, ideally located in a grove of giant pecan
trees. A small lake bordered the entrance, and the rolling hills beyond
formed a picturesque background, in spite of the fact it was a cemetery*

The lady in the Platt next door came out to watch us park under
a big pecan tree. We were a little surprised to hear our Platt neighbor
constantly referred to by the other tenants as "Madame Butterfly/*

Her face was reminiscent of an old bicycle saddle and her hair re
sembled Shredded Wheat, factory fresh and clabbered with peroxide.

Emotionally, she turned out to be a flighty, verbose, frustrated in
dividual whose every third word was "Gilbert/* Gilbert, we learned,
was her high-school-senior son who sported the biggest Oedipus com
plex in Texas.

Madame Butterfly had formerly lived in California and wanted to
get back there the worst way or any way. She kept saying she had seen.
nearly forty summers too many of them in Texas* (The figure seemed
low or an equal number of very hard winters had taken a vast toll)

She badgered us about her son the whole week we spent investigat
ing Dallas and Fort Worth. She was positive Gilbert would stand
Hollywood right on its ear if Hollywood ever got a look at him and
didn t we think so. Never having seen her son it was a little hard to
pass judgment. He was always busy with girls or something, which

i5 2 The Long, Long Trailer

worried Madame Butterfly no end. She was positive though, that
Robert Taylor, Gary Grant and Gary Cooper would throw up their
hands in despair and leave town the minute she trotted "her boy" down
the boulevard. As she herself put it, "My gawd, he s six-feet, two-inches
tall and got A in dramatics and is playing the second lead in the
class play where the hell are the scouts?"

That, we didn t know unless they were hiding in Hollywood from
Madame Butterfly. Our garrulous neighbor was so wrought up over
her boy s histrionic ability, and so persistent a press agent, that she
dulled the edge of our interest in Fort Worth. We would have much
preferred Jack the Ripper next door.

We readied our rig for our trek to Mississippi, but just as we were
about to pull out, Madame Butterfly rushed over to the trailer, drag
ging her son, and introduced him. He was much older than we had
anticipated and, having a fairly empty skull, had apparently "hung"
several years in the stretch-run for a diploma. Gilbert verged on
obesity. He was an impeccable slob.

After the introductions he immediately left for school and the
"Madame** issued her warning.

"Don t you worry," she assured us, "don t you worry a gawddamned
bit- Them pimples ll disappear."

With the assurance that her boy s acne was only a temporary deter
rent to his career, and we weren t to worry about it, we rolled the rig
out onto the highway. We spun along without the slightest incident
into Shreveport, Louisiana.

We stopped only one night in Shreveport. In the trailer park we
selected, near the Red River, we were given the usual spot called the
"over-night hook-up."

It was located between the laundry and the ladies room and had
all the charm of living in a cesspool.

The crossfire of gossip drifting from these two feminine spheres was
most educational and juicy. Too juicy, Merle decided which was

Fame and Bad Fortune !^

one reason we were on the road bright and early the next morning
en route to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The other reason was the faint
aroma the trailer was acquiring as though we had unsuccessfully
fended an attack by a determined skunk.

We were fascinated with the vista. The countryside is mostly hilly
and rolling farm land, dotted with little shacks surrounded by patches
of corn or cotton. Water was in evidence everywhere with dozens of
small bridges over streams and bayous. Vines were tangled with cypress
standing knee deep in water.

The undergrowth and brush so thick, it looked like a jungle.

The highway was something else again. The peculiar washboard
effect made The Monster look and act like an oversize rocking horse.
It was very uncomfortable.

Since most of the farms were operated with one-horse or one-mule
power, we had no trouble stamping twenty-two white horses and
three white mules which, according to the book, took care of our good
luck for the next two days.

We had been warned by a fellow traveler in Shreveport that Vicks-
burg, because of the hills, was a trailerite s nightmare. In the matter of
hills it is a junior-league San Francisco, but Moby Dick was on his
good behavior and raced up and down the hills with ease. He got so
carried away with the hills he got lost and couldn t find U.S. 80. It was
dusk and we were headed for Memphis before we discovered the error.
We scrambled to find a trailer park and in the- half dark spotted a
whole flock of trailers right on the banks of the Mississippi.

We worked our way in among them but learned we had wandered
into the M-System Trailer Factory and nearly wound up on the
assembly line. We renegotiated the hills of Vicksburg (it s built on a
bluff overlooking the river) and rediscovered our route, but the trailer
parks were jammed full.

After a dinner of southern-fried chicken at a little restaurant on the

154 The Long, Long Trailer

edge of town, we prevailed on the owner to allow us to park there for the
night. He even went further and permitted us to plug our electric
line into his porch light.

At two o clock in the morning we realized the gentleman operated,
not only a restaurant, but a night club as well. The place rocked and
jived until four o clock in the morning. Sleep being impossible, we
read. That is, we read until the owner retired. Then he snapped off
the porch light, stopping our reading, the refrigerator and hot-water
tank.

In the morning we found a trailer park located on the edge of the
Vicksburg National Military Park. We parked the trailer right near
a huge statue of Major General Walker, who guarded our rig in stony
silence all during our stay in Vicksburg. Probably the lowest assign
ment he ever had.

It took us more than a week to sate our avid interest in the famous
scene of the "Siege of Vicksburg" (another must on the traveler s list),
and then we got The Monster ready for a visit to what we had been
told was the most interesting city in America New Orleans,

19. FLORIDA VS. CALIFORNIA

THE STATE of Louisiana seems intent on two

things, (i) creating a din that can be heard in the other forty-seven
states, and (2) elevating the tax on gasoline to such a lofty position that
anyone with a tankful is looked up to as a man of considerable means.
It no doubt pleased the oil companies and the guardians of the state

Florida vs. California 155

coffers must have looked down on Fort Knox, but our gas budget
was knocked as flat as Kansas.

The ruckus with the automobile horns is dictated by law. The traffic
rules (which we read very carefully) urge you to blow your horn on
the slightest pretext or no pretext. The rules state specifically:

"Pass to the left of a vehicle overtaken, after giving audible warn-
ing."

"Before starting or stopping give audible signal."

"Before turning from a direct line give audible signal.**

"Give audible warning upon approaching a curve."

The earnestness and zest with which the good citizens of Louisiana
comply with these laws creates a thunderous blare that echoes and re
echoes all over; even to the furtherest reaches of the state of Texas.

We honked our way down Gentilly Road, past Canal Street and
onto Tulane Avenue.

It was an expensive ride. The new fishtail on the exhaust told us
in smoke signals it was costing us thirty-five cents just to turn a corner.
Tulane Avenue blends into Airline Highway, where we decided to
park. We zigzagged in and out among a hundred other trailers and
warped into a landing with the rear end of the thing overhanging a dirt
road on the side of the park. It seemed like a good, clean, quiet spot
and it was, at the moment.

But we soon learned that the dirt road was a short cut to a large
residential section. Everybody in Jefferson Parish used trie road morn
ing and night. The clouds of dust kicked up by the motorists intent on
observing the audible-warning laws was exceeded only by the clouds
of sound from roaring motors and wide-open horns.

Remembering Tom Sawyer and his fence white-washing episode, I
tried an experiment.

At six-thirty the next morning I began my sprinkling operation. I
started with the first trailer in our row and went from hydrant to

156 The L*ong, Long Trailer

hydrant, attaching my hose and sprinkling the dirt road for a good
block, from the first to the last trailer, During this operation I whistled,
hummed, sang, looked jaunty, content and full of fun. I varied my
sprinkling stream from a cone-shaped spray to a thin, elongated pencil
line with which I could spell out words in the dust. With the fat,
round stream from the nozzle, I played tick-tack-toe on the road. I en
joyed the simple pastime of sprinkling, up to the hilt.

A few envious eyes peered from behind Venetian blinds and cur
tains.

That evening a fellow traileritc joined me in the sprinkling. The
next morning the road was as crowded as an accessible trout stream
on the opening day of the season. I quietly retired and thereafter our
neighbors vied with one another in an attempt to inundate the street.
Before we left New Orleans, the road became an almost impassible
quagmire.

While our neighbors sprinkled the road it gave me time to in
vestigate the park and look over the trailers. We even broke down to
the point of speaking to our neighbors across the way (in spite of the
Culpepper calamity).

Our neighbors were Mr. Warren "Dude" Allen and his delightful
wife, Patricia.

Dude was a salesman, apparently the high-power type since this
was his fifth marriage. (It was Patricia s first.)

We learned these facts one day when we heard Patricia announce
in an unmaidenly voice that there would be a "ba~ le," unless he would
immediately, "se-4e the ra-le in the bo-les."

It s almost impossible to resist investigating such a statement. The
investigation turned up the further information that Mr. and Mrs.
Allen were newly weds of only a few days standing. They had been mar
ried in Chicago where Dude assured his new bride she would be
"simply carried away" with the carefree life of trailering.

Florida vs. California 157

After the marriage ceremony they had headed for Peoria, at the
behest of Uncle Eph. Uncle Eph had wired his friend, who operated
a trailer park there, and advised him to be on the lookout for the Aliens.
In the heavy rainfall, Dude and Patricia located the park and pulled
their trailer into a sea of mud. But that wasn t the worst of it Uncle
Eph s friend ran a very second-rate park and didn t have electricity, or
even water available. And this, their nuptial eve.

It was quite an opening-night brawl and Patricia was very unhappy.

She became more unhappy .after they left Peoria (in the rain still)
and encountered one blowout after another until Dude left her stranded,
in the middle of the night, with the trailer perched precariously on
jacks, while he made a ten-mile trip to the nearest town to bargain
for a new set of tires and tubes with flaps.

Patricia was also irritated at the route from Peoria to New Orleans
which Dude had selected. She was positive the rough highways had
given her a permanent spinal ellipse, serrated her teeth and spread
her rump.

The final disenchantment took place when she caught five mice in
her trailer, which rocked and heaved every time the trap sprung. It
was the rocking and heaving as they raced for the trap that caused her
to warn Dude about the glassware under the sink.

Translated, her statement meant that there would be a "battle"
unless Dude would promptly "settle the rattle in the bottles." Double
T s were something Patricia avoided like poison, swallowing them
completely before they could ever be sounded.

We toured New Orleans with the Aliens and before our departure
agreed to meet them in California after we had completed the first
leg of our journey.

It s hard to tear yourself away from New Orleans after a first visit.
It was certainly the most fascinating city we had visited up to then.

158 The Long, Long Trailer

We eventually got our rig out of the mud and headed east on the
Chef Menteur highway. (A highway actually named for a chef as
good an indication as any how highly regarded are the gastronomical
wonders of the South.)

US. 90, which carries most of the traffic from the west to Florida
during the winter months, is very narrow and very uncertain. There
were times when we had the feeling The Monster had digressed and
taken off across country, in order to alleviate the pounding and thump
ing on his innards. These rough roads are not too apparent to the
average motorist, but the earth-rumbling created by the trailer-towers
must have startled the seismologists as far away as the University of
California.

The gas-station attendant at Pass Christian pointed out a blister on
the dolly tire the size of an Arizona grapefruit. The spare dolly wheel
went on and we rocked our way into Biloxi, Mississippi.

Biloxi, I will always remember. It did something to Merle just
what I don t know. She had recently read an article on this interesting
gulf-coast city in Holiday. The article had a startling effect. She was
steeped in the history and traditions of the place, and this, plus the
ease with which the name rolls off the tongue, caused her to eventually
regard Biloxi as the center of the universe. All roads led to Biloxi.
Merle reckoned distances in "miles from Biloxi." She computed time
and dates for months afterward by the simple statement. "Let s see now
we left Biloxi in December."

Whenever she consulted a map (which was rarely, except at my
urging) she first located Biloxi, then traced her way to Lake Champlain
or Seattle. It became a fixation. In Ohio I inquired the distance to
Aurora, Illinois. She reached for the map and promptly asked, "How
far are we from Biloxi?" It was very disconcerting.

In Nebraska, I asked my wife to look up the highway we would take

Florida vs. California 159

from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Her first question was, "What highway
were we on in Biloxi?"

The Biloxi discussion lasted right into Mobile, Alabama, where we
would have liked to investigate Government Street with its wonderful
old homes, but The Monster ducked down a hole right in the middle
of the street. The hole turned out to be a toll tunnel (fifty cents) that
burrows under the Mobile River. We encountered a stalled truck ex
actly in the middle of this tube. The addition of our size and weight
to the already compounded traffic snarl, plus the uncontrollable urge
of drivers to blow their horns and race their motors, deafened and
sickened us at the same time.

We weren t nearly so upset, however, as the gentleman ladened with
the responsibility of keeping this hole in the ground open. His first
job was to charge up and down the tunnel advising motorists to turn
off their motors and stop blowing their horns. When he had accom
plished this monumental task, things quieted down and there was
nothing to do but sit and wait for the offending piece of machinery
to be hauled out of the tube.

While we waited, Merle got out her knitting. She has a weakness for
socks. She was currently working on her eighth pair. All knitted for
me. Since they were all knitted for me it was never quite clear why
the sizes ranged from 9 (they would curl my toes) to 12% (she must
have slipped up somewhere and made them even larger, since they
could each have held both hind feet of a mastodon). They never be
came a problem though, since she had never learned how to turn the
heels. When she arrived at the heels she blithely tossed them aside and
started a new pair.

I was the perplexed owner of seven pairs of heel-less socks.

I attempted to cooperate just once and used one pair for cuffs while
I greased the trailer, but Merle disapproved. She washed and stretched

160 The Long, Long Trailer

them carefully and tossed them back in with the other six pairs.

If in some future war I should get both heels shot off, they ll come
in very handy.

While she knitted. Merle offered a surprising conversational piece
that was to rival her Biloxi monomania.

Out of a clear sky, or more accurately, out of the poisonous, carbon-
monoxide gas floating around the ceiling of the tunnel, she remarked,
"Why is it that every small town has a movie theater called the Nile?"

Now I am reasonably observant and for the life of me couldn t recall
having seen more than one or two Nile Theaters in a lifetime of some
forty-odd years. I challenged the statement. It was a mistake I re
gretted it.

Merle launched into a lengthy speech on the names of theaters.
She reeled off the names of towns in which she had seen Nile Theaters
towns which I had never heard of before located in states we had
never visited. She became very irritated when I pointed out to her that
we had never been in Devil s Lake, South Dakota (where she had
located one of her Nile Theaters) and furthermore that Devil s Lake
was in North Dakota.

Her only response was, < North South, what s the difference? They re
both Dakotas, aren t they?"

I was sure it did make some difference to the people living in the
Dakotas, but didn t say so. We were both becoming pretty heated up
over the discussion of Nile Theaters, so I tried to turn the conversa
tion into other channels.

(The Nile-Theater debate was never ended. For the next ten-
thousand miles I had to pilot the trailer up and down the streets of
every town of any size at all, while Merle searched for Nile Theaters,
We didn t find even one. The search settled nothing. Merle is still
positive there are thousands of Nile Theaters, somewhere in the United
States.)

Florida vs. California 161

My effort to change the tenor o the conversation wasn t very fruitful.

Merle had other things on her mind and guided our little tunnel tete-
a-tete into her own channels.

She was in high dudgeon over the antics of the government specifi
cally the postal department. She had read in the newspapers that air
mail postal rates were to be increased. Since all her correspondence
was carried on by air mail, she felt the order was aimed primarily at
her.

She "showed them" though.

She told me she had found a postal sub-station near our trailer park
in Biloxi and had bought their whole supply of air-mail stamps, $5.20
worth -at the old rate.

She still felt she had put the government in its place, even after
I tried to explain to her that she would now have to buy an equal
number of one-cent stamps in order to arrive at the correct postage. I
couldn t convince her. She bought the stamps before the rise, they said
air mail right on them and by Godfrey the government better accept
them or she d give them a piece of her mind.

She stuck to her guns too! She never mailed an air-mail letter with
sufficient postage attached.

While the subject was never mentioned again after we got The
Monster freed from the tunnel and continued sailing over Mobile
Bay (on causeway and bridge, of course), I have often wondered what
Merle s correspondents thought receiving letter after letter, inevitably
markcd-POSTAGE DUE if

On the west coast of Florida signs began to appear urging us to
visit the largest trailer park in the world. We were prepared to see
a park which held several hundred trailers, but we weren t prepared
for the colossal Bradenton Trailer Park in Bradenton, Florida, which
is equipped to accommodate more than a thousand trailers. It was filled

162 The Long, Long Trailer

to capacity, which meant a trailer city of several thousand people.

The park is operated by the KIwanIs Club and the profits are devoted
to charity. Plans for expansion are under way despite its present size
and accommodations.

