Читать книгу Roads From the Ashes - Megan Edwards - Страница 8

Chapter 2

A Phoenix Hatches

Trek to Traveland

Before we decided we wanted to acquire one of our own, neither Mark nor I had done much more than peek inside a motorhome. As children, we’d camped in tents with our families. We’d felt superior to people who didn’t like “roughing it,” overly civilized softies who couldn’t be away from television for a weekend and felt compelled to tow their own bathrooms. Never in a million years did we see ourselves as members of the Winnebago crowd.

We still didn’t, but we also didn’t want to hit the road in a tent. If we were going to live on a roll for six months, we wanted a few amenities. Suddenly, we had metamorphosed into the people we’d snickered at. We’d be equipped with television. We’d be hauling our own toilet.

It was a novel idea for us, but Americans have been in love with recreational vehicles since 1929, when the Covered Wagon Company in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, offered the first mass produced travel trailer to the public. By the end of the 1930s, 300 companies were building homes-on-wheels, and the growth continues. Hundreds of thousands of vans, trailers, campers and motorhomes are on the road at any given moment today, and even more fill storage yards and driveways from coast to coast. We wanted only one, but we were daunted at the prospect of finding it. We hardly knew where to begin.

Fortunately, just about every motorhome, camper, and trailer ever built can be found and purchased in southern California. It’s an RV shopper’s Mecca, rivaled only by Florida and Arizona. We decided to begin our search at a gigantic consortium of dealers known as Traveland USA. Its billboard promised hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of units, all in one magnificent location. It was the kind of place we’d heretofore assiduously avoided, but early one Sunday morning, we drove straight to Irvine and parked in the shadow of fourteen Winnebagos.

A guard at an entrance kiosk gave us a map to Traveland that identified all the manufacturers and their locations. Not knowing where else to begin, we went to number one. It was a warm day, and a salesman was lounging in a folding chair outside an office in a trailer. He stretched, rose, and walked toward us.

“Howdy, folks,” he said. “How can I help you this fine, fine morning?”

“We want to buy an RV,” said Mark. “What can you show us?”

The salesman looked at us through narrow eyes, sizing up the down payment we were likely to represent. He steered us in the direction of something called a Jamboree, a boxy-looking vehicle about the length of two sedans. It was white, with corrugated siding and a front end like a pickup truck. We climbed inside, and the salesman invited us to sit down on the settee.

Realizing immediately that we were ignorant “first-time buyers,” the salesman launched into a well-rehearsed 30-minute lecture about recreational vehicles. By the time he wrapped up, we’d learned the difference between a Class “A” (a bus) and a Class “C” (the kind we were sitting in). We knew about GVW (gross vehicle weight) and how important it was to know how much stuff you can load into a vehicle before the axles break. We knew about water tanks and propane tanks, generators and refrigerators, wind shear and suspension, inverters and converters, water pumps and fuel pumps.

While he was talking, I was taking in my surroundings. It was pretty spacious, I thought. I could live in this. There was a bedroom in the back, and another bed over the cab. The galley looked adequate, and the dining table seated four. What more did we need?

Suddenly Mark asked, “Does anybody make an RV with four-wheel drive?”

The salesman shrugged. “Well, actually there is one company that does. It’s expensive, and it has no resale value, so I can’t imagine anybody buying it, but there’s one sitting on the lot here somewhere.”

That did it. We thanked the salesman and said we’d be back if the Jamboree turned out to be the right truck for us. “Whatever you decide, I’d sure like to have a shot at the deal,” he said forlornly as we departed. He sat back down in the folding chair, and we set off to find the four-by-four.

We asked the guard. “Oh, that thing,” he said. “It’s about a hundred yards around that bend to the right. You’ll recognize it when you see it.” We walked down the road and looked at all the vehicles with new eyes. “Class ‘A’,” I said, pointing to a huge bus with a patriotic mural on the side and an enormous satellite dish on the roof. “I can’t see us driving around in anything that conspicuous.”

