I was blessed to have just one rainy day during the three weeks I was on the initial run in my Blue Bird Ford Transit Van. I drove 6,194 miles to gather nearly 20 stories for the book that is tentatively titled “The Camper Book,” although my small straw poll preferred “Man v.s. Van.” That ringside name became clear after I navigated foggy switchbacks and mountains in the middle of a Saturday night to settle at 8,000 feet in the Heart Bar state campground in the San Bernardino (Ca.) National Forest.
I nicked up my van for the first time trying to back in a boomerang gravel driveway in the dense, dark woods. One thing I learned about Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park campgrounds: I love their pull throughs. I’ve rented large RV’s with friends, but trying to back in a 9 x 20′ camper van alone at night is a daunting experience.
Higher Ground, 6/12/16 (Dave Hoekstra photo)
I did not see the sun set in the San Bernardino mountains, where gold was discovered in 1855.
But I was swept up in summer sunsets at Albuquerque, N.M., Pismo Beach, Ca., Grand Forks, B.C. Canada, Coeur, d’ Alene, Id., Missoula Mt., and at a Clear Lake, Ia. truck stop on the way home. Iowa sunsets are often my favorite. The green linear landscape creates a stage where the promise of tomorrow is certain.
My trip was remarkable and it will take me the rest of the summer for it to settle in. A wealth of new ideas are floating around my head like snowflakes in a dime store globe.
I moved in and out of Route 66, and talked to a young couple restoring an RV park along the Mother Road in Carhage, Mo. I took a Cadillac limousine from my Amarillo Ranch RV Park to the Big Texan Steak Ranch. I saw Gregg Arnold’s Easter Island tiki outside of Kingman, Az., drove the van on Pismo Beach and made a personal San Joquain Valley connection between between John Steinbeck (“Travels With Charley”) and Merle Haggard (“Big City.”)
Calling an audible, I drove the silent but majestic Trans Canada Highway through British Columbia, visited Montana for the first time where I got a charge of the school teacher and her retired sheriff husband who shared a teardrop trailer in Missoula. I loved hearing a sanctioned David Letterman look alike play old timey folk music at a KOA Kampground in Great Falls. I saw a rainbow cross the highway outside of Tacoma, Wash.
I made a wish on a shooting star.
Mrs. Dave Nicholson with her husband’s crow decoy for their teardrop camper, early morning 6/22/16, Missoula, Mt.
Once the trip found its rhythm I also witnessed the ribbon that is attractive to foreign travelers. It is the independent ribbon that wraps us up as a diverse and welcoming country. I saw lots of bridges. I did not see walls.
It takes time and consideration to make this ribbon, I tried to be nice to people and to be honest it took a while to drop my cynical Chicago filter. I didn’t see many people on cell phones or even with the younger people among the camper and food trucks of Portland, Ore. Upon my return to Chicago, there they were, glowing pings in the lost night.
My photographer Jon Sall was a great tonic for the project. He made some tremendous photographs. His patience is important in the camping world. He’s more of a tent camper, but even within the warmth of a camper van I had to make a mental checklist of everything I needed to carry along before wandering off to the community bathroom. You just don’t ask a stranger if you could borrow their towel.
Jon was invaluable in technical support, especially in our first night out at a KOA outside of St. Louis where we lost power, regained power and then couldn’t turn off the van’s ceiling lights. I was illuminated by buyer’s remorse.
I have camped before and I knew that campgrounds are about flexibility, unplugging and the fluidity of community. Neighbors are here today and gone tomorrow. People were good and honest, especially when I blew fuses while running the air conditioning.
I asked new friends to describe kindness and how to pay it forward. I requested they share their thoughts on a slip of paper and drop it in a clear plastic jar. I won’t read many of their gestures until later in the project for an eventual sidebar in the book.
Jon Sall photo
Dozens of people across the country smiled at my friend Tony Fitzpatrick’s birds on the exterior of the van. I saw people smile in campgrounds, in parking lots, along blacktop cracks. Smiling faces made me feel good and Tony will like that because he is the happiest White Sox fan I know this side of Charley Krebs.
Last Sunday I walked around the Iowa truck stop towards the end of the trip. All I heard was the sound of grinding brakes.
I leaned back on the blue hood of my dusty van and watched the sun fade away.
I had nowhere to go. Really. Does routine define place?
I thought about ex- girl friends and considered traveling with the spirit of my parents and their antique Mr. & Mrs. Blue Birds perched at the desk of my van. Birds get closer as you get older.