There are scores of shuffleboard and horseshoe pitching courts. Bad
minton and table tennis are played In a dozen different places. Every
winter the canasta addicts and bridge wizards gather from the forty-
eight states and tournaments run for months. There are thousands on
thousands of square feet of dance floor and you can conjure up a
hundred couples for a square dance just by scraping a bow across a
fiddle.

One trailerite Informed us there was a minimum of three thousand
fishing poles In the park and a single day s catch would put the
Fulton Fish Market to shame. Another swore there was enough fish
line available to reach from Portland to Portland.

While my trailerite brothers may have been a little carried away
with some of their statistics, the whole aspect of the Bradenton Trailer
Park was so startling and so alluring It would scare the average house-
owner right out of his mortgage and right into a trailer.

Further south In Florida we discovered a city in a fever of excitement
that usually indicates the discovery of oil. It wasn t oil, but it was just
as good. It was shrimp; inexhaustible beds had been found just off
the coast of Fort Myers.

Since it was evening and shrimp was one of our favorite sea foods,
we pulled in to a trailer park on the edge of the Caloosahatchie River,
intending to stop for the night, fill up with shrimp, then proceed to
Miami*

In the morning we discovered we had parked in the most interest-
Ing spot we had found to date.

The trailer was surrounded on three sides by medium-size palm
trees. Our bedroom over-hung the river, and the soft slap, slap of

Florida vs. California 163

the water had accounted for the ten hours of restful sleep. There was a
handkerchief of sandy beach just outside the door and a small dock
extending a few feet into the river, which was alive with fish and small
crabs.

The one day we planned to stay developed Into a month and we
learned that the discoverer of the shrimp beds was right. They were
inexhaustible, otherwise we would have had the shrimpers scraping
bottom long before we left Fort Myers. We ate shrimp salad, shrimp
wiggle, shrimp cocktail, shrimp mariniere (copied from Antoine s
Restaurant in New Orleans), fried shrimp, broiled shrimp, stewed
shrimp, deviled shrimp, shrimp Fort Myers (Merle s invention), chev-
rcttes a la Creole and Vol-au-vent de che&rettes,

Merle had twenty-one other recipes she wanted to try, but I per
suaded her that the limit had been reached. When I began looking long
ingly at the sea algae and hankering for salt water, Merle decided we
should go on to Miami.

We hadn t been on the Tamiami Trail, headed for Miami, more
than a half -hour, when I detected a slight knock in the engine.

My one accomplishment at auto mechanics consists of filling the
tank with gas. If the car doesn t go after that, I need help.

I thought possibly that if I Ignored the knock it might go away, but
it didn t. It got increasingly louder until Merle remarked about it.
That worried me, since she is the only person In the world less familiar
with automobile engines than I. An Imminent state of disintegration
is indicated when Merle detects anything amiss.

I stopped the car, opened the hood and meditated. The engine seemed
in about the same position it usually maintained and there was no
question about the full gas tank. It said full

There was nothing to do but stand there and look helpless.

While this is a pretty weak-kneed attitude, experience had proved, it
always gets results.

164 The Long, Lang Trailer

Nothing in the world excites the would-be mechanic quite so much
as the sight o a perplexed motorist standing beside a car with hood
raised. Help usually arrives accompanied by burning brakes and smok
ing rubber, and the amateur attacks the problem with all the enthusiasm
of a surgeon in ecstasy over a new-type hernia.

Help arrived but in a strange form. A mule skinner. He was a native
Floridian who was ambling along the highway driving two emaciated
mules. The nigh animal seemed about to drop in his tracks. His head
drooped nearly to the asphalt; a bloodhound scenting out the white
line.

The skinner though, proved to be a very efficient fellow who started
the motor, took a screwdriver and shorted out each cylinder until he
arrived at one that set up a clatter of castanets.

His diagnosis a burned-out connecting rod bearing was pronounced
to the accompaniment of professional head-nodding that would have
done credit to the medic working on the hernia had it turned out to
be pregnancy.

He was so sad about the whole thing it made me a litfcle uneasy. I
remarked that it sounded like a major operation. The native agreed.
He advised me that the only thing to do was have the car towed back
to Fort Myers (twenty-three miles away) and have the castanets re
moved. Then he made a very generous offer. If we liked, he would tow
us (both car and trailer) into a trailer park in Bonita Springs, where
we could park The Monster and wait out the operation on the car.

A quick appraisal of the two mule-power available didn t look too
encouraging. The dilapidated nigh fellow had by now crossed his front
legs and was leaning on the tongue with his nose resting squarely on
the white line. The other animal stood straighter except for a listed
rump with one leg hoisted out of sight. To the casual observer he
appeared to have only three legs.

I wondered aloud if there was sufficient strength available to get the

Florida vs. California 165

rig rolling. The owner allowed we d have no trouble on that score, so
I hooked our tow-cable to the axle of the cart and the front bumper
of the car.
The owner was right.

The mules did some heavy scratching getting the whole caravan
under way, but they did it, much to everybody s amazement, including
the mules. Once moving, we rolled along at a mile or two an hour
with ease.

From the way the animals twisted their necks to look back at The
Monster they must have assumed they had just beached the Queen
Mary.

Merle felt that our now-elongated train looked a little ridiculous.
It probably did.

The two mules in the lead, followed by a farm cart that had seen
better much better days, towing a disabled car, which in turn was
followed by the still-attached Monster, made the length of our wagon
train now well over a hundred feet from the nose of the mules to the
trailer stop lights.

It would be pretty hard to assemble any other assortment of convey
ances that would have looked more ridiculous.

Our appearance bothered Merle.

She arrived at her decision to ride with the mule skinner by a series
of eliminations. She first decided to take to the trailer where she would
be out of sight. This idea was quickly discarded when she remembered
the rolling apples and potatoes, and clutching the rug. That disastrous
experience in the trailer was still fresh in her memory. She next de
cided to remain in the car and crouch in the rear seat.

Since the top was down she realized it would be a little difficult to
maintain a hidden position, so her final decision was to climb up be
side the muleteer and pose as his wife or daughter. That way she
felt she could deceive the public into thinking she was a member of

166 The Long, Long Trailer

the rescue squad Instead of a broken-down Californlan being towed by
two Florida mules.

A few words passed. I wasn t entirely in sympathy with the idea.

We, or rather I, was the subject of much ridicule as we negotiated
the two miles to the trailer park in Bonita Springs.

The snide remarks of the Florida Crackers about California and
Californians didn t irk me nearly so much as Merle s aloof attitude on
the wagon. When the natives lining the walks in town threw their
verbal barbs and jibes. Merle would smile and nod as though she were
on their side and I was a total stranger.

I worked myself up to a pretty high pitch about the whole thing
and blew a gasket when somebody shouted from the sidewalk, "Get a
horse!!" This was followed by a raucous guffaw when Merle pointed
to the two mules then put her thumbs in her ears and waggled her
fingers at me.

It was a lonely, embarrassing ride all the way to the trailer park
where we anchored the rig under some palm trees for three days,
while the car underwent repairs.

Merle got her comeuppance over the adroit double-cross with the
mule skinner when we discovered a tree snake inhabiting one of the
palm trees. While they re completely harmless, Merle is deathly afraid
of anything that crawls on its belly, and as a consequence refused to
appear outside the trailer until I could locate and report on the activity
of the snake. By way of punishment there were times when I refused
to make a report, in which case she was confined to the trailer. Since
she was trying to acquire a Florida tan, the withholding of the snake
reports endowed the trailer with all the inconveniences of a well-barred
jail.

In the end she agreed that hereafter, when we were being towed by
mules, she would ride in the car with me.

20. TRAILER PARK CRISES

ALL THE WAY across the Cypress Swamp and
Everglades I tried to bring Into focus a mental picture o the budget.
Figures had been entered in the budget book daily, but totals had
been drawn only for the first month.

Our budget called for an expenditure of two hundred fifty dollars per
month. The first month s total had exceeded four hundred dollars.
This didn t disturb me too much since we were on the move a great
part of the first month and our gas and oil expenditures alone averaged
ten dollars per traveling day. Whenever the rig was immobile, a larger
part of this expense was eliminated.

It seemed to me s however, that I was entering too many figures under
the "Emergency Expense" heading.

The new connecting-rod bearing plus a twenty-three dollar tow
charge had set this month s budget back a cool seventy dollars. Then
there was the tire that had been ruined because of the bent axle.
Merle s vacuum cleaner had broken down and that expense (if I re
membered correctly) had been charged against the third month s budget.

It must have been my subconscious that warned me not to strike
off monthly totals, In order to avoid a case of apoplexy. At any rate I
couldn t bring myself to do It.

The budget problem wasn t improved any by our search for a trailer
park In the Miami area. Merle decided she wanted to park on the ocean
front. The only place we could find that fitted all her specifications
seemed to be In Hollywood Beach. We hauled the trailer down to the
ocean and the manager of a park handed us a map showing each
available space and the various prices. It was an interesting map with
Interesting prices. The first thing that caught my eye was "Season $550.**

I pursued this further to determine what constituted a season, then

167

1 68 The Long, Long Trailer

mentally divided this up and got a figure that was more than double
the amount we were accustomed to paying. We weren t interested in
staying a whole season anyway, so I didn t get too excited until my
eye fell on the monthly rate.

There it was, plain as anything. January through April, $110 per
month. One hundred and ten dollars per month rent and we supply the
house!! Perhaps I d made a mistake. Maybe this figure was for a family
of six or something. I checked the price list again. There was no mistake.
The price was $no,

I looked at Merle. As usual she was using her "menu technique"
which meant utter disregard of the price list. She was stabbing her
finger here and there on the map as the manager pointed out available
spaces.

I thought of the budget and the "Emergency Expense.** A couple of
months here could create the biggest emergency to date.

Merle was explaining to the manager that she wanted to be in the
first row the ocean front the most expensive row, while I wigwagged
signals behind his back, which she ignored.

I was greatly relieved when the manager informed Merle that no
spaces were available on the ocean front. The best he could do was a
space on Throckmorton Street, which was in the fourth row. The
price on Throckmorton Street was sixty dollars per month still more
than we had ever paid before, but at least it wouldn t make a shambles
of the budget.

Merle wasn t satisfied with Throckmorton Street, and guessed we
would go back to Miami and park until an ocean-front lot was avail
able.

We drove down Biscayne Boulevard examining trailer parks on either
side until we came to Lee s. It must have been the euphonious slogan
that intrigued us "No Fleas at Lee s." At least we parked there for
several weeks while we explored southern Florida.

Trailer Par\ Crises 169

We even hooked up The Monster one day and drove to the only
frost-free city In the United States, Key West, Florida.
The Overseas Highway is excellent but the causeways and bridges

connecting the keys are fairly narrow, and eight-foot-wide trailers
meeting other eight-foot-wide trailers find themselves in a pretty tight
squeeze.

There are trailer parks on any number of keys, Including Key West.
Finding space was no problem at all. The problem was with turtles.
Key West has turtle crawls that contain hundreds of turtles, some of
which weigh as much as five hundred pounds. Most are shipped to
other markets but a goodly number find their way into the local restau
rants.

We sampled turtle soup, which was excellent; turtle steaks, which
were surprising; and turtleburgers (first cousin twice removed of the
hamburger) which were pretty dismal concoctions. It took two wedges
of key-lime pie to coax our taste buds out of hiding after the encounter
with the turtleburgers.

The tropical weather and oolitic limestone formations must do some
thing wonderful to the lime trees, since the key-lime pie is a delectation
well worth traveling the several hundred miles to sample.

On our return trip we by-passed Miami and headed up the east coast
of Florida clutching a little book we carried which described and rated
all the trailer parks and points of interest.

We were getting wiser in the ways of trailer parks. A trailer park
can always be found: (a) near the railroad tracks, (I?) bordering the
cemetery, (r) on the edge of the city dump. The new trailer parks,
however, were things of beauty and comfort. Enterprising business
men were discovering fast that movable homes were here to stay and
travelers were willing to pay for green lawns, cement patios, shade
trees, swimming pools and the like.

We always inquired first for the newest park. In the absence of a

170 The Long, Long Trailer

new park, we had to be content with the rumble o freight trains
throughout the night, or the resounding clatter of tin cans as the
garbage wagons dumped their loads in the early dawn, or we slept
with the dead. If a choice was available, we always took the cemeteries.

Trailer parks, we were learning, were as varied as the people who
inhabited them.

In Jacksonville for instance, we were waited on by the Clarendons
from Canada who were positive we were impostors. They distinctly
understood us to say we were from southern California if so, where
was our southern accent. It takes an agile tongue to explain the dif
ference between "the South" and "the South" of California.

Perhaps the testiness of the Clarendons could be excused because they
had already had their troubles with some United States citizens, whose
knowledge of Canada and Canadian customs was a little cloudy.

They had taken an empty milk bottle into a little country store and
plunked it down on the counter.

The storekeeper raised an eyebrow at their slight British accents
and eyed the bottle suspiciously. "What s that?" he asked.

"It s a milk bottle/* replied Clarendon. "We want a quart of milk."

The storekeeper squinted at it again. "Never seen a milk bottle
like that before.*

Clarendon then explained that it was an imperial quart milk bottle
which he had brought from Canada.

"Canada!" the storekeeper said, picking up the milk bottle and turn
ing it carefully in his hand as he read the raised lettering embossed on
the glass. His eyes lit up. "Look!" he cried. "Look, I can read Canadian!
I never knew that before. How did I learn to read Canadian?"

Under the circumstances we felt the Clarendons were justified in
being irked over our lack of a southern drawl.

Another surprising encounter occurred in a brand-new trailer park
in South Carolina.

Trailer ParJ^ Crises 171

Answering a knock on the door, I was confronted by a gaunt, sad-
looking individual who stated unequivocally, "I am the local under
taker."

Such a startling opening conversational gambit can lead anywhere
or nowhere. I was at a total loss for a response. I considered "That s
fine" and "Welcome" or even "We re glad to see you,** but they were
all such palpable lies they stuck in my throat. I could do nothing but
stand and stare at him. We both became very uncomfortable until the
undertaker clarified the situation by informing me he was also the
owner of the trailer park.

It was a relief to know he was not on a professional call.

It seemed that this was his first trailer park and we were his first
tenants. He wanted to know if we felt he had made a good Investment.

His wife had been badgering him to convert his property into a ceme
tery, but he told me (very confidentially) that the neighboring property
owners had raised such a fuss that he had built a trailer park Instead.

It was some comfort to us to learn that the surrounding householders
preferred a live trailerite to a dead anything else,

The undertaker was very morose. He was afraid, now the deed was
done, that his wife was right he had made a bad Investment.

I tried my best to cheer him up, but it was of little use. I even pointed
out a trailer parked on a little knoll, not fifty yards away, and urged
him to call on them to see if he couldn t Interest them in becoming his
first permanent tenants.

He told me he had already done that. "I called on them over a week
ago/ he said, "but they told me they were very happy where they were.
They already have their garden planted and besides they aren t paying
any rent." He delivered all this very sadly, then added dismally, T[
didn t have the courage to tell them I owned the property they wore

parked on."
Maybe he should have buUt a cemetery after all.

172 The Long, Long Trailer

All the way from Key West, Florida, we had clung doggedly to
US. Highway i. Still clinging to this ribbon of road we left the under
taker wrestling unhappily with his problem and struck out across the
Carolinas and the fields of tobacco, cotton and corn, long leaf pine,
and wonderful resort areas which led to our next major objective:
Washington, D.C

We were carried away with the beautiful Virginia countryside and
its wealth of Civil War history. We agreed that the drive from Rich
mond to Washington was as delightful as any hundred-mile section we
had traversed.

We were in a fever of excitement as we left Alexandria, Virginia,
and knew we were about to sweep down on the nation s capital. Sud
denly, there it was! Dumped right in our laps! We could see the
Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. There was the tidal
basin, and that building. What s that? The Pentagon it must be.
Taxes/* I thought. "We ve got to dig up more taxes if we re going to
build things like that.**

We searched for more landmarks. We were positive we caught a
brief glimpse of the White House and the White House lawn. Egg
rolling popped into my mind. There was the reflecting pool and the
Navy or Marine bandstand. There was The Mall with impressive
building after impressive building strung along from the Capitol to
the Monument

Here was our seat of government. Here was the heart of our nation
here met that august body, The Supreme Court. Here, on this very
ground, trod Washington and Jackson and Jefferson and Wilson and
Roosevelt and Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, and a middle-class trailerite
taxpayer in the same city! The thought seemed a little jumbled and
incongruous, but it didn t interrupt my patriotic fervor.

I began reciting the Gettysburg Address in round stentorian tones.