“Well, I can’t see us driving around in a Jamboree,” said Mark. “It looked nice, but it had a flimsy feel. Did you noticed how far it leaned when we stepped inside? It’s basically made of plywood and fiberglass. Doesn’t anybody build these things like aircraft?”

We rounded the bend and stopped dead in our tracks. “That’s it,” said Mark, “Look at that thing.” I looked. It was huge, it had six enormous tires and a big winch on the front bumper. The body was smooth and streamlined, and five driving lamps each had covers that read “Super Off-Roader.” Mark smiled, and we headed toward the office to find somebody to let us inside.

You Say You Want a Revolution

But here I must digress. I’ve got to issue a warning to all those who say they want a revolution. This was November 10, 1993. The preceding December, I’d turned forty. It hit me like Dorothy’s house hit the witch.

I was morose for days. I went about my daily drill, but I was a rusty tin man, forcing unwilling joints to move in directions they resisted. Life was toil. It wasn’t unbearable, though, and I kept at it. I kept putting on nylons and checking my voice mail.

I told myself I wanted a revolution. I said it silently, but it shrieked in my head. It kept yelling for ten months. For ten months, I kept putting on nylons and checking my voice mail.

Then my house burned down. I got my revolution.

I didn’t have to accept its offer of transformation. I could have put everything back, down to last pair of panty hose. It would have been easier. It would have made lots of people more comfortable.

But how many revolutions do you get in life? I hadn’t had enough to waste one. However it might turn out, I’d turned enough degrees to have a whole new view in front of me.

It seemed monumental, but the fire, it turns out, was just a little baby vortex, a personal whirl that invited me to a new life. I didn’t know as I stepped inside a Super Off-Roader at Traveland that I was on the edge of a Charybdis of global dimensions.

You were, too. We all were. 1994 was the year we heard “Information Superhighway” until we were sick of it. It was the year we got to know Bill Gates, and began tossing “Internet” into casual conversation.

America hit the road to cyberspace in 1994, beginning a revolution we’ve only begun to understand. It envelopes the world, and we can’t ignore it. If we keep putting on nylons and checking voice mail, we’ll be left in the dust.

The five years we’ve spent letting America’s highways unroll underneath our wheels are the same five years Americans have moved into virtual realms. We’ve watched it happen in Eastern Oregon, northern Idaho, southern Texas, the Florida keys. No one’s driven a golden spike, but it’s no less monumental than the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

But enough. Please join us as we step inside the Super Off-Roader. Take a look at the ultra-macho truck we decided to call home for the six months that never ended. It’s about to embark on a journey you’ve been on, too.

We caught the saleswoman just as she was about to leave. She got back out of her car, unlocked her office, and took the key to the Super Off-Roader off a hook on a peg board. We walked back out to the monster, and she unlocked the coach door.

As the door opened, two steps magically slid out from under the body and clicked into place. To anyone who knows anything about motorhomes, this would come as small surprise. To us, it was one more new thing, and I have to say, it made the Super Off-Roader seem terrifically cutting edge. We stepped up and inside.

“Take your time looking around,” called the saleswoman from outside. “I’m going back to the office to get a video to show you. I’ll be right back.” The door clicked shut with satisfying heft. “This is more like it,” said Mark.

To the right of the door was a bleached oak panel of electronic entertainment devices, including a television, a CD changer and a video player. A table flanked by two benches faced us, and to our left was the galley. Over the cab was a bunk that looked big enough for two. The cab itself held four captain’s chairs.

A hallway led to the back room, which housed a table and a wrap-around sofa against three walls. All in all, the Super Off-Roader looked like a cross between a mobile military command post and a party wagon. It was the ultimate in manliness, the sort of rig guys dream about taking their buddies hunting in, no women allowed.