Moments like this are why I need to be alone. I felt my parents sacrifices in not being able to take long vacations while raising two sons. Perhaps I am still shaded by their back to back passings last year. I did the best I could. Suddenly a metaphor flew across the orange sun as it inched closer to the pure earth.
COEUR d’ ALENE, ID.—Over the weekend I was driving south on 395 from the Canadian border along the Kettle River in northern Washington.
I saw a trailer with two empty lawn chairs side by side.
The chairs overlooked a ravine filled with lush pine trees and a distant river that twisted like a question mark. I determined this scene to be romantic.
I pulled over to take a picture. It was around 10 in the morning and there was a jig to my rig after a nice Friday night meal of trout and rice and a good night’s sleep in Grand Forks, B.C.
As I approached the van from at least 30 feet away, an elderly, heavy set woman in a scraggly nightgown peered out through the lean front door. She was tough. She inquired about my intentions. I didn’t have any fancy camera equipment, just my cell phone. The space was open and lush, void of any “No Trespassing” signs.
Suddenly a large man emerged behind the woman. He wore a scraggly tee-shirt and had the chiseled face of Garrison Keillor gone bad. He looked over her shoulder, looked me in the eye and shouted,
“You keep taking pictures and I’ll blow your head off!”
This is the sense of place I’m getting at as I travel around America for my next book: Here was a remote stretch of highway in rural Washington, two people tightly wound together and they’ve drawn a line around their trailer. This is their section of the world.
Maybe this is how you react when you feel the world closing in on you.
It has been a grueling couple of weeks and this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and collect my thoughts. I’m at the Coeur d’Alene RV Resort, which is actually in Post Falls, Id.—between Spokane, Wash and Coeur d’ Alene (named after a Native American tribe who were skilled traders, i.e. heart of an awl.)
Coeur d’ Alene RV Resort, 6/20/16 (D. Hoekstra photo)
It’s a beautiful night and the Summer Solstice skies are crisp and blue. I’m getting a kick out of people smiling at Tony Fitzpatrick’s birds on my van Blue Bird, although tonight some new friends I met remembered my ride as “the one that looks like an ice cream truck.”
I went thrifting in Coeur d’ Alene on Sunday afternoon. I have been to Sandpoint, Id. but only knew of Coeur d’ Alene from an Iris DeMent song.
Lake Coeur d’ Alene is beautiful but the vibe was too dressy and upscale for my tastes. The town felt like Traverse City on steroids. So tonight I opted to stay in the camper van.
Unplugging the van and locking down stuff just run an errand gets to be cumbersome. So I passed on some of Coeur d’ Alene’s fine restaurants and walked over to a nearby Wal-Mart to fetch a frozen dinner and Diet Mountain Dew.
I’ve never been much of a Wal-Mart guy but now I know why they are such a big deal with wheel people. I’m to the point now where I’m conditioned to buy sidebar stuff for my van every time I walk into a Wal-Mart.
On this visit I purchased a stapler for only $2.79, a George Strait CD for $11 and a tiny miner’s head lamp I used to laugh at when I went tent camping with my ex-girl friend. Now I have a tiny miner’s head lamp and it only set me back a dollar.
As the light fades away I find myself going to bed earlier than I do in Chicago. I brought along lots of stuff to read and picked up Willy Vlautin’s “Northline” at Powell’s Books in Portland. Vlautin’s crooked and elegant “Lean on Pete” is one of the best road books I’ve read in recent years. But after long days of driving, fiddling with my van’s inverter and setting up interviews, I haven’t had much time to read.
Of course I brought John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley (In Search of America)” along for my trip. I love the appointed heart and plain speak of that book and the stop at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Ca is one of the highlights of the initial stretch of my research trip. I don’t want to get to deep in my re-read of Steinbeck’s 1960 travelogue because I want to maintain the clarity of my voice.
Inside John Steinbeck’s camper van, 6/13/16 . I don’t have flowers. (Jon Sall photo)
But I am forever indebted to museum director Susan Shillinglaw for granting us rare access inside Steinbeck’s beloved Rocinante camper van. Photo journalist Jon Sall made some great Rocinante pictures and shot video. My interview with Susan will air this Saturday night on Nocturnal Journal, WGN-720 AM in Chicago.
Steinbeck set out on his journey to listen to the rhythm of speech in America. He wanted to listen. He thought he