History-book pictures and newspaper cuts were coining to life in

Trailer Par\ Crises 173

cement and granite and marble and steel and wood and paint. We
pointed and exclaimed and oh d and ah d at everything.

This burst of sight-seeing was interrupted by Merle who pointed
ahead and said, "Look at the traffic, we re right down town. Where are
we going to park?"

She had reeled off our three big problems in three little seconds;
traffic, being down town, and a place to park. At the moment we were
confronted with all three simultaneously.

There is no entering Washington from Virginia. Once off the bridge,
you re in Washington. Right down in the midst of government build
ings. It was five o clock now (an hour we swore we d avoid in cities)
and government workers by the thousands clogged the streets.

We had a vague idea there was a trailer park somewhere in the
vicinity. A fellow trailerite in Miami had told us the local government
had set aside such an area for Washington visitors.

The heavy traffic was holding up our forward progress. We would
creep along for ten feet, then be held up for a full minute before we
could negotiate another ten feet.

At the end of the bridge a road curved to the right. It was completely
free of traffic. Merle pointed to it. "Let s go down there and get out
of the traffic."

It did look inviting, but I was always a little wary of traffic-free
roads. I was even more wary of acting on Merle s impulsive suggestions.
Three times before she had got me into trouble. Once she urged me up
a too-narrow blind alley; once up a dead-end street; and the most
serious error in Fort Worth, when she directed me down the one-way
street against traffic.

So we took the road that curved to the right, went through a rail
road underpass, and there, not a hundred feet away from the highway
was a big sign that read, WASHINGTON TOURIST CAMP.

With our trailerite neighbors on either side looking on, I backed

174 The Long, Long Trailer

The Monster into a narrow spot behind a tree. It required an intricate,
daring set o maneuvers which drew gasps of amazement and admira
tion from the on-lookers.

The most enthusiastic members of the audience were two acrobats
who were rehearsing their stuff on horizontal bars set up beside their
trailer. They stopped their "Allay Oop s!" long enough to cheer and
applaud as The Monster slipped neatly into place.

Washington I was going to like. That was for certain.

The name Washington Tourist Camp is a throw-back to the good
old days when all motorists stopped at tourist camps, pitched tents,
cooked in the community kitchen, then packed their equipage for
the next day s drive.

We were amazed at the number of tents pitched within rile shot
of the Capitol More than an acre of ground is set aside for campers.

Conventional motel cabins are available by the dozens. There are
several large dormitories on the grounds, providing housing facilities
for the bus loads of school children visiting their capital city.

A grassy several acres with paved streets is reserved for trailers. Each
space has its sewer system, electric and water connection.

The camp is on government-owned property in East Potomac Park.
A beautiful setting bounded by the Potomac River, Tidal Basin, Wash
ington Channel and the East Potomac Golf Course.

The whole enterprise is privately managed under the benevolent eye
of the government, and stop-over privileges are limited to two weeks.
Beyond that period a legitimate reason must be forthcoming.

The rent for our two-weeks stay (including electricity) was $6.12
per week. The twelve cents is tax.

It was inevitable that we should strike up a number of acquaintances
along our street. Most of them had been out to watch as I parked
the trailer so deftly, and I could scarcely wait for the unpacking before
I ventured forth to bask in a limelight of praise and envy.

Trailer Par\ Crises 175

Our right-hand neighbors were the acrobatic team of Hoon and
Michael, and their wives. Loretta and Clifton Hoon had a young son
aged six, which meant five people jammed into a twenty-two-foot
trailer.

The two families were friends and partners from before the war. The
team of Hoon and Michael had been just about to move into the big
time, when the boys careers were interrupted by a four-year hitch in
the Army.

They were discharged almost simultaneously and by judicious bor
rowing and careful use of their discharge pay, they had managed to
buy a second-hand trailer and a used car of very ancient vintage.

The trailer looked like something that might have been spawned in
a junk yard the car was positively the impotent spawn of a junk
yard; the bastard offspring of a minimum of six equally impotent
progenitors.

After spending two months refurbishing the act, their Hollywood
agent sent them on the road in the decrepit trailer.

They were forever complaining o the agent s lack of knowledge o
distances and justifiably so. Their play dates were often six and seven-
hundred miles apart. This meant closing in one city with a midnight
show, packing up, driving all night and all the next day, to open in
another state the following evening.

The fact that they carried all their equipment with them added tons
of weight to an already overloaded trailer, and placed such a towing
burden on the car, which should long ago have been retired as scrap
iron, that they had to set up a complete operations crew in order to
negotiate hills.

This organization was a sight to behold in operation*

The two men divided the driving chore between them which meant
permanent positions in the front seat, with Junior Hoon sitting in the
middle. The ladies, who were equipped with four-by-six blocks of

176 The Long, Long Trailer

wood with rope handles, rode in the back seat. At night it was per
missible for all but the driver to sleep.

In the daytime it was the duty o all occupants to remain wide
awake and peer as far ahead as possible in order to spot hills. The
first one sighting an incline of any dimension cried, "hill!" This was
the first cue for the driver to plunge the accelerator to the floor boards.
Occasionally they would make the hill. More frequently not. After the
cry of "hill" everyone was automatically under the command of the
driver, and assumed to be alert at his station.

The girls would have one hand on the door in the other they
would hold the wood blocks by the rope handles.

The driver would have his door opened slightly to facilitate a quick
exit from under the wheel, while Junior, who always rode in the
middle, would slide forward in his seat ready to stand at the wheel, one
foot on the brake pedal.

On the driver was placed the burden of judging whether or not the
car could pull the trailer over the hill. If he felt the car losing way
(which was usually the case) he would shout the second command,
"all out!" With this command the team really began to function. All
four doors flew open. The girls, blocks in hands, ran to the back of
the trailer and put their shoulders to the rear end. The two men leaped
out and shoved on the rear bumper of the car, while Junior stood behind
the wheel.

It was a sight to watch this group in operation and it was amazing
what sizeable hills they could negotiate by adding their pushing power
to the car.

There were only two other commands needed to keep the action
smooth. As they reached the crest of a hill the welcome cry, "all in,"
would sound.

The only other command, and the one most dreaded, was "blocks!"
With this call the two girls would race from the rear of the trailer and

Trailer Par%_ Crises 177

place their wheel blocks. The driver would yank on the emergency
and Junior would step on the brake pedal The extra man acted as rov
ing center and threw in his weight wherever it was needed most. This
was always a dismal occasion. It usually meant unhooking the car
and driving to the nearest town for a tow truck.

The girls were firm in the conviction (Loretta Hoon especially, who
always swore on a stack of Bibles) that they had pushed their trailer
over every hill in every state east of the Mississippi.

We became interested in the Hoons for two other reasons besides
their trailer-towing technique; Clifton Hoon s championing of the
"Dirty-Trick" Policy, and Loretta Hoon s educational system, devised
for her six-year-old son.

He was a precocious youngster with a fund of knowledge far beyond
his years. Loretta held a regular daily ckss with Junior and she was a
severe task master.

The basis of the educational plan was a jig-saw puzzle of the state.
Whenever the Hoons entered a new state they purchased one of these
puzzles. The puzzle then had to be assembled by counties. That took
care of Junior s geography.

On the back of each section was printed the vital statistics names
of cities, area, population, historical background, industrial activity
and agricultural commodities produced. Loretta would read this in
formation to Junior while he printed parts of it on a blackboard. This
took care of reading, writing and history.

Civics almost took care of itself, since this was the kid s third
visit to Washington, D.C.

Junior had even seen the President and was urged along the iowery

path of knowledge intent on acquiring his job, because he had once

seen the great man enter a big car, surrounded by what seemed to be

dozens of solicitous servants. This impressed the lad no end.

Junior had to keep track of the mileage traveled, the cost of gas and

178 The Long, Long Trailer

the amount used. This was his arithmetic lesson, and a practical one.

All in all it seemed to us the most painless educational process ever
contrived.

Several times during our stay in Washington we toured points of
interest, with Junior acting as our guide. His retentive mind, having
absorbed a fund of information from previous visits, was remarkable,
and forced me to purchase books on Washington, Lincoln and Jeffer
son just to be able to carry on an intelligent conversation with him.

Loretta always accompanied us on these tours, but Clifton Hoon
(he was Hoonsy by now) spent most of his spare time attending Senate
sessions.

We ran into Hoon late one afternoon when he had just returned from
a visit to the United States Senate, and was boiling mad. He was
marching up and down in front of a half-dozen trailers in search of an
audience on which to unload his wrath. It wasn t long before he had
gathered a group which he felt was sufficiently large to justify his
speech.

His theme today was the lack of attendance at the Senate sessions.

"Look at those guys, 9 * he shouted, waving a menacing arm in the
direction of the Capitol Building. "Look at *em. Five guys just five
measly guys in the Senate. And I swear on a stack of Bibles (Hoonsy
was always swearing on a stack of Bibles too) two of em were asleep.
Sound asleep the wedge-heads. Look at the money we pay out. Look
at the taxes we pay, and those guys won t even show up so we can
look at em.* 1

The man from the Liberty suggested that our senators had committee
assignments which kept them tied up. The elderly gentleman from the
Airstream allowed that most of our lawmakers showed up on the
floor only for roll call or major speeches.

Hoonsy passed this off disdainfully with, "Yeah committee meet
ings yeahl n

Trailer Par\ Crises 179

As a matter of fact the first subject introduced by Hoonsy at these
street-corner meetings was merely a blind to whet the appetite of the
listener for his regular oration.

He was the advocate of the "Dirty Trick," and decried the fact that
we were the ones who always had to "remember" something. Hoonsy
never launched into this speech, however, until his audience had been
previously prepared by his short talk on the senate absentees, or the
cost of the Pentagon Building, or the practice of usury at the Washing
ton Monument where they extracted a dime for a ride in the elevator.
These, or any one of a dozen other short subjects, always served as a
softening-up process intended to put his hearers in the proper frame
of mind to appreciate his Dirty-Trick Theory.

He always timed his switch from the preliminary subject to the
"Dirty Trick* with infinite care. He would wait for a few affirmative
bobs of the head and one or two grunts of agreement from his audience
before slipping into the main speech. The opening was always the same
question.

"An another thing why it is we re always the guys that gotta re
member something, huh?"

This usually elicited a quizzical look from the audience which was
exactly what Hoonsy wanted. At this point he would carefully search
each face while he paused dramatically. Then he would go on.

"Remember the Maine," he would say. "Seems like some guys are
always doing us a dirty trick and then we gotta go around remembering
it. Somebody swims out to a boat sticks some dynamite through a
port hole an we gotta Remember the Maine! li it ain t that, then
they torpedo one of our ships and we gotta Remember the Lusitania!
Or they drop bombs on us in Hawaii, and there we are Remembering
Pearl Harbor. "

After another dramatic pause lie would continue in a confidential
tone.

180 The Long, Long Trailer

"Somebody is always doing us a dirty trick. You know what I think ?"
He never expected a reply and never paused for one because he had
the answer on the tip of his tongue.

"I think we oughta get our senators together and have them figure
out the dirtiest trick they can think of and play it on somebody. Let
somebody else remember something once. Our senators can do that,
can t they? They can figure out a good dirty trick and we ll do it to
you know who. For the luvamike let somebody else remember some
thing once just once!"

Having delivered himself of his entire speech, Hoonsy would then
return to normal and we would all go down to the canteen for a cup
of coffee*

21. NEW YORK OR RUST

LORETTA, Hoonsy and Junior led the contingent
bidding us Godspeed on our journey to New York, in a contraption
that must have caused some grave-stirring among the immortals en
shrined in Washington and vicinity.

The thickly populated area between Washington and New York poses
something of a problem to the trailer-hauler.

No sooner had we threaded our way past the Capitol and out of
the Washington traffic, when we found ourselves in the equally con
gested Baltimore area. Ahead lay Philadelphia and the ever-mounting
tide of cars and trucks.

The roadside signs of the New Castle-Pennsville Ferry were a source

New Yor^ or Bust jgi

of great comfort. "Avoid City Driving," they urged. "Take the No-
Traffic Route to New York.** Exactly what we were looking for
no traffic.

I appointed Merle a committee of one to follow the ferry signs.
While she agreed to act as lookout, she was a little nervous and appre
hensive over taking the trailer on a ferry. She had two worries. Her
first worry had a slightly macabre touch.

"I read just the other day/* she said, "where somebody drove down
the ramp on a ferry and right off the other end.**

It was a gruesome picture that made my nerve-ends tingle, but she
didn t drop it there,

"All three of ern drowned," she added dolefully.

I slowed down a little and tested the trailer brakes. Merle undoubtedly
was remembering my complaint about the electric brakes. They had
a tendency to "fade out" on hills. At the bottom of steep grades the
brakes had usually lost their ability to stop the trailer, but did retain
the shrill, piercing, high-C shriek that managed to scare motorists for
blocks around. This blood-curdling scream was almost as good as hav
ing brakes. The sound carried like a fire siren and alerted every car
driver within three hundred yards of the trailer. While this squealing
was the source of some pretty nasty looks, it did have the advantage of
clearing a sizeable path for the rig. With all that we still had the very
efficient car brakes which never failed to pull The Monster up short.

Merle s second worry was one which I had also considered, but had
pushed to the back of my mind. I always seemed to have better luck
if I kept the current problem well hidden until we were actually con
fronted with the necessity of making a decision. Not so Merle. She
usually worried at least three states ahead. This worry posed the prob
lem of whether or not we could actually get the trailer on the ferry.

We had been regular commuters on the SJ?. ferries during our
four-year residence in San Francisco, and remembered the occasional

182 The Long, Long Trailer

steep pitch of the ramps that varied with the tides. Negotiating this
camel s hump with a short-coupled car was one thing a trailer with a
twenty-foot wheel base was another. I pointed out, though, that it was
senseless to anticipate trouble until we ran into it.

And we did run into it. Slam bang, head on.

The cars debarking from the ferry it seemed likely we would board,
shot over the ramp as though they had been fired from, a mortar in
the boiler room. The radiator would appear first with the nose of the
car aimed directly at the sun overhead.

Merle pointed at the hump in the ramp and cried, "See! See! I told
you so. Well never make it!"

This didn t exactly have a soothing effect on my nerves, nor did the
sight of the last car catapulting from the bowels of the ferry add any
thing to my comfort.

A man standing at the head of the line waved us on. As we ap
proached the ramp I leaned out the car window and called to the deck
hand:

"Keep an eye below will you? We re pretty low slung and the trailer
might not "

That s as far as I got. The hog back underneath reached up, clutched
our undercarriage and we sat there teetering on the brink of the ramp.
Merle gave me her "I-told-you-so" look, and I tried to pass it along to
the deck hand. He crouched down and squinted underneath, then
straightened up, and with a fog horn voice shouted, "Trailer stuck!!"

It sounded for all the world like "Man overboard."

"Back her up!" he commanded.

He seemed so positive in his order that I quickly tossed aside the
urge to question it. I hadn t moved more than six inches when he
shouted, "Hold it!" I looked up to see three men approaching on the
run with what appeared to be a battering ram. I had visions of these
three huskies smashing the trailer to bits and dropping the chunks in

New Yorf^ or Bust ^3

the Delaware River in order to clear the way for the hundreds of cars
stacked bumper to bumper behind us.

The battering ram turned out to be half o an oversize telephone
pole, cut lengthwise. With a clattering and banging which drew the
attention of some several hundred spectators, they shoved the thing
under the trailer and in front of the wheels flat side down. The deck
hand then motioned us on.

As the trailer wheels climbed the pole the added height gave us
several inches more clearance underneath, and we slid onto the ferry
without further difficulty. I even stopped The Monster before we drove
off the other end, much to Merle s relief.

She acted a little superior over having correctly guessed that we might
encounter some difficulty boarding the ferry, and took great satisfac
tion in the sneering looks directed at me by our fellow ferryites which
said, plain as day, "You brute. How can you force a nice girl like
that to travel around the country with you in a nasty old trailer.**

I had become hardened to the stares and sneers of the unfortunate
people who were chained to immovable houses, and the abuse flowed
off my back like rain off our trailer awning.

The thing that did disturb me was the condition of the river it
was crawling with ferry boats. It struck me that perhaps the New Castle-
Pennsville Ferry advertising campaign had been too effective. Every
body, it seemed, wanted to "avoid city driving" and take the "traffic-
free** route to New York. We joined the thousands of other motorists
and truckers, all bent on avoiding traffic, and headed for New York.

Since Merle claims that maps scare and confuse her, one of my
many duties is to scan carefully all available maps and guides the night
before our departure. This requires the memorizing of state and federal
highway numbers, towns, turns, ferries, mileage, streets, intersections
or anything else that will give me a positive "fix** on our route and ob
jective.