I sat down at the table, trying the thing on for style. It felt like a status symbol. It felt like a machine designed for the same men who buy red convertibles and marry trophy wives, it was a quantum leap beyond the bus-like monster with the satellite dish and the patriotic mural. “This thing defines conspicuous consumption,” I thought to myself, “And it positively screams Southern California.”

It was also built like an aircraft. The carpeted walls sloped in at the top, and the cabinets were cut to fit. Nothing was corrugated. Nothing was fiberboard. “Sleek” says it the best.

The saleswoman returned with the video. She slid it into the video player and said, “Now you can see the Trailblazer in action.” The Trailblazer. Now we knew its name, and for the next ten minutes we watched two men take a similar machine over boulders and across streams to music that sounded like a cross between “Rawhide” and “Chariots of Fire.”

When it was over, Mark asked the saleswoman a bunch of questions, but I knew we weren’t going to be doing any more shopping. 99.99% of motor homes built in America are designed with 60-ish couples in mind. They’re suburban split-levels squeezed and shrunk to fit inside a rectangle eight feet wide and 30 feet long. They’ve got upholstered window treatments, matching throw pillows, and built-in spice racks.

The Trailblazer was more like a ski hut reduced to fit on a one-ton Ford truck chassis, which of course didn’t match our profile, either. But Corey, the saleswoman, had divulged another piece of information in passing. “You can follow your Trailblazer from chassis to completion,” she’d said. “We can customize the interior for you.”

“You mean we can have an office in the back?” asked Mark, “Instead of a party room?”

“I can’t see why not,” said Corey, “But you might want to visit our factory and talk to the designers.”

We set a time to meet at the Revcon factory in Irvine, and stepped back outside the Trailblazer.

“It’s huge,” I said.

“I guess we need to know how much it costs,” said Mark.

“$75,000,” said Corey.

We thanked her and walked back toward the gate. $75,000 was three times more than we’d thought about spending. The guy with the Jamboree had been right on target when he’d sized us up.

“We’ll go see the factory, and then we can decide,” said Mark, but it was too late. We both knew it. We’d finished shopping, even though we’d hardly begun. We’d picked our wheels, and now we had a new challenge: figuring out how to pay for them when our income was about to drop by 90%.

Lunch with the Suits

Money. We’re all brought up to plan our lives around how much we have, how much we expect to have, and how afraid we are of not having enough. I’d always lived well within my means. I had a couple of credit cards, but I always paid them off every month. I’d used them as an easy way of buying stuff, a way to avoid writing checks or carrying cash. The only big debt I’d ever incurred was a house loan.

The fire burned up my good habits along with my stuff. When I saw how easily the things I’d always considered permanent metamorphosed into smoke and ash, it shook all my assumptions. I’d always known anything could happen, but now I’d experienced it. There’s a difference.

Two days after the fire, I put on my one remaining business outfit, the one that had escaped destruction by being at the dry cleaners. I went to work, accomplished nothing, and then decided to have lunch at the University Club.

The University Club is a former old boys’ bastion I had joined a couple of years before. It was a good place for quiet lunches with business associates, and a growing number of female members was lightening its heavily masculine atmosphere. Even so, when I walked in the door, the round members’ table in the center of the room was occupied by a phalanx of men. Every one of them had twenty years on me.

The week before, I would have looked for another table. I would have eaten alone rather than sit surrounded by suits. They’d always intimidated me. Today, as I stood in the doorway, I found myself looking at them and asking, “What have I got to lose?” It almost made me laugh out loud when I realized I’d never been so entitled to answer, “Nothing!” I walked right over to the table full of men and sat down. They looked surprised, but they all murmured hello.

They went back to talking about the fire, which was the only topic of conversation all over Pasadena. None of them had been affected, and they were wondering what was going on up in the hills. “It’s still burning,” I said. “My house went two days ago.” The conversation stopped. The whole table looked at me blankly. I was their first concrete example of burnout, and it silenced them. “It was all gone in a couple of hours,” I said. “Just about the only things that survived were the cars we left in.” They didn’t know what to say. They were all busy imagining what they’d be doing if their houses had burned down less than 48 hours before. They were having a tough time.