184 The Long, Long Trailer

Of all these items, far and away the most important is the highway
number. Never once had we gone astray when we followed the num
bers without question. It was only when we attempted a short cut to
circumvent traffic, or cut down mileage, that we found ourselves lost
and in trouble. Making a wrong turn with a car is not too serious an
error. It merely calls for a stop, an examination of the AAA map and
presto you re back on your route.

With a trailer the problem is multiplied. In my case, multiplied and
compounded. A wrong turn may mean miles of travel just looking for
a place to park, and more miles finding an area large enough to turn
both car and trailer. The compounding of our difficulties usually arose
from Merle s inability to read maps. Because of her aversion to maps, it
was only when we were hopelessly lost and in really desperate straits
that I would urge her to get out the map, find our location, and give
me a route that would get us back to civilization.

Merle had a peculiar quirk about map reading. It was easy enough
for her to visualize our traveling from the bottom of the map to the top,
but utterly impossible for her to change directions and conceive of us
traveling from the top of the map to the bottom. Unless the map was
printed to conform to her idea of the direction we should be traveling
right turns always became left turns, and towns we had passed through
were continually popping up as being miles ahead.

She tried desperately to overcome this idiosyncrasy by turning around
in the car and reading the map while facing the rear, but this worked
only occasionally just often enough to keep me in a constant state of
utter confusion. She claimed that it always worked if I would remain
quiet while she closed her eyes, faced the rear and conjured up a mental
picture of the trailer running down the map from top to bottom.

Another thing which she said would always help was to hold the
map upside down. But it s difficult to place your confidence in an upside-

New Yor^ or Bust 185

down map reader. Even when it worked, It didn t always keep us
out of trouble.

In the case o the New York leg of our journey, perhaps nothing
could have kept us out of trouble.

The traffic on "traffic-free" Route 130 was an endless line of cars and
trucks when our highway joined U.S. i, the traffic was doubled at
Newark it tripled, and the highway numbers began to assume a posi
tion of secondary importance on the roadside markers. At every traffic
circle (which seemed to follow one another like beads on a string)
the reading matter became so voluminous that we would slow down
to a crawl to be certain of directions. This always brought forth a
raucous blaring of horns from the traffic behind us so we devised a new
plan.

Merle would read the highway markers from the top down, while
I read from the bottom up. If it did nothing else, this method silenced
the horns and speeded up our reading of signs.

Our objective was Ray Guy s Trailer Park, located at the Jersey end
of the George Washington Bridge. I had carefully mapped the route
and memorized every highway number, turn and intersection. How
ever, the nearer we approached New York, the more obscure became
the highway signs. My maps had assured me that once we had reached
U.S. Highway i, our troubles were over. It was only necessary then to
follow the highway designation right to the end of the bridge.

The maps and guides were equally insistent on another point.
"Don t go into the Holland Tunnel," they said. There would be no
difficulty on that score. We saw eye to eye on the business of avoiding
the Holland Tunnel. I was even more aware than the map-makers
that down-town Manhattan was no place to be, with a twenty-eight-
foot trailer skulking along behind you.

Our real difficulties didn t begin until the highway markers began

iS6 The Long, Long Trailer

ignoring, almost completely, the number of the highway. They sub
stituted instead the names of towns and cities.

In one traffic circle we were given a choice of four routes to follow.
Arrows pointed in all directions. Bayonne was that way; Elizabeth
this way; Newark that way, and Irvington over there. I made five
complete revolutions in the traffic circle while Merle scrambled through
the maps trying to determine which town lay on our route.

It was only with the aid of considerable luck and good guessing that
we were able to maintain headway in the general direction of New
York.

We had barely solved the problem of towns which lay on our route
when the character of the highway markers changed again. A new set
of authors must have taken over. These boys were not interested in
towns and cities. They tried to coax us into taking specific streets and
avenues.

The man working for Delancey Street was especially persistent. Time
and again he urged us to take Delancey Street, and held up as bait
wide, traffic-free boulevards. They were a temptation and it took a
strong will not to fall for his stuff. Once bitten though, you became
wary of these invitations that seem too pat, and too smug. This
Delancey-Street character, I had no doubt, was the same-type individual
that posted the "truck-route** signs.

They all seduce you into getting three blocks off the highway, then
drop you like a hot potato. The signs disappear and youVe left on your
own to fight your way up alleys and down one-way streets trying to
locate the highway on the other side of town.

Don t misunderstand the Delancey-Street fellow wasn t alone in
urging us to take this avenue or that street. It was just that he made
the best pitch, and even now it makes me shudder to think how close
we came to succumbing to his blandishments. It was only the knowl-

New Yor% or Bust 187

edge that somehow we had to get on the Pulaski Skyway in order to
reach our objective, that saved us.

With our first glimpse of a sign, "Pulaski Skyway Straight Ahead,"
I assured Merle we were there, or almost there, and urged her to dis
regard all signs and markers except the Pulaski Skyway.

Once we had spotted these signs we rolled along snappily in spite
of congestion, trucks, traffic circles, entrances, exits and complicated
clover leafs.

It wasn t until we reached the approach to the skyway itself that
we were again confronted with that old dilemma. The highway divided,
with each branch clearly marked. One said, "Passenger cars only;" the
other, "Truck route/* It was the old question: were we a passenger
car, or were we a truck? Would this be an honest truck route? Or
would the signs disappear shortly to leave us to shift for ourselves?
Memories of our trip abroad at El Paso came flashing back and we
quickly ducked up the approach for passenger cars.

Clairvoyance would be a valuable asset to a trailer-tower. In this
case, it might have kept us out of a great deal of trouble.

In briefing myself on ways and means of getting into New York,
I was positive of two things: We had to get on the Pulaski Skyway,
and we had to make a left turn to get oft of it and onto Tonnelle
Avenue. The left turn worried me.

Merle was alerted and peering as far ahead as possible, while I
grimly held The Monster in close check so we might have every op
portunity to read the markers.

A hole appeared in the middle of the skyway I shied away from
it as far as possible. Cars were disappearing down the hole. I was
sure that hole was the entrance to the tube and breathed a little easier
when we were past.

A sign, "No Left Turn," stunned me.

X 88 The Long, Long Trailer

I had scarcely recovered from this shock when another sign ap
peared, "No Right Turn." This was followed almost immediately by
"No U Turn." There was no anything. I was becoming panicked. I
began asking myself questions, and answering them-

"What was left?"

"Nothing!"

"Yes there was! A down turn."

We hadn t seen a sign saying "No down turn." Maybe that was it.
Maybe there was another hole in the skyway and we d go down a

ramp.

Another sign appeared. Merle read it. "Holland Tunnel Straight
Ahead." I fervently wished we had stayed in Washington or Idaho or
Montana or any place else. My hands were getting sticky with sweat.
I prayed for another hole to open up. We d take it even if it meant
driving right into the Hackensack River. I tried to be cairn and reason
the thing out. The logical step seemed to be to park the trailer, leap
out and run back to California.

Just then Merle gave me the clutching hand and said, "I thought
you didn t want to go through the Holland Tunnel."

I gritted my teeth. "I don tl" I shouted

"Then why?"

"I don t tyow why!! I m lost!"

I had shouted so loud I attracted the attention of the occupants of
the car alongside us. They gave me a sickly smile. "The rats," I thought
"Building a trap like this for a trailer."

More signs appeared. "Have the Correct Change Ready."

I looked at Merle. She was frozen in her seat staring straight ahead.
I had shouted too loud.

Another sign, "Holland Tunnel 50^.*

This was the end. All feeling left me. I wasn t even sweating any
more. I couldn t even think.

"New Yor^ or Bust 189

There were the toll gates the toll gates the entrance to hell
And there was the keeper. No it wasn t either. It was a police officer.
I d give myself up, that s what I d do. There was no use wrecking all
of New York. I d confess my crime and throw myself on his mercy.
Td march off to jail manacled, but with head high and free of The
Monster.

I stopped our wagon-train to the accompaniment of the screaming
brakes and leaped at the officer. The siren-shriek of the trailer brakes
plus a human body hurtling through the air at him, must have been
a sight that even a blase New York cop seldom witnessed. He pivoted,
leaped a good two feet in the air and reached for his back pocket.

"Murder," I thought. "They murder trailer-towers on sight in the
Holland Tunnel"

It was reassuring to see it was a handkerchief that came out of his
back pocket. He stood there shaking and mopping his brow. By this
time I had him by the arm and was pouring out my terrible story. The
officer kept nodding, shaking and gesturing. I kept talking.

Suddenly he walked away and I caught what sounded like "another
gawddamn trailer."

It isn t quite clear to either Merle or me what happened after that,
but I m certain I heard a number of shrill whistles traffic stopped
slowly we turned around the cop shouted something about a right
turn onto Tonnelle Avenue and we found ourselves heading back
toward the Pulaski Skyway.

The Monster must have found the turn to the George Washington
Bridge by himself the next thing I recall clearly, is pulling into Ray
Guy s Trailer Park at the end of the bridge.

Tl. CITY SLICKERS

THE MONSTER had scarcely stopped rolling into

the trailer park when we spotted two sets of friends : the Days , whom
we had last seen in Phoenix, and the Owens , who were our left-hand
neighbors in New Orleans.

The Days rushed up to the trailer with the news that there was
only one space left in the park, and if we were smart we would hurry
into the office immediately and sign up for lot number 7-A.

Still a little weak I rushed in, signed up for it, paid the eight dollar
weekly rent, then came back to see what I had rented* Merle was stand
ing in front of lot 7-A with a dissatisfied look in her eye. The reason
was readily apparent. Lot 7-A was built to hold only twelve-foot vaca
tion trailers. The Monster alone was twenty-eight feet long and we
needed another eighteen or twenty feet for the car. We couldn t even
get Moby Dick s nose into a lot this size.

"What are we going to do?" I asked. Actually in situations like this
Merle always takes over alone.

I am the Casper Milquetoast type when it comes to purchases or bar
gaining. When I go into a store, I buy the first article shown me, pay
for it, and the transaction is ended forever. Not Merle. She is always
positive that something a little better is available at a slightly lower
price and I m nonplussed at the number of times she s right.

This time, however, I was afraid we would have to accept what we
had bought since the Days were positive it was the only space available.

Undaunted, Merle marched into the office. She s a pretty formidable
opponent when aroused and I felt a twinge of compassion for the
manager and his staff. The office door closed behind her but still I was
able to catch her opening remarks.

"What do you mean by renting my husband a lot that won t even
hold a baby buggy? let alone our trailer!!"
190

City Slickers 191

I recognized her technique. It was what she called her "forward
approach** put your opponent or-- the defensive. Which is just
what she had done. It was now their fault for renting me too
small a lot, not mine that I had practically taken it away from
them.

Of course Merle emerged from the office on the manager s arm. The
cashier was beaming. The manager s assistant was there to direct us
to a new lot a larger lot a wonderful lot with grass and trees and
a patio. Not only that, it was in the best section of the park the high
est part. The section known as "Snob Hill," to differentiate it from the
lower streets where the children were permitted. That section was
called "Hell s Kitchen."

With our rig comfortably settled on Snob Hill, we turned our at
tention to ways and means of exploring Manhattan. We were carefully
prepared for our assault on the big city. We were loaded with maps,
city guides, street locators and glossy slicks with pictures of what to
see and how. We became pretty discouraged, and finally in desperation
we devised our plan for visiting Manhattan. This Manhattan Visiting
Plan involved a reasonably early bedtime with the alarm set for three
o clock A.M. Then we would have a quick cup of coffee and be on the
George Washington Bridge by four o clock. From this hour until
seven in the morning Manhattan belonged to produce trucks, late-beat
cops, newsboys and us.

We explored every nook and cranny of the island until we were
more much more familiar with Manhattan than we had ever been
with Los Angeles.

A few well-placed bribes (they can scarcely be called tips in New
York) in upper, midtown and lower Manhattan, assured us of parking
space within easy walking distance of almost any objective, plus a
reasonable expectancy of getting the car back with fenders still at
tached.

192 The Long, Long Trailer

We even broadened our vista of New York by inviting our trailerite
friends the Days and the Owens to join us in a boat trip.

We boarded the craft at the foot of Forty-second Street and circled
Manhattan Island by water. This can be an irksome trip to a dyed-in-
the-wool Californian who is positive that all the great wonders of the
world are confined to the Golden Bear State.

The oily-tongued announcer assigned to our sight-seeing craft left
no doubt in the minds of the outlanders aboard, that the United States
is bounded on the west by the Jersey bank of the Hudson River.

Everything without exception everything he pointed out was the
biggest, longest, tallest, widest, flattest, highest; heaviest, lowest, onliest
thing, device, concoction or type in the world. He dripped superlatives.

Where is there another Chrysler Building or Rockefeller Center
or Statue of Liberty or Brooklyn Navy Yard or Empire State Building?
Where is there another financial district like Wall Street? Where are
the slums worse than on Manhattan s east side? Where in the world
is there another United Nations Building?

It was irritating humiliating- true. It was a bitter pill.

I casually mentioned to the Days the great things we had in
California, but they seemed irritated at my interruption of the an
nouncer. I excused it because they were from Oregon and probably
didn t realize how great California was.

I turned to the Owens, who were from New Mexico which I was
sure didn t contain a single motion picture studio and began telling
them about our home state.

I tried to match the announcer wonder for wonder with California
I couldn t. He had the statistics, the proof that everything he was
saying was the gospel truth. It was shameful

The Owens just glared at me.

It seemed they had things in New York we didn t have in California.

City Slickers 193

It made me shudder to think of the consequences if more Callfornians
found this out. It could mean genocide.

I closed my ears and sulked all the way up the Harlem River and
back into the Hudson. What would the California Chamber of Com
merce say if they found an adopted son (usually more vehement than
the native type) sitting on a pleasure craft off Manhattan Island ab
sorbing fabulous statistics on a foreign state. It was terrible to con
template.

I sat in stony silence as we came down the Hudson, until the Days
poked me in the ribs.

"Look!" they said in unison, and pointed up to the George Wash
ington Bridge.

Since all our trailers were parked at the end of it, it was of especial
interest. When my mind unplugged my ears, I couldn t help overhear
ing the obnoxious announcer. He was discoursing on the George Wash
ington Bridge.

Bridge! Bridge!!

The word re-echoed in my brain. Bridge! that s what we had in
California. Bridges! Bigger bridges longer bridges more expensive
bridges than they had in New York. I was immediately alert. Here was
my chance. If this announcer person even suggested that this was
the longest or most expensive suspension bridge in the world, I would
immediately report him to the captain.

I listened to the slick-voiced barker.

"I direct your attention," he was intoning unctuously, "to the bridge
directly overhead. It is the world-famed George Washington Bridge.
This suspension bridge from New Jersey to New York is three-thousand,
five-hundred feet long."

"Give him rope," I muttered to the Days. "Let him hang himself.
If he so much as intimates that this is the longest suspension bridge in

194 The Long, Long Trailer

the world. 111 grab tie microphone myself and give you and the other
passengers some real statistics on a red California bridge."

Cagily I bided my time while the voice went on*

"The total cost of the span was sixty millions of dollars.**

"Peanuts," I said to the Owens , "Peanuts! He s coming to it now,
then 111 let him have it."

I wasn t a Bay side Superintendent on the Golden Gate Bridge in San
Francisco for nothing. I knew it was the longest and most expensive
suspension bridge in the world even if the ignorant announcer didn t.
I leaned again toward the loud speaker. This had to be it!!

The voice said, "Now, for the benefit of the Californians aboard,
this is not the longest nor the most expensive suspension bridge in the
world. That honor goes to the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San
Francisco."

I could scarcely believe rny ears. I had been double-crossed. He had
pulled my cork. I was clobbered*

My trailer chums looked at me with a sneer I tried to smile, but
couldn t and the worst was still to come. The voice was still talking.

"But for the benefit of the New Yorkers aboard," he said, "this is a
much better bridge!"

Defeat!! I had suffered ignominious defeat, and I hadn t even had
a chance to be heard.

There was nothing to do but leave New York. It was no pkce for
Californians, it was too big and too smart.

In departing New York, we even refused to conform to the tour-
pattern established by our predecessors. This route led across the George
Washington Bridge, through the Bronx (skirting as many New York
parkways as possible) and onto the Connecticut Merritt Parkway (an
excellent toll road which makes for a quick exit from New York) en
route to Boston,

City Slickers 195

I didn t care to have any further truck with bridges which was reason
number one for not using that exit.

Reason number two was the condition of the highway through the
Bronx. We had sampled it and found it more suitable for tractors and
tanks.

The third reason was the snooty indifference of the operators of
the Merritt Parkway. They refused to allow trailers on their toll road.
This didn t prevent trailers from using it, it merely meant a plea of
ignorance when the law caught up with you. Since most people, in
cluding officers of the law, are convinced that anyone towing a trailer
is a harmless schizophrenic (but a potential dementia victim), the plea
of ignorance usually held,

As a matter of fact this attitude of cautious tolerance toward the
trailer-tower, harbored by the normal people who bowl along in their
cars at seventy miles an hour cutting in and out of traffic, is of in
estimable value. It is doubtful if towing a trailer would be half so easy
if the normal people didn t slow down and become warily cautious
when meeting or overtaking a trailer. This slowing down and giving
the trailer-hauler a wide berth stems, I am sure, not from the knowl
edge that the motorist has been driving too fast or too recklessly, but
from fearful anticipation that at any moment the man in the trailer
might blow his top and go berserk, thereby strewing accidents all over
the countryside.

I shudder to think what might happen if the normal people ever
discover that the trailer-tower is harmless.

But I digress. To get back to our departure from New York, we
struck out on Highway gW, which follows the Hudson up-river, all
the way to Albany. We left this excellent route (which all trailers
should use when visiting New York) near West Point and crossed the
Bear Mountain Bridge (toll).

For the next several days we luxuriated in the lush New England

196 The Long, Long Trailer

countryside, from Danbury, Connecticut, to North Adams, Massachu-
setts> to the Atlantic. An area steeped in early Colonial history with
date after date proclaiming the establishment of settlements in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

We wallowed in the greenness of the Berkshire Hills; the beautiful
old homes in Lenox; Salsburg-in- America Tanglewood. Summer home
of the Boston Symphony; Pittsfield and its jewel-like setting in the
Berkshires, a rare fusion of industry and vacation-land; the textile
mills of North Adams and Fitchburg; Concord, where the battle of
Lexington culminated and the literary great lie peacefully in Sleepy
Hollow Cemetery. Among them Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and
the Alcotts; Lexington, where was fired the "shot heard round the
world" and the Spirit of 76 had its genesis.

Town after town, mile after mile we reviewed the early history of
our country as we tooled along to Newburyport, Massachusetts.

There, an impromptu reunion and celebration took place. We backed
The Monster into a space to the accompaniment of squeals of joy
from Junior and cries of welcome from Loretta and Hoonsy. Two
months to the day our paths crossed again. Momentous events had
taken place since we had last seen them. Momentous events were even
taking place right at the moment it was Junior s birthday.

Loretta was baking a birthday cake, plying us with coffee and trying
to bring us up to date on the excitement of the past sixty days, all
at the same time. Hoonsy had his hands full trying to hide a bicycle
in the trailer (an almost impossible task) until proper presentation
time.

Junior was inviting youngsters by the dozens to his birthday party,
assuring one and all that his mother was baking the biggest birthday
cake in the world, and optimistically predicting there would be plenty
for everybody.

It wasn t until the birthday party had calmed down and Junior was

City Slickers 197

belting himself black and blue in an effort to master the bicycle, that
we were apprised of the magnitude of the change, and its cause.

Both the Hoons and their partners, the Michaels, were sporting new
automobiles and brand-new trailers. Gone was the anemic car, gone
was the aged trailer. The car had been turned in on the purchase of
the new Buicks, but the demise of the trailer was a long, sad story.

Hoonsy told it with gestures.

They were driving through Pennsylvania after playing a week at a
county fair and were headed for their next date in upper New York
state. As usual the jump was several hundred miles, which meant driv
ing day and night. Hoonsy was at the wheel but was getting good sup
port from Michael in spotting hills, in spite of the fact that it was
past two o clock in the morning and Michael was rightly entitled to
sleep.

Suddenly Hoonsy spotted a hill that seemed to be the granddaddy
of all hills. It was almost vertical. Michael confirmed the terrible dis
covery. It was unthinkable that the car alone could haul the trailer
over such a grade, so Hoonsy shouted the first command, "Hill!"

The girls in the back seat came to attention, took a firm grip on
their wood blocks and put one hand on the door handle. Junior slid
forward in his seat, while Michael peered into the distance to report
progress.

At first sight of the hill, Hoonsy had plunged the gas pedal to the
floor and the car was responding nobly. Thirty-five forty then forty-
five miles per hour. Possibly, just possibly the car might attain sufficient
speed to make the hill. The hill itself was a bothersome thing. Instead
of flattening out, as hills should when approached, it became increas
ingly steeper. The car crept up to fifty miles an hour and Hoonsy
had a vice-like grip on the wheel They might make It yet.

Then it happened!

The vertical hill was right in front of them and it did go straight

198 The Long, Long Trailer

up. It was the tall concrete smoke-stack o an Industrial plant. It blended
into the highway perfectly, but the highway took a sharp turn to the
right. Hoonsy yanked the trailer brakes, the car brakes and the emer
gency brakes too late! He wrenched the wheel to the right and the
car screamed around the turn but not the trailer they parted com
pany and the trailer rolled crazily across the highway and came to rest
with its nose on the cement smoke-stack, still upright.

The girls and Junior had a good cry while the men wrestled the
trailer into towing position.

Still contemplating their greatest acrobatic feat to date, they drove
to the nearest city and purchased two cars and two trailers.

The girls especially were in Seventh Heaven. They now rode in
the front seat of the car like ladies. Not for a thousand miles a whole
thousand miles had they once had to push a trailer over a hill. It was
Utopia.

23. SPRING IN NEW ENGLAND

WHILE WE had traveled through Connecticut

and Massachusetts, to Merle and me, New England in the spring
means Maine in May and June. Our specific objective was the Mooring
Trailer Park somewhere near Belfast, Maine.

Hoonsy and Loretta helped us hook up The Monster and point him
in a northerly direction. Sandwiched in between the good-byes and
handkerchief waving was a shouted promise to meet the Hoons at
Laguna Beach in California sometime during their six-weeks summer
lay-ofL

Spring in New England 199

Just beyond Portsmouth we slipped onto the Maine Turnpike, a
divided, four-lane toll road, brand new and smooth as taut silk. The
turnpike slashed through the woods and headed straight for Portland.

This was what we had promised ourselves nearly a year ago spring
In New England. Once more we wallowed In velvety greenness,
steeped ourselves in historic towns and places, and mispronounced jaw-
breaking names. Again we turned back the calendar to the seventeenth
century and fought Indians from Falmouth Foreside into Yarmouth.

We sailed into Brunswick and right past the home of General Joshua
Chamberlain on Maine Street, the same General Chamberlain who
received the surrender of Confederate General Lee at Appomattox.

It was also In Brunswick that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle
Tom s Cabin.

We tooled along the rugged coastline into Bath, birthplace of the
Navy s super-destroyers.

In Wiscasset, romance and history became so thoroughly entwined,
we couldn t distinguish one from the other. Here was hatched a plot
to rescue Marie Antoinette from prison. Talleyrand, master French
diplomat, visited Wiscasset on one of his trips to America. It was here,
also, that a gentleman named David Robinson, to whom we will
always be grateful, made the first ice cream in America, the more to
impress General Lafayette.

We went on to Newcastle, part of a grant to the Duke of York by
Charles II and named for the Duke of Newcastle; Waldoboro, settled
by German immigrants; Rockland, birthplace of Edna St. Vincent
Milky; Rockport, Camden, Lmcolnville, all as New England as Calvin
Coolidge; then around the bend of the geographical center of the
Maine coast and Into Belfast, a picture-postcard town perched on a
hill above the water and cradled in the arms of Penobscot Bay.

Here was our destination. This is what we had struggled through
more than half the states to find. Here was our recompense for more

200 The Long, Long Trailer

than eight-thousand miles of wrong turns, Culpeppers, coyotes, Holland
Tunnels, difficult backings and truck routes. That is, here it was if
we could find the Mooring Trailer Park.

We threaded our way down the main street past the shoe factories,
the beautiful old homes built by sea captains, the sardine packing
plant at the end of the bridge, the lobster pound, the hills dark with
blueberries, and turned onto a lush carpet of green grass. Here was
our spot. Twelve acres of gendy undulating lawn shaded by giant
oaks.

We rolled down the hill to the edge of the bosky bluff overlooking
the Bay, and signed the register for a two weeks stay. This period
quietly lengthened into five weeks and would have developed into
five months had it not been for my earth-shaking encounter with the
budget.

We scarcely had time to anchor the Zephyr and put the interioi
in order before clam rakes were thrust in our hands and we found our
selves on the beach digging dinner. Not five minutes away was the
lobster pound where we discovered the toothsomeness of the Maine
lobster trapped within the hour. It was such a delicious delicacy that
we promptly placed it in the same category with our other discovery,
key-lime pie. We felt at least equal to David Robinson and his ice
cream.

Our neighbors on all sides were enthusiastic about showing us the
delights of this little piece of Maine. We were rushed from clams to
lobsters to flounder and then to Blueberry Hill not two hundred yards
away; a several-acre mound carpeted with luscious, ripe berries.

It was on the Hill that we ran bang into the park feud. An internecine
battle that rivaled the famed strife between the Hatfields and the
McCoys.

We stood on the brow of the hill, open-mouthed watching the
frantic operations of its lone occupant.

Spring in New England 201

The picker was Kenneth Morse, our neighbor who lived in the
Schult directly behind us. He was on his hands and knees savagely
tearing blueberries from the vines. He had several large vessels already
filled but had several more strapped to his back which he evidently
intended to fill, and we could only conclude he was going into the
wholesale blueberry business.

The most perplexing feature of Kenneth s operation was his intense
concentration on the job and seeming animosity toward the blue
berries. He ripped them from the earth by the handfulstwigs, leaves
and all the while muttering to himself through clenched teeth. He
ignored us completely we got not so much as a nod of recognition*

Thinking possibly we were poaching on his territory, or the sight
of so many blueberries drove him slightly mad (as large sums of money
affect some people) we slunk back to the trailer.

Later in the afternoon we were paid a visit by his wife who related,
somewhat sadly, the sordid story of Kenneth and his blueberries.

It seemed that Kenneth prided himself on the fact that he was an
expert blueberry canner. During the first week of their month s vaca
tion, Kenneth had picked, cleaned and canned a dozen beautiful jars.
These he displayed with pride to all the park tenants including Mrs.
Beth Carpenter, who lived in the Liberty in back of the Morses. Mrs.
Carpenter snooted him unmercifully and in turn displayed a dozen
and a half jars of blueberries which she had canned. It seemed Mrs.
Carpenter was also an expert blueberry canner, so expert that she would
not defer to anyone especially a man.

The aroused Mr. Morse would, in turn, be damned if a woman any
woman could can more or better blueberries than he.

We had arrived at the park just as this terrible feud was reaching
its climax.

Morse had packed seven-dozen jars of blueberries while Mrs. Carpen
ter was working on her eighth dozen. Morse was becoming a mental

202 The Long, Long Trailer

case. He berated his wife for refusing to help him pick the things.
She did consent to boil the jars for him, which he conceded was some
help, but he pointed out to her that Mrs. Carpenter forced Mr. Carpen
ter to assist with the picking. Further, the Carpenters insufferable
fourteen-year-old son Wilford was also pressed into service. Picking
against three people meant that Morse had to arise at four in the morn
ing to begin his operations just to keep even with Mrs. Carpenter.
There was no thought of surpassing her, unless he could enlist more
help.

This he did. He found a sympathetic soul in the minister living in
the Spartan parked alongside us on the bluff. The minister proved
to be an expert picker and day by day, jar by jar, Morse slowly over
hauled Mrs. Carpenter.

Kenneth, it turned out, was a delightful fellow except when on the
short end of blueberry canning. Each new-canned jar pushed his dis
position one notch higher. His spirits were soaring. He had just learned
through the park espionage system that he was about to pull even with
Mrs. Carpenter. That is, he was, until Mrs. C. achieved her brilliant
coup de maltre.

She recruited the services of the photographer who lived in the cabin
on the hill.

Morse was beside himself. He went from trailer to trailer pointing
out the unfairness of it all. It was underhanded political skulduggery.
He documented his charges with proof.

"The man isn t even human," he sneered. "He lives in a cabin
instead of a trailer." Then he added, "That makes him out-of-bounds,
if so facto"

Up to this point we had taken the whole thing pretty lightly. We
found some humor and a little ludicrousness in the antics of two grown
human beings knocking themselves out over blueberries. But we learned
that the humor was thin and grim. What had begun as a friendly

Spring in New England 203

rivalry over blueberry canning had developed into a full-blown feud,

The out-of-bounds charges didn t disturb Mrs. Carpenter at all.
She used the photographer to make trips to town for more jars and
even lured him into taking a hand in cleaning the blueberries.

Morse retaliated by buying blueberry rakes and borrowing an electric
fan from the doctor who lived over by the croquet court. With this
instrument he devised a new system for cleaning the blueberries. He
bought a large wash tub which he sat on the ground, and so placed
the fan that the air stream blew across the top. Then he would pour
the blueberries from the picking containers into the tub. The fan blew
out the leaves and twigs and stepped up the cleaning operation to
such a rate that within three days the "system" was able to report
that Morse was now four jars in the lead.

Then the roof fell in!

Mrs. Carpenter executed the coup de grdce. She displayed the new
canning technique she had been using for the past week. Her jars were
full full to the brim. Morse was leaving a two-inch air space at the
top. His was cold-pack canning. Mrs. C. had switched to the open-
kettle method. This news spread around the park like wildfire. Morse
was crushed. There was no telling how far ahead Mrs. Carpenter was
now. Her quarts represented full quarts, while Morse s were scarcely
two-thirds fuIL

Wilford, the nasty, teen-age offspring of the Carpenters, needled
Morse unmercifully until the poor fellow, vacation gone, spirit broken
and defeated by a woman, hooked up his rig and headed for home; the
trailer sagging ominously under the weight of his 168 two-thirds quarts
of blueberries.

With the departure of the Morses the trailer park settled down and
we devoted our time to organizing clam and lobster bakes. It was a
big undertaking that required a number of committees. There was
the lobster detail, clam-digging detail, seaweed-gathering group, corn

204 The Long, Long Trailer

committee, firewood-gathering detail and the chairman. I was the
chairman.

The fire would be started late in the afternoon over a previously
arranged pile o large boulders. When the rocks became sizzling hot,
the firewood was scraped off and converted to a campfire for the eve
ning. The seaweed group then piled on a thick layer of seaweed fresh
from the waters of Penobscot Bay. The experts insisted the seaweed
had to come from underwater; they wouldn t permit the use of sea
weed that had been exposed by the tide.

Next forty-four lively lobsters were tossed on (the livelier the better,
claimed the know-hows), two each for twenty-two hungry committee
members. Then another layer of seaweed on which was dumped baskets
of clams dug within the hour. On this was placed still another layer
of seaweed, then six-dozen ears of corn, husks and all, which had
previously soaked for a few minutes in salt water. The corn was as
fresh as the clams, having been hand picked by the corn committee
from the farm next door.

The corn committee was chairmanned by the man who owned eleven
spare gas pumps for his decrepit car. He had purchased them in nearly
every state he passed through on his cross-country trip, on the assump
tion that a faulty gas pump was causing his car to stall whenever he
towed his trailer above an altitude of 3000 feet. He didn t learn until
the tour was completed that the car was merely suffering from vapor
lock, and nature would have cured it in the same time it took him
to remove one pump and install another if he had just sat still and
waited.

Even as he piled on the final layer of corn he never lost an opportunity
to try to unload one of his pumps on anyone owning the same make
car.

With the dams, lobsters and corn in place, we blanketed the mound
with a last covering of seaweed and incased the whole with a tarp, held

Spring in TSIew England 205

down with, rocks. This trapped the steam, thereby speeding up the
cooking process.

In forty-five minutes, following the singing of our official song,
"There s a Long, Long Trailer Winding," the banquet was ready. The
tarp carfie off with great ceremony. The experts tested a dozen or so
clams and pronounced them done to a turn. The experts always pro
nounced them "done to a turn," whether the steaming period was
forty minutes or an hour. There were times when I had the feeling
that this was merely subterfuge on the part of the experts in order
to get in the first lick at an extra dozen or so clams. But I could be
wrong. At any rate I didn t interfere with New England tradition.

The feast over, the campfire would be built up to a cozy roar and
trailerites swapped stories of their exploits.

There was one memorable clam bake that I m sure will be recalled
with pleasure, or horror, by most of the tenants especially Wilford,
the precocious, brash, unbearable fourteen-year-old son of the Carpen
ters.