“I came here for lunch,” I said, “Because I couldn’t go home.” I laughed, and they stared at me again. That’s when it hit me. They were scared. They thought that losing all their stuff was the worst thing that could happen to them. They’d spent a lifetime piling it up and guarding it. They couldn’t imagine what it was like to have it all snatched away, just like that, poof!

And then another thought struck me. They were supposed to be the powerful ones, the ones who intimidated the likes of me. But now they looked like slaves to the pursuit of security. I felt free. I smiled sweetly at them as they remained speechless. I think I spoiled their lunch.

Somehow, the fire had singed my soul. It ignited a thousand cliches with new meaning. If not now, when? Life’s not a dress rehearsal. Be here, now. Follow your dreams. Climb every mountain. What are you waiting for? What have you got to lose? Just do it!

They were all shouting at me as we drove away from Traveland wondering how in the world we could buy a $75,000 truck. “Just do it!” drowned all rational doubts, and the next morning, we drove to Irvine to take a look at the Revcon factory.

Bastard Hunting

Revcon was housed in an industrial park, one of the thousands that have taken root in Orange County where citrus groves used to thrive. Anonymous on the exterior, they can surprise you with wonders on the inside. I once went into one that was a sculptor’s studio, and another that was full of trombones, tubas, and a fascinating fellow who repaired them. Outside, they’re urban sprawl. Inside, they’re secret entrepreneurial kingdoms.

Revcon’s operation qualified as an industrial park wonder. Inside a large garage-like space were parked three Trailblazers in various states of completion. While our eyes were adjusting to the light, a walrus of a man lumbered over to greet us. Trotting along next to him was a little terrier of a sidekick.

“Welcome to Revcon,” said the big one. “I’m Bob.” We introduced ourselves. “And this is Wes,” he said, elbowing his companion. “Wes does a lot of our design work.” Wes smiled nervously, and we followed both of them inside the factory.

It smelled like glue, and the rat-tat-tat of power hammers and staple guns echoed. “I’ll show you the assembly line first,” said Bob. He had Mark by the elbow. Wes flanked him. I walked behind. He steered Mark toward the chassis of a one-ton Ford pick-up truck. “This is what we start with,” he said. “And actually, we have to buy the whole truck and strip it down. Ford won’t sell us just the chassis. Anyway, we stretch the frame, and then we build the coach.”

We walked by the three Trailblazers that had progressed to the point of having bodies, and we went inside the last one. Two workmen were installing light fixtures. Bob was still talking, and Wes was still laughing nervously, but I’d stopped listening. I was moving in, if only mentally.

Then I heard Bob say, “They use them to hunt bastards,” and I was again all ears. “Yeah, Saudi Arabian princes buy these things and take them out into the desert to pursue their favorite pastime, bastard hunting.” He was loving our stunned looks, and he paused dramatically. “Bastards are these big birds they like to shoot.” Oh. Bustards. I didn’t bother telling him he had his vowel wrong. Without his malapropism, Bob would have been no fun at all.

By the time Bob escorted Mark into the front office and allowed me to edge in, too, before closing the door, I had formed some opinions. The first was that for Bob, cornering a potential customer in his office was as unusual as catching a leprechaun in a rat trap. The second was that Revcon was more than it appeared to be. Beyond the factory floor was a warren of offices full of boxes, telephones, mismatched furniture, and a dozen or so aimless young men wearing ties. People were either moving in, moving out, or incredibly disorganized. It was a mystery, along with the fact that Bob’s office appeared to belong to someone else, someone with a German name.