The clam bake was over and we had just arrived at the story
telling stage when we were brought up short with the hollow call,
"Haalp!" It was difficult to distinguish the direction from which the
call came. Flashlights appeared by the dozens and we searched the
beach to no avail. We all paused dramatically and listened. The calls
seemed to be growing weaker and more desperate,

"Haalp! Haalp! For God s sake, Haaalp!"

The voice had a hollow, cave-like quality and appeared to be com
ing from a giant loud speaker far away. In desperation we shoved a
row boat into the bay but twenty feet from shore it became obvious
the calls were coming from above the bluff right in the trailer park.

Twenty frenzied trailerites plunged headlong up the steep incline
and ran in the direction of the calls. The Carpenters were in the
lead, they were positive it was their son in trouble.

206 The Long, Long Trailer

The cries for help were by now punctuated with sobs, and seemed to
be coming from the general direction of the laundry.

We headed for the laundry room, the Carpenters still in the lead,
and burst through the door. The sight that met our eyes was ludicrous,
heart warming or terrifying, depending on the point of view.

Mrs. Carpenter nearly keeled over in a dead faint. There was her
pride and joy, her boy, her son, her only offspring, buttocks in the air
supported by two half-bent legs, his head and torso inserted to the
waist in the Bendix washer, after the manner of a mummer.

Some wag standing in the rear shouted, "Turn on the washer and
clean him up!"

Mrs. Carpenter whirled on her tormenter like a tiger and spat out,
"That s not funny. Wilford is dying!"

The information from such an authentic source that he was dying
had an electric effect on Rosemary another teenager who had been
carrying on a heavy romance with Wilford. She burst into an uncon
trollable fit of hysteria and throwing herself on the laundry room floor,
sobbed out the irrelevant news that she was "disgraced. Forever dis
graced!" She was positive her boy friend would slowly starve to death
in the Bendix and how could she face her girl friends at school with
the information that her hero had met an untimely end in a washing
machine.

She screamed at anyone who would listen, "If he has to die, why
doesn t he die like anyone else?"

She had a point there. It s pretty difficult to die a heroic death in
a washer. It s even pretty hard to loo\ heroic to your lady love, with
half your body out of sight and your rear-end sticking out through
a round hole in a washing machine.

With Rosemary s outburst, Mrs. Carpenter went into action. She
seized the mop alongside the washer and rapping Wilford smartly on

Spring in New England 207

the derriere averred she would stand for no further nonsense. Wilford
was to "back out o there immediately immediately! do you hear?"

The attack from the rear prodded Wilford into raising his voice to
inform us he could not back out. He was stuck. That was definite
he d been trying to back out for fifteen minutes and succeeded only
in thrashing around until he had skinned his shoulder. The sight of
blood and the weird timbre of the voice coming from the bowels of
the Bendix caused Mrs. Carpenter to become panic-stricken and she
joined Rosemary on the floor of the laundry, where they tried to
outdo one another with cries of anguish.

As chairman of the clam bake, it seemed up to me to take the
situation in hand. I scurried around the laundry there was no soap.
(Each trailerite provides his "own.) I dispatched Mr. Carpenter to the
beach for the remainder of the drawn butter we had been using for
dipping clams. The minister raced to his trailer for a pair of scissors,
while I calmed Wilford down with the assurance that we would have
him out momentarily.

With the scissors we cut away his shirt. The drawn butter was
splashed on the opening in the Bendix and with the remainder we
liberally greased Wilford s torso; then with the minister and Mr.
Carpenter holding his posterior and two of us pulling on his legs we
affected the rescue.

Wilford plopped out of the Bendix like a champagne cork, stiE
clutching in his hand a page torn from a magazine captioned, "How
to Fool Your Friends/ One of the ways to fool your friends and make
money at the same time, was to wager that you could insert and with
draw your torso through the small round opening in a Bendix washer.

Wilford had been rehearsing alone, just to be sure he could do the
trick before wagering any money. He had carefully read the direc
tions on how to get inside, and had accomplished it only, he took

208 The Long, Long Trailer

the directions in with him. Once inside it was so dark he couldn t read
the directions on how to escape. It was a very unsuccessful undertaking,
theatrically and financially.

His mother marched him off to the trailer where I m sure she
promptly forgave him, but Rosemary held out to the bitter end. She
assured us all that Wilford was only a child, doing childish tricks. The
fact that he hadn t made her look exactly like a movie heroine, lying
on the laundry room floor kicking and sobbing, may also have had
something to do with her aloof attitude.

The Carpenters never found out that the minister had always
wondered about the stunt and had placed the magazine in the reading
room right on top of Popular Mechanics, Wilford s favorite publica
tion*

The remainder of our stay at The Mooring seemed dull after the
Battle of the Bendix. There was nothing to do but eat clams, blue
berries and lobsters, and loll in deck chairs soaking up sun while we
watched the commercial fishermen haul up their lobster traps, a few
yards offshore.

Since the honorary position of Clambake Chairman was more or less
a sinecure, the post revolved frequently. It was inevitable that I should
eventually become one of the working group. It turned out to be the
dessert committee. I was handed fifty cents by the Finance Department
and instructed to purchase a quart of ice cream to top the blueberries.

I recalled seeing an amateurishly painted sign down the road a
"piece" (New England for any distance from a city block to nine
miles) announcing "Homemade Ice Cream."

In the shop I encountered a gentleman (the proprietor) whom I
hoped was a descendant of David Robinson, the ice cream man. He
was a composite of all Down-Easters. A gaunt, taciturn, thin-faced in
dividual of ascetic deportment and firm believer in paucity of words.

Spring in New England 209

He had a face the color and texture o a wet burlap bag and the
attitude of the Grim Reaper. His age could have been anywhere from
seventy to a hundred and seventy.

"Possibly," I thought with a macabre shudder, "I have stumbled onto
David Robinson himself."

I marched from the door to the counter then waited then he
marched from his door to the counter.

He stared me in the eye momentarily, then said flatly, "Something?"

Not a muscle twitched; his burlap face just hung from his hair
and did nothing.

I thought of Calvin Coolidge, and was tempted to say, "I do not
choose to purchase anything," but something in the proprietor s eye
stopped me. I had the feeling that perhaps he wouldn t see the humor

in it.

He was serious very serious. His "something" obviously implied
that this one magic word embodied all the great approaches ever
devised by all the world s great salesmen. It was supposed to be a
ringing welcome and subtly suggest that he was completely at the
command of the customer and my slightest wish would send him into
a frenzy of activity. Somehow the word missed its mark a shade. I
felt a little like an intruder. I did manage a semblance of a smile as
I got out hesitantly, "I d like a quart of ice cream."

"Don t sell it b th quart."

His inflection gave me the impression I had just asked the im
possible. I mulled over the implication for a moment, then said hope
fully, "Pint?"

"Only sell it b dips *

Again he had crowded me into a corner. "B dips," I assumed was
another New England unit of measurement; something like "piece,"
only confined to ice cream. Since I wasn t sure but what "b dips" might
mean anything from a half-pint to a half-gallon, I pled my ignorance.

2io The Long, Long Trailer

"What is a b dips?" I asked

The proprietor looked at me scornfully and disdained a reply, in
stead he held up an ice-cream scoop for my inspection. I examined it
carefully and when I caught on that a "dip" was a scoop I became
as scornful and shrewd as the Down-Easter.

"How much per dip?"

"Thirteen cents."

"Would it be possible to put enough dips in a container to make a
quart?" I felt I was verbose to the point of vulgarity.

Again he refused a reply but nodded his head affirmatively.

"Then," I said, Td like a quart of dips!"

I felt pretty smug. I was purchasing the thing he had originally
refused to sell me. I had the feeling I was showing this New Eng-
lander that we of the West could be shrewd and clever too.

By the time I had thoroughly savored my astuteness, and clever ap
proach, the proprietor had returned from the back room with the
quart of ice cream.

"How much?" I asked.

"Two dollars and eight cents."

I blinked, "Two dollars and eight cents?" There was a note of sur
prise in my voice in spite of my efforts to keep it out.

"Yep. Sixteen dips at thirteen cents a dip."

I paid for my purchase and lugged it back to the clambake where
the Finance Department refused to reimburse me for the extra dollar
and fifty-eight cents.

My story of how I had put one over on the New Englander con
vulsed my fellow trailerites, but seemed scarcely funny at all to me.
Perhaps I told it badly. Not enough emphasis on how I had forced the
man to sell me something against his will. So I finally dropped the
whole thing.

Spring in New England 211

The quiet peace of New England and the lull in local activities,
presented a fine opportunity to catch up on my bookkeeping. Here
was my chance to examine the budget minutely. I could draw monthly
totals. I could add up the long columns of figures nearly a year s supply
of them and stack them against our projected budget. I was positive
we had exceeded our budget at least for the first three months, but
after that I was equally positive things had leveled off.

When we set the budget at $250 per month, I had again shrewdly
calculated that it was a give-and-take proposition, and knew it would
be mostly give. It could be upped ten per cent with no harm at all.
I kept this information in reserve as a surprise for Merle. I kept under
cover an even bigger surprise. We could stand a twenty per cent deficit
without the world coming to an end.

Fortified with this fiscal knowledge, I began the adding of figures
which would give us the monthly totals, with a certain air of self-
satisfaction.

Just as I had suspected, not the first three months, but the first four
months totals had exceeded the budget by a considerable margin.

Then came New Orleans. Total $412. How come? What was this?
How did it happen? We were sixty-five per cent over the budget.
Three dinners at Antoine s and two at Galletoire s stove the biggest
hole. The high price of Louisiana gas hadn t helped any either. The
budget was getting out of hand.

The connecting rod at Fort Myers, Florida ruined the next month s
allocation and Miami nearly sunk us completely. In a panic I hastily
added the figures for Washington, D.C. seventy per cent over.

The budget was a shambles.

Then New York! The big city had robbed us. Robbed us blind and
broke. $653.57 worth. And all we had to show for it was memories
some o those not very pleasant. This was the end. We had crammed

212 The Long, Long Trailer

a two-year vacation into one year. We hadn t been abroad and there
was no prospect now of going abroad.

There was only one thing to do. Get back home as quickly as pos
sible and go to work.

I didn t want to upset Merle with the bad news about the budget
and spoil our return trip, so it took me two days of gentle urging to
get her to pack up and let me get The Monster rolling back toward
his home state.

24 THE ROAD BACK

THE SECRET knowledge of the depleted budget

took some of the edge off my enthusiasm. Withal, the return trip was
pleasant but fast.

We dove into the rolling hills of Maine to Augusta, its capital, and
crossed the Kennebec River. Then past dozens of lumber mills, paper
mills, shoe factories and pulp mills. Across the Androscoggin and
Salmon Falls rivers and into New Hampshire. We liked New Hamp
shire. It s a bright, solid, cheerful state, with its shaded village greens,
historic buildings, literary landmarks and impressive museums that
vie with its natural topographical charms for attention.

We rumbled over the Connecticut River that forms the north and
south boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont, and waded
into the land of maple syrup, maple sugar, maple cream and maple
candy. We stuffed ourselves with maple products, gained four pounds
in as many days, and felt as heavy and solid as the granite and marble
quarried in Rutland.

The Road Eac\ 213

The Green Mountain State is well named; it has green mountains
and they re named the Green Mountains and from Brattleboro to
Bennington you go over the Green Mountains. It s the Molly Stark
Trail, Vermont s answer to the Massachusetts Mohawk Trail, and as
impressive a sight from Hogback Mountain as any trailerite with
a strong will and plenty of horsepower could wish for.

From Bennington, Vermont we coasted downhill and over the cob
blestone highway into Troy, New York.

Merle had heard the story of Hannah Lord Montague of Troy who
is supposed to have cut the collars off her husband s shirts so she could
launder them separately. By this simple act with a pair of shears she
created the industry that was to make Troy the "collar capital of the
world." Merle was so disappointed to learn that other things were
made in Troy besides collars that we promptly crossed the Hudson
and headed for Albany and the Cherry Valley.

We had been advised by our fellow trailerites to avoid US. 20, which
is the Cherry Valley Turnpike. But we had been advised before about
avoiding this route or that mountainous area until we felt we were
sacrificing scenery for level roads.

Our advisers were right about this one though; it s no place for a
trailer. It was like taking a ride on a i6o-mile-long roller coaster. We
roared down hill with the trailer brakes screaming in protest, then
grunted up the other side in second or low. I was happy to reach the
Finger Lakes district and a comparatively level route into Niagara
Falls.

We did everything everyone is expected to do in Niagara Falls. We
examined both the American and Horseshoe Falls from the top, the
bottom, the inside, above, below and from the Maid of the Mist, a
bustling little terrier of a boat that snaps at the heels of the falls and
gets buffeted around disdainfully for its pains. We even held hands
to avoid being conspicuous. If the newly weds we saw were any criterion

214 The Long, Long Trailer

(they might as well have worn signs) Niagara had lost none of its allure
for the honeymooners.

Merle got carried away with the hand-holding after all these years
and wanted to stay longer. She was still unaware of the delicate con
dition of the budget, and it took some adroit diplomatic moves to
get the rig under way again and headed for Chicago.

We made excellent time through Buffalo to Erie Pennsylvania s
only port on the Great Lakes.

We passed farm after farm and orchard after truck garden. We
were in a prolific fruit country. At the farm stands that lined the high
way we bought peaches (good), tomatoes (unsurpassed), plums (ex
cellent), and grapes (fair).

Near Cleveland The Monster dealt the budget a shattering blow by
exploding one of his rear tires. Since trailerites never, or rarely carry
spares (they re too big, too cumbersome and too heavy) this was a minor
catastrophe and could have been a major one had it not occurred on a
four-lane highway. The blow-out had its compensations in spite of the
six-hour delay while a new tire of the correct size, make and weight
was being discovered and delivered.

If it hadn t been for the tire accident we might not have had our
opinion of truck drivers confirmed. From our experience to date we
had suspected they were angels on wheels; now we were positive.
It was a truck driver who picked me up and delivered me to the
nearest service station and a truck driver who returned me to the
trailer. It was even a truck driver who suggested where we might find
the right-size tire. As we played a several-hour game of mumbly peg
on the grass alongside the highway, fifteen truckers (by actual count)
stopped and offered help.

A medal should be struck for these fellows. Beyond question they
are the most courteous, competent, helpful group of individuals on the
road.

The Road Bac^ 215

While I assisted with the tire mounting Merle took our murnbly
peg knife and dug up what looked like an armload of spinach. She
swore they were wild Ohio violets and we were held up a little longer
while she transplanted some of the philodendron to make room in one
of our solid copper ferneries for the violets. (We never knew they
didn t bloom.)

With The Monster again mobile, we headed once more for Chicago
on U.S. 6 and would have made it but for a detour that took us
fifty-six miles north and south in order to gain six miles in a westerly
direction. We wound up in Elkhart, Indiana, a city we hadn t intended
visiting at all.

As long as we were pushed off our route it couldn t have happened
in a more appropriate spot, Elkhart, in addition to turning out most
of the world s band instruments, comes very near being the trailer
capital of the United States. I don t know what connection there is be
tween a cornet and a trailer, but fifteen Elkhart factories turn out
band instruments and eighteen manufacture trailers. It would cer
tainly be a simple matter for a tuba player to make his purchase, load
it into a trailer (he needs one anyway to carry the thing) and head
for home.

Possibly it is significant that Miles Laboratories, Incorporated has
located its Alka-Seltzer plant there too. There may be some connection
between tubas, trailers and headaches.

The morning we left Elkhart, Merle was bright and cheerful with
the news that she had had a dream a beautiful dream about the
Lincoln Highway. Although we didn t carry a dream book as regular
equipment, Merle Insisted the dream was very significant, and we must
immediately change course and return to the west on the Lincoln
Highway. I got out my maps and revised our route.

At Plymouth, Indiana, we met U.S. Highway 30 the Lincoln High
way and rolled along snappily until we encountered Chicago Heights.

2i 6 The Long, Long Trailer

From Chicago Heights to Joliet to Aurora, Illinois the highway was
a shambles a well-marked strip of rubble. With the exception of five
miles of road under construction in Western Montana, it was without
doubt the roughest roadbed to date.

Apparently not a lick of work had been done on it since Lincoln
finished it. Merle s dream highway had turned into a terrible night
mare.

Fearing a permanent spinal injury I suggested stopping in Aurora.
Merle wanted to be nearer Chicago. We headed for Chicago and after
some reconnoitering found a trailer park that satisfied us both. I
pulled up in front of the little building marked "Office" just as a big
bruiser of a man emerged through the door. I got out of the car with
a big smile and hand extended. The man, obviously the manager,
brushed past without so much as a nod of welcome. I stood there with
hand extended as the man marched purposefully toward the Glider,
parked only a few feet away.

As he reached the patio, the tenant stepped from his trailer and
stood with his feet planted solidly. A veritable rock. The manager
marched up to him, drew back a club-like fist and punched the tenant
right on the nose. It was a teeth-shattering blow literally. The tenant
spat out a few teeth and slowly sank to the patio. He wasn t a rock
after all.

Merle looked at me hopefully, but Fm no fool; I leaped into the
car and spun the tires getting The Monster under way back to Aurora.
I wanted no truck with trailer-park managers who punched their tenants
on the nose.

From Aurora we commuted the forty miles to Chicago for our ex
ploration of that city.

Again it took some coaxing to get Merle and the trailer back on the
road. Merle still insisted that we follow the Lincoln Highway. After
all, she argued, she had had a dream; in addition, it didn t seem possible

The Road Bac^ 217

the highway could deteriorate further, and there was the remote
chance it might become better.

She was right on the last point it did improve but it was still not a
route for trailers. From Indiana to Wyoming the roadbed is concrete,
with expansion joints that met only occasionally. Just often enough to
create a sickening, rocking motion that could be overcome only by
slowing down to twenty-five miles per hour.

We crept across Illinois to the Mississippi River where we discovered
what must be the world s narrowest bridge (toll thirty-five cents).

In the middle of the Mississippi we encountered a woman driver
aiming at us from the opposite direction. She zigzagged her way to
within twenty feet of the trailer, stopped the car in the middle of the
bridge, got out and thrust the key at me.

If there was any passing to be done, she informed me, I would have to
do it. She said further that she would not ride in the vehicle nor would
she permit me to drive her car past the trailer. If I was going to do any
thing I would have to park her car and tow the trailer past it.

If these arrangements weren t suitable, she implied that the next
twenty-four hour period was completely free and she would just as soon
spend it in the middle of the Mississippi as anywhere else. She summed
up her whole attitude with a snap of her fingers accompanied by, "I
don t give that for trailerhouses!"

I admired and envied her a little as I parked her car as close to the
bridge rail as possible and squeezed The Monster past. The clearance
would have torn tissue paper to shreds.

Safely across, we got our first glimpse of Iowa, land of corn and hogs.
We jerked our way into Ames and were happy to find an excellent park
and the prospect of a good night s rest.

Merle was in the midst of preparing dinner when our trailerite
neighbor next door dropped in for a chat. She said she was very taken
with the rig and wanted all the information on it we could give her.

218 The Long, Long Trailer

While she professed a great personal interest in the trailer and we did
our best to be helpful, the major share of her attention and conversation
was directed toward a vapid, unanimated animal which she clutched
in her arms,

It was a dog but the most unlikely dog we d ever seen* He had
ears like a mule and a nose that made him resemble somewhat an
anteater. But the crowning touch was the little red sweater, which the
lady assured us she had knitted herself. "With a dweight big aitch on
the side," she said, patting the animal. The "aitch," she informed us
was for "Harold," and she constantly inquired of Harold, "Duzzums
itty bitty Harold like the dweight big twailer?"

We finally awoke to the fact that we were describing the appoint
ments of the rig for the edification of Harold, and to switch the
subject Merle offered our visitor a piece of candy. At the mention of
the word "candy" she nearly had apoplexy, then apologized profusely.

"That s a word," she said, "that I never say out loud. I always have
to spell [and she spelled them] C-A-N-D-Y and M-E-A-T. Harold
loves them both so, they simply send him into tantrums."

I nearly fwowed up all over "itty bitty Harold" and the "dweight
big lady."

After they had left we had some difficulty deciding which was the
worse off, the lady with the debilitated dog, or the dog with the idiot
mistress.

We got a bright and early start the next morning and tried to step
up our pace to thirty miles an hour, but it was no use. The highway
and our innards wouldn t stand for it. We had to drop back to
twenty-five miles an hour and while away the time counting the fat
cattle and even fatter hogs populating Iowa and Nebraska.

At Kearney, Nebraska we discovered that our morning burst of speed
had created a casualty a broken dolly spring. Moby Dick seemed
aware that the budget was in a touch-and-go position and was doing
his perverse best to push it as far into the red as possible.

The Road Bac\ 219

We got a new spring wrong size but at least it worked, and
carried us into Cheyenne, Wyoming without difficulty. Even the high
way seemed to show a little compassion it turned from concrete to
blacktop and was level and smooth. At Cheyenne we pulled into a
forest of gas pumps and instructed the attendant to fill the tank while
we "washed up." We were preparing for the long, hard pull to the
summit, forty miles away and nearly 9000 feet up.

A thirty-five mile headwind complicated the driving and nearly
nullified our effort to reach the summit. The wind was biting cold
and the slightest hill forced us into second gear.

We had just pulled over one of these rises when the engine coughed
tentatively, wheezed a couple of times, then gave up completely. Here
was a problem. The middle of Wyoming, a roaring wind, little traffic
and a complete lack of mechanical ability. Maybe it was vapor lock, I
thought hopefully. Maybe if we just sat quietly for a little while it
would start again. We sat quietly for a little while it didn t start.

I thought enviously of the man with the eleven gas pumps and wished
I had bought one, but immediately retracted the wish. I wouldn t know
where to pump the gas if I had all eleven of his pumps.

There seemed to be only one thing to do; make my rounds and
check the liquids. I looked in the radiator; it was full. I checked the
oil; the crank case was full. There was no need to check the gas,
we had bought sixteen gallons less than an hour ago. I was about to
poke an exploratory finger among an interesting group of wires, when
Merle shouted from inside the car, "The gas gauge says empty!"

I knew the gas gauge didn t work until the ignition key was turned
on. This bit of knowledge by a no-ability mechanic can make you feel
pretty superior. It didn t seem possible I could get any place poking
among the wires anyway, so I climbed into the car to explain the
operation of the gas gauge.

"The gas gauge," I said, "doesn t work till you flip the switch-
like this. Then it slowly rises to " But it didn t rise. It lay there

220 The Long, Long Trailer

dead. Empty, it said. But this couldn t be, we had just loaded up with
gas. A leak, that s what it was. I jumped out of the car and looked
underneath.

If the thing was bleeding internally, there should be a puddle below.
There was no puddle, I thumped on the gas tank and it thumped back
hollowly. There was no question, we were definitely out of gas. I ran
down the highway a few yards in a fruitless search for a gas trail, and
waved down a Knight on Wheels at the same time.

There was no hesitation on the part of the trucker. He pulled up
promptly and came over to lend a hand. I immediately discarded the
medal idea and thought of writing my congressman about minting a
coin (at least a fifty-cent piece) for these fellows. A truck under full
way on one side with a composite of all truck drivers on the other.
It was the very least they deserved.

Although an expert mechanic, the truck driver was as baffled as we
were over the mysterious disappearance of the gas. If we had actually
burned it in the car, our gas consumption had achieved the all-time
low of one mile to the gallon. The trucker discarded this theory as
impossible.

He expertly fondled a few complicated gadgets under the hood,
traced back the gas line and examined the tank for leaks. They were
all pronounced perfect.

He accepted a five dollar bill for the purchase of ten gallons of gas
which he said he would send back, with the change, by the first
truck coming our way.

I m sure the trucker had a mental reservation about the whole
thing and was positive we had never put the sixteen gallons in the
tank in the first place.

The only thing we were all certain of was the present condition of
the tank. It was definitely empty.

Since Merle and I would have at least an hour s wait for the delivery

The Road Bacf^ 221

of our gas, we moved into the trailer to prepare lunch. Merle made
sandwiches while I prepared coffee. I began filling our glass percolator
from the trailer water pump, but had pulled the pump handle only
once when Merle s head snapped up and she sniffed the air. "What s
that I smell?"

There was scarcely any doubt but I pulled the pump handle once
more and sniffed the result myself.

There was our sixteen gallons of gas. The wedge-head in Cheyenne
had loaded our trailer water tank with gas, instead of putting it in the
car.

It was nice to know where the stuff was, but the four gallons of
water which was in the tank ruined the gas for use in the car and the
gas ruined the water for coffee. The whole mess ruined the tank for
further use for anything.

The only thing of value anyone seemed to get out of it was the truck
driver who delivered the two five-gallon cans of gas. He was convulsed,
and left us with the unequivocal declaration that it was the best belly
laugh he had had in the last five years. At the time it didn t seem quite
that funny and I mentally revised the letter to my congressman, re
ducing the truck driver s coin from a fifty-cent piece to a twenty-five-
cent piece.

The remainder of our return trip was almost without incident.

With gas pumped into the proper tank (guaranteed now by one of
us standing guard) the car expanded its efforts to give us reasonable
mileage. The Monster had ceased his passes at the budget and behaved
admirably all through Wyoming and Utah and Nevada.

We had encountered so many irritating difficulties Merle couldn t
quite understand our several days of good luck and got into the
habit of inquiring each morning, "Well, what s on the pogrom for
today?" She couldn t have made an apter error. While It took a few

222 The Long, Long Trailer

days to get around to it, get around to it we did. And it was a dandy
when it arrived.

The trip might have been completely without incident, and we
might never have instigated the "pogrom" had not the human element
complicated things as we re-entered California.

At every point of entry into our home state the government has set
up agricultural inspection stations. They are operated by the State
Department of Agriculture for the purpose of preventing the spread
of disease among trees, shrubs, fruits and vegetables. Every vehicle
must stop for inspection.

Our difficulties didn t begin until the inspector, a giant of a man
with amazingly big feet, had concluded his examination of the car
and was ready for the trailer.

Merle was eying the cement floor of the inspection dock which was
covered with a thick coating of oil and grease, deposited there by the
hundreds of vehicles inspected daily.

The inspector paused with one hand on the door as Merle tapped
him on the shoulder*

"You ll have to take off your shoes," she said sweetly. The inspector
dropped his hand and backed away from the door with a puzzled ex
pression on his face. He thought perhaps he hadn t heard correctly.

He leaned toward Merle unbelievingly. "What was that again,
Madam?"

Merle bristled a little at the "madam" and interposed her 105 pounds
between the inspector and the door.

"I said you d have to take your shoes off they re dirty and oily!"

"Take my shoes off!!"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I just told you. They re covered with oil and grease, and I just
had the rugs cleaned. They re yellow."

The Road Eac\ 22 3

"Yellow?" The inspector echoed with an inflection that gave the
impression he was now hearing the word for the first time in his
life,

He paused a moment and shook his head slightly to clear away the
prior conversation. It seemed to help. He was almost normal when he
gave Merle a tolerant smile accompanied by, "But Madam, I can t
inspect the trailer in my soc\s"

The second "madam" didn t set too well. Merle pulled herself up to
her full five-foot-two, and said slowly and clearly:

"You will either have to remove your shoes, or roll up all the
rugs in the trailer." Then as an afterthought, "and you ll have to take
off your shoes to do that!"

Every word bit him.

The inspector looked thoughtful.

Merle, seeing he was weakening, tossed in the clincher. "We have
bedroom slippers you can put on."

The inspector heaved a resigned sigh and unlaced his shoes. He
stepped in the door and tried to get into the bedroom slippers. They
couldn t even contain his toes. He gave Merle a hurt look and began
his inspection.

In bedroom slippers, I accompanied the shoeless inspector on his
tour.

He got his first surprise when he discovered our "thirty-five dollar,
solid-copper fernery," the dirt of which was now not so fresh, since
Merle had crammed it with more philodendron, some rabbit tracks,
artillery, ivy, sweet william and the wild Ohio violets which looked
like spinach. Even this interesting little grouping wouldn t have up
set the inspector had it not been for Merle s unique method of preserving
this arboretum.

In order to keep the leaves from rubbing against one another while
the trailer was under way, she had inserted little tufts of cotton among

224 The Long, Long Trailer

the leaves. Hundreds of little tufts of cotton, which we had become
used to, but which startled the inspector no end.

"Cotton?" he accused. "You re transporting cotton plants?**

Now cotton is a major California crop and the discovery of even
one little boll weevil would send the Department of Agriculture into
a frenzy. I hastened to explain the cotton to the inspector and reached
for one of the tufts so he might examine it. The tuft of cotton refused
to budge. It was stuck to the leaf of the Ohio violets. I swallowed un
comfortably and looked guilty as the inspector leaned over for a closer
look.

It was perfectly obvious that the cotton had come from our medical
kit. But it was also obvious to the inspector that he might he just
might have on his hands a female Luther Burbank. Merle might be
crossing cotton with Ohio violets in order to produce something in
Technicolor to sneak across the state line.

The inspector was becoming very wary as he asked to look in the
refrigerator.

I attempted to soothe his ruffled composure by snatching open the door
of the freezer as quickly as possible. Added proof, I thought, that we
concealed nothing inside.

It was the refrigerator that caused the final downfall of the inspector.

After the gas episode in the trailer water tank, I had purchased a
four-quart, glass water bottle, which we kept in the refrigerator.
Since it was a new piece of equipment, we apparently hadn t learned
how to anchor it securely. As I ripped open the door the gallon jug
came flying out and crashed on the big toe of the inspector. He yelped
with pain and leaped in the air. The container bounced once, then
crashed again to the floor smashing into a hundred pieces.

When the inspector came down from his leap he landed on the
jagged neck of the bottle cutting an inch-long gash in the side of
his foot. He yelped again. Water rushed over the floor and cascaded

The Road Bac^ 225

down the floor furnace. Merle hurtled through the door and shouted at
the inspector, "What have you done?"

That harried individual could stand it no longer. He fairly erupted
with wounded toe and pride.

"What have I done? What have / done? My God, Madam!
nothing! ! LooJ^ what you ve done!" He pointed to the floor, the smashed
metatarsal and his leaking foot.

Blood was turning the water to crimson. Merle began crying the
third "madam" was too much. It was bedlam. The racket brought two
more inspectors rushing to the trailer. Merle sobbed out the order,
"Get a mop." One of the new recruits rushed off to comply. I was
trying to soak up the water with a sponge and clear a path through
the broken glass for the wounded inspector.

Before I could complete the job he fought his way through the
trailer like a rabid panther.

Merle blubbered, "Look out for the *

It was too late. Whap! His head bounced off the door. He stag
gered momentarily then reeled off in the direction of the office where
he was given first aid.

Things quieted down.

While Merle mopped the trailer, gathered broken glass, and tried
to clean the rugs, I reluctantly went into the office where the inspectors,
a sullen little group, were contemplating their hazardous occupation.

Silently the wounded inspector, now sockless as well as shoeless,
and plastered with Band-aids, handed me my clearance slip.

Everybody seemed relieved at our departure.

25. THE MONSTER AND
THE LADY

FREED of the inspection station, The Monster

acted like a workhorse that had been slapped on the rump and headed
for the barn after a hard day behind the plow.

He fairly outdid himself with good behavior and in no time at all
we were in San Bernardino, then Pasadena, then Hollywood and
home.

We returned to Valley Park in North Hollywood, our starting point,
but disdained the old spot at No. i First Avenue and whipped around
to No. 3 Oak Street. This in itself showed improvement; we were
no longer tenderfeet, we were veterans and could park the trailer where
we liked.

We spent several weeks in Hollywood while I tied up some dangling
business ends, laid the groundwork for my return to the ranks of
the gainfully employed (this information I kept from Merle the
time didn t seem propitious), and compiled some interesting statistics
on life and costs in a trailer.

From time to time, I could not help indulging in nostalgic thoughts
of some of the interesting characters we had met on our trailer trip.

There was the ophthalmologist in Missoula, Montana, who hooked
up to a trailer every other year to study and contemplate, while his
partner took care of all the patients. They split the income and the
following year their positions were reversed. They ll both live to be
octogenarians.

There was the president emeritus of a small Midwestern college, whom
we met in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He and his wife had been traveling
on a very small pension for the past two years. They had rolled through
nearly every state in the Union searching out likely spots to park the
226

Tfi Monster and the Lady 227

trailer. When they found one, they bought it. They owned ten lots
in ten different localities. Each had something special to recommend
it a mountain view, a lake, trees, the ocean, or a stream abounding in
fish. The most expensive lot cost them seventy-eight dollars and their
taxes on all ten lots totalled less than seventeen dollars per year.

He is an octogenarian.

Then there was Shamus Monahan, a crinkly-eyed Irishman who
simply got tired of the eternal scramble bought a trailer with his last
dime and took to the road. When his larder was empty, he painted
mail boxes and stenciled on names. When it was full, he just sat and
dreamed.

He ll probably live forever.