In any event, Trailblazers were definitely being built, and Bob was bursting to sell us one. The price was $75,000, just as Corey the saleswoman had said. There was no negotiation. That was the price. We could follow our truck from chassis to completion. In fact, the chassis we’d just seen would be ours. And yes, they’d work with us to create an office in the back in place of a bedroom, and they’d wire in any equipment we wanted, like a CB radio, a cellular telephone, whatever. So do you want it? Please sign here. By the time we were done, I felt as though Bob had been sitting on me for three hours.

In the end, we signed, because, as I’ve said before, our good sense had been burned up in the fire. We walked back out to the factory to look at our chassis, which was supposed to become Coach Number 115 within six weeks. We didn’t know it then, but it was a lucky thing for us that it took more like twelve. The extra time came in handy for scraping together $75,000.

Beyond the Cutting Edge

Perhaps at this point I should explain why we were more interested in offices than bedrooms. Even though we had only a vague notion about exactly why we were hitting the road at all, one component of the fog was work.

I was a fledgling freelance writer and newspaper columnist. My first column had been published the week before the fire, and I was determined to sell my editor on the idea that I would still file the thing regularly, whether I was in Outer Boondocks, Alaska, Off The Map, Maine, or Times Square. Nobody would be able to tell I wasn’t still firmly planted in Pasadena, California, including him. I swore to it, so he said he’d give it a try. It helped that he was already heavily into computers and electronic communication. It also helped that I had a good track record with deadlines. I hadn’t even missed the one that arrived two days after the fire, and that accomplishment had left a lasting impression.

So it was really that column, for which I was paid the princely sum of $25 a week, that led to our acquiring a mobile office equipped with $15,000 worth of electronic gadgets. To appreciate just how cutting-edge we were, think back to before “AOL” was only a typo for “AWOL,” like 1993.

It was a day when few could understand why anyone would want to access the Internet by cellular telephone. Heck, it was a day when few had more than a vague idea about what the Internet was. I was one. I read a bunch of stuff, and still couldn’t quite understand about onramps and service providers. I’d think I was beginning to catch on, but then I’d run into a POP, SLIP, or a BMP, and get stuck.

But 1993 was the year America Online began paving the continent with “free” disks. Every man, woman and child in the country received these disks on a regular basis. Every magazine on every newsstand had AOL disks stuck between alternating pages. You could walk through cemeteries and find one carefully propped against each headstone. Bars used them for coasters, contractors used them for insulation, and everybody used them for doorstops. There were so many AOL free disks thrown into New York trash cans that the landfill at Freshkill was closed two years ahead of schedule. When AOL stopped sending them out, the U.S. Postal Service laid off two thousand workers. Okay, okay, I’ve overstated things a little. But it is true that I had three AOL disks before I owned a computer to try them on, and my friend’s dog had two.

Fortunately, I knew a computer consultant who was fluent in both English and Nerd. We told him what we wanted to do, and he found all the stuff to do it. Then he taught us how to use it, all in perfect, uncondescending English.

Here’s what we got, and in January, 1994, it was bleeding edge. The laptop was a Zenith Data Systems 486 with a color monitor and a 502-megabyte hard disk. It had a slot on one side into which you could stick a PCMCIA “credit card” modem. The one I got boasted a baud rate of 14,400 which was twice as fast as most people’s regular modems at the time. I also got a separate box that could read CD-Rom disks, a SCSI cable to hook it to the computer, a Hewlett-Packard portable ink jet printer, and a black case to hold everything, including a snake nest of cables and assorted transformers, batteries and power packs.

So big deal. 1994 was the year thousands and thousands of people were diving into computerland with open checkbooks. Everything I had so far was new, but hardly unique.

Then we got the black box. It arrived with no instructions, but its manufacturers claimed it would make a cellular telephone talk to a modem. The black box was our key to mobility, but it was a silent enigma. Our computer consultant knew nothing about it. I called the customer service number on the box it arrived in. The person who answered the phone knew nothing about it. I’d arrived at the edge of charted territory, and I was on my own.