There were dozens of others. Some on pensions who were going to
spend the rest of their lives traveling. Some who were just taking a
year off "to get away from it all." Some who were writing poems
for greeting cards and some who were doing it just for the fun of
it.

It was the most varied, interesting, sound group of people we d ever
met.

We loved every minute of it in spite of the fact our expenses had so
bloated the budget that it lost all control of its figure.

During our statistic compiling period, who should pop in but our
New Orleans friends, Dude and Patricia Allen.

Had we known at the time the terrible difficulties they had encoun
tered, we wouldn t have permitted the practical joke which almost
immediately began to take form, to go as far as it did.

Since we had last seen them, they had done considerable traveling.
Among other states, they had visited Florida. There, they had en
countered a mild hurricane which stirred up their trailer with all the
gusto of a giant Mixmaster. It tore down the trailer awning, broke
all their dishes and smashed a lamp or two.

228 The Long, Long Trailer

They hastily pulled out of Florida but were deathly afraid their posi
tion had deteriorated since then rather than improved.

"Now," they maintained stoutly, "we ve got California earthquakes
to contend with."

They were even more frightened of earthquakes than hurricanes.

And it was easy to see why.

This was their first trip to California and for years they had been
subjected to the eastern and midwestern newspaper scare heads an
nouncing:

"Another Quake Rocks California!"

The newspaper and radio accounts of the constantly occurring Cali
fornia earthquakes had made a profound impression on the Aliens. It
was almost their sole subject of conversation.

We immediately, of course, introduced them to their neighbors on
Oak Street, and Dude and Patricia never failed to express their fear of
quakes, much to the irritation of the native Californians. They closely
questioned their fellow trailerites on the prospecthorrible thought
of encountering one. What should they do how did it feel did the
earth open up did it smoke would they be killed could they get
earthquake insurance?

It was at this point that the practical joke began to take solid form.
The build-up took days. One resident on Oak Street even brought out
the standard California wheeze about earthquakes. He told of the man
from Los Angeles who met the man from Chicago in a New York hotel
lobby. They had scarcely been introduced when the building was
rocked by an earthquake. The man from California calmly walked to
an archway and announced, "I m from Los Angeles we always stand
in doorways." The man from Illinois ran around in wild-eyed frenzy
shouting, "I m from Chicago what the hell do I do?"
Dude didn t find this very funny; he was from Chicago himself.

The Monster and the Lady 229

An old timer from San Francisco needled the Aliens with the gory
details o the great quake and fire in that city.

The Aliens elicited the most astounding replies to their inquiries about
earthquakes.

"Earthquakes! Gawd-a-mighty, boy, don t mention em they re awful
earthquake weather we re havin too."

"Earthquakes! Do I know about em? Air feels funny right now*
Let me tell you about Long Beach no better not."

"Earthquakes!! I was in Santa Barbara"

"Earthquakes! Please. I d rather not talk about them."

Dude and Patricia were reduced to jittery bundles of nerves.

When the Aliens leaped up and ran out of their trailer every time a
truck rumbled down the highway, the practical joke committee judged
they were ripe.

A guard was posted to watch the lights in the Allen trailer. This
night the lights were extinguished at nine-forty-five. They were then
given twenty minutes in which to get to sleep.

At shortly after ten o clock eight neighbors gathered around the
trailer. Two were assigned to the rear end, one each to the sides, one
to the front and one man on the dolly wheel. The trailer was rocked
from side to side and from end to end. It heaved and bounced. It
was pulled, pushed, shoved and thumped until Patricia unleashed a
blood-curdling scream. This was the cue for the guard to announce in
a doomsday voice, "It s a qu-a-a-a-k-e."

The scramble that then took place in the trailer was fearful. Both
Aliens assumed that such a terrible earthquake had smashed all power
lines so they didn t even try the lights.

They fought for the door. It was locked. There was a great fumbling,
then the door slammed open against the side of the trailer. A feminine
hand thrust itself through the screen. The screen door flew open and

230 The Long, Long Trailer

Patricia catapulted from the trailer and ran up and down the patio
ringing her hands and sobbing. The neighbors slunk behind trailers.

Patricia was wearing a typical bride s nightgown sheer black nylon.
The moon was bright. The men peeked from behind trailers. The
moon peeked back through the nightgown. She might as well have
worn a cobweb.

The embarrassed neighbors crouched farther behind their trailers
and listened to the rumpus still going on in the Allen home. Dude
was having trouble. There was a crash, accompanied by, "Gawddamn
stove!" Two bangs and a swish convoyed Dude through the trailer
door. The first bang was an overturned chair, the second, the door
jamb.

His delay was accounted for later. He had fallen in the kitchen and
Patricia had charged right over him.

He rushed up to Patricia and tried to soothe her. He looked at the
moon then at her nightgown and tried to shield her from the moon s
X-rays. It was no use. He didn t have enough material. He was wear
ing only half his pajamas. The wrong half. He was even more of a
sight than his wife. The neighbors peeked, then quietly slunk away.

We rushed out to the Aliens with robes and towels and herded them
into our trailer.

Dude was grateful "Thank God, nobody saw us."

Patricia thanked nobody. After her nerves had quieted down she
was positive she had made a very pretty picture in her nightie on the
patio.

We made up the spare bedroom in our rig. Then after assuring
the Aliens that it was only a mild quake and that The Monster
(being bigger) could stand a much harder shake, we finally got them
to bed.

Next morning the Aliens were two mighty confused people. There
was no mention of the quake in the newspapers. (They didn t learn

The Monster and the Lady 231

till weeks later.) They just assumed it was more of their bad luck
they felt they were hexed.

Dude rushed out to the first neighbors he saw in the morning with,
"Brother, that was a real one last night, wasn t it?" The neighbor just
looked puzzled.

Dude tried the Korns, "Say that was some quake last night. It
rocked the trailer right we " He gave up. Korn s face was blank.
"Quake? What quake ?"

Dude went from trailer to trailer. His questions shrunk, declined,
waned to a tentative, "Feel anything last night?" then collapsed.

They had had a gruesome time, we learned, during the past few
months. The quake and hurricane were only a small part of it. In
Houston they had been sideswiped by a truck which stove a hole in
the side of the trailer and necessitated a two-day layover while they
awaited a major repair job. In El Paso they had smashed up the car
which involved a two-hundred dollar repair bill and another delay.

All this, plus the encountering of a sandstorm and freezing weather
was recounted to Merle in all its lurid aspects. For several days there
after Merle wore a worried look.

"This," I thought, "is my answer."

She plumbed the depths of despondency over the obstacles a trailer
could encounter during a two-year trip. She withdrew into herself and
seemed to have a vague, faraway look in her eye.

Her unhappiness, plus my as yet undisclosed knowledge of the anemic
budget, forced me into an enterprise for which I had no stomach. I had
come to love The Monster like a brother. We had been through a great
deal together. He had bowed his neck and been recalcitrant at first,
that s true. But once we got to know one another and he had been
properly broken, no one could have asked for a better, more tractable,
useful companion.

Now, all this was over. The rig would have to be sold. With heavy

232 The Long, Long Trailer

heart I inserted an ad in the Valley paper. I received two responses.
These two epistles (both o which agreed to take The Monster off our
hands if the price was right) I laid before Merle.

She hit the ceiling, not too difficult a task in a trailer, and launched
into a lengthy tirade. Hadn t I promised her a two-year vacation?
What was I? An Arnold Benedict? (She always transposed the name.)
Wasn t trailering the most wonderful life we d found to date? Weren t
we having more fun than we d had since we went broke in the depres
sion? Weren t we traveling cheaper than it could be done any other
way?

Then she hit me where it hurt the most.

She pointed out the delightful convenience of The Monster. Was
anything ever before devised by man as comfortable as our trailer?
Wasn t it the most wonderful thing in the world to have your house
with you wherever you went? We could go where we wanted to go
and when we wanted to go. We were totally free of hotels, motels, and
tourist cabins. Nothing need be packed or unpacked.

The trailer slowed us down just enough to give us a perfect view
of the countryside while traveling. What if we did park near the city
dump occasionally pull down your blinds, and there s your home.
The same home you occupied last night and the night before that and
the night before that. We weren t constantly shifting beds, the more to
interrupt our sleep.

She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

She would not positively would not go back into a house or an
apartment or anything else that was stationary.

Could we have found or lived in such a spot as the wonderful bluff
on Penobscot Bay without a trailer?

Would we have ever found New Orleans or Fort Myers or Ray
Guy s, or Belfast or the Caloosahatchie River or key-lime pie or East
Potomac Park if The Monster hadn t helped us ?

The Monster and the Lady 233

Weren t we twenty years ahead of the poor, unfortunate people who
had to live in stationary houses or who hadn t yet learned about trailers ?

She went on and on, pointing out all the wonderful things about
trailers which I already knew, and she knew I knew. The entreaty
rolled on for a good hour while I patiently listened. I hadn t realized
it before, but she had come to love The Monster as much as I. This
made my obvious duty even more difficult to perform.

I agreed with Merle that all the things she had said were true.
"But," I said, "there s the budget."

She repeated the words. "The budget? What about it?"

I then placed before her the early entries on page one. Original cost,
$11,001.95. To this I added our twelve months expense of $4,856.00.

"Now," I said, "we originally set up a budget of $2,750 for the
trailer. We have added a car; our original estimate of two hundred and
fifty dollars a month expenses has grown to four hundred and five
dollars a month. Here is how it worked out.**

With that I handed her the sheet of paper with the following
figures:

Original expense $11,001.95

Traveling expenses 4,856.00

Total $i5> 8 57-95

Budget

Trailer $2,750.00

24 months travel

at $250 per month 6,000.00

Total 8,750.00 8,750,00

Deficit 7,107.95

And we had only been traveling for one year.

I pointed out that if we projected our monthly expenses to cover

234 T^ e Long, Long Trailer

the full two years* vacation, we would wind up with a deficit of
$11,963.95. And in all probability would also wind up in a debtor s
prison.

With bowed head, Merle looked thoughtful for what seemed like a
good five minutes, then she looked up.

"It s too late," she said. "I ve been shopping."

Those three words, "I ve been shopping," always brought me up
with a jerk. The statement could mean anything. It could mean a neck
tie, which I would despise. It could mean a fur coat, the price of which
I would hate even worse. This time I had no idea what it meant.

I tried to be calm, but I knew only too well something desperate had
taken place. "What," I inquired, "has shopping to do with the trailer?"

She withdrew a list from inside her bag, and the blood drained from
my face. "These are the things I bought," she said. "We needed them*
I had the fernery replanted [$8.50]. I replaced the rugs [eighty-nine
dollars], and I ve been down to the trailer factory and ordered some
awnings for the doors [twenty dollars] and the cutest little gadget
called a Dishmaster [fifty dollars installed] for washing the dishes."

For a moment I was stunned into speechlessness, then I gathered
all my strength for the final declamation. I waved my arms and
thumped on the several-page budget. I threw deficits right and left.
I predicted a terrible end for people who couldn t stay within a budget.
We were wastrels, incompetents. I pointed out the only answer to
the thing back to work. Nose on the grindstone. We would enter
the laboring class again only, twelve months sooner than we expected.

Merle was nodding her head all the while.

I stopped and looked at her. "You agree with everything I ve said?"

She nodded her agreement.

"Then what are we arguing about?**

She turned to saccharin. "I m not arguing. I just have it all figured
out, You ll write a bool^l"

The Monster and the Lady 235

She couldn t have surprised me more if she had announced that
her mother had just been arrested for bootlegging. I was horrified.

"Write a book!" I yelled. "How can I write a book? I ve never writ
ten a book in my life. I don t know how to write a book. I wouldn t
know how to start it or what to put in the middle or how to end
it. You re being absolutely ridiculous!"

Merle bristled a little at this. "Anybody can write a book," she
said, "and there s good money in it too. Look at the Bible and the
dictionary they ve been selling those books for years. You can too
write a book anybody can. You simply sit down and write that s
all there is to it."

I was nonplussed. I was not only to write a book but a book that
would compete with the Bible and the dictionary. The argument lasted
far, far into the night.

So I started writing a book. I bought some typewriter paper, oiled
my Royal and started banging away at it.

I banged for days.

Whenever my typewriter stopped, the echo came back from the
Spartan trailer next door. It was either an echo or my neighbor was
writing a book also.

The echo stopped.

I sneaked to the window and peeked out. He had sneaked to his
window and peeked out too. A thin face with a little moustache and
butch haircut was looking out the Spartan. I decided that nobody
with a butch haircut like that could write a book. On second thought
maybe he could maybe the butch haircut helped he might even be
able to give me some tips. I made plans to waylay him on his next trip
to the shower room.

His trailer door banged open and closed. I stepped outside. He had
a towel slung over his shoulder and was headed for the showers.

I gave him the trailerites salute with a tentative "Hi."

236 The Long, Long Trailer

He slowed down and returned the greeting.

"Twiss is my name."
"Jones is mine Jim Jones."

We shook hands. "Writer?" I asked

"Sorta."

"Book?"

"Yeah. You writing one too?"

"Yeah sorta." I fidgeted a little, then asked, "You been at it long?"

"Years!"

My heart sank. So it took years to write a book. I wanted to have
it over with in a couple of days.

Finally I said, "What s the name o your book?"

"From Here To Eternity!

I nodded approval. "That s good. I ve heard Rudy Vallee sing
it."

"My book?" he seemed surprised.

"No," I said. "The song. The Whiffenpoof Song. "

"Oh yeah. That s where I got it. What s the name of your book?"

I was beginning to enjoy this little session. We both sounded like a
couple of authors, although neither one of us had ever had a book
published.

"Mine?" I said, "Oh, I just call it The Long, Long Trailer! I tried
to be modest but I really thought the title was terrific.

"Technical?" he asked.

"No. Just trailers and trailer trips."

"Say that s good! I d like to read some of it."

"This," I thought to myself, "is something like it. This is big time.
Just like a couple of Hemingways talking. He wants to read my book."
Not to be outdone I returned the compliment. "I d like to read some of
yours too."

He agreed to come over to the trailer that very night. We couldn t

The Monster and the Lady 237

go to his., he said. He was baching it and wasn t a very good house
keeper.

He came. We read manuscripts till the trailer rocked with stentorian
oratory. I read our "Culpepper experience" and "backing sequence."
He read his "bugle scene" and "Pearl Harbor." I was shocked. Here
was a real writer. I threw my manuscript in the waste basket. Jim
fished it out and we had a couple of bourbons. He explained that
our books were different. Mine was for laughs his was war stuff. We
had a couple more bourbons and I felt better.

I called in the Korns from next door, snatched the "bugle scene" from
Jim s hands and read it aloud myself. (Jim was a lousy reader and with
my radio training I could really make his words ring.) It was terrific.
We read more chapters. They were great. Here was a real book.
We formed a league for mutual admiration. We bucked each other up.
We wrote like mad right there in the trailer. Sales ran into the
millions. Picture rights brought a king s ransom. Magazines were
screaming for our stuff. We were so successful we retired to the little
joint around the corner and had hamburgers just as it was breaking
daylight.

Three days later came the bombshell. Jim sold his book. To a real
live publisher! For money! Mine wasn t even half finished. Nobody
had even offered to read what I did have finished.

I, an unpublished author, couldn t continue to live right next door to
a man who had really sold a book. Somehow I felt that Jim had double
crossed me. He was unfair. I wrote as hard as he did, and we were
having a lot of fun. Now he had ruined the whole thing by selling
his book.

Our neighbors pointed out Jim to their visitors with swollen pride.
They just pointed at me with, "He s writing too."

Letters from the publisher began arriving. They urged Jim on to
even greater heights. Every chapter he mailed to the publisher brought

238 The Long, Long Trailer

a return letter praising his writing. Jim was knocking himself out,
writing better every day and getting more glowing responses from the
publisher in return.

Whenever the mail arrived, a little knot would gather around Jim s
trailer while he read the letters. I just sat in our trailer sulking; peck
ing; hunting for words that would bring me glowing letters from a
publisher too. I couldn t go on. In spite of the fact Jim bucked me
up and assured me that somebody would publish my book I couldn t
go on. Especially after Merle joined the group listening to Jim s letters,
while I sat alone in the trailer hunting and pecking and sulking.

We got The Monster ready for the road once more, and I got a
butch haircut.

And I continued to write a book this is it.

We hooked on the new awnings rebolted the fernery laid the
new rugs installed the new Dishmaster put the unblistered dolly
wheel in place and we started again.

And I wrote a book.

When the book sees the light of print everybody will be surprised
except Jim Jones, Merle and The Monster. Jim won t because he said
it would be published. Merle won t, because she ordered it. The Mon
ster won t, because he s getting used to the unusual.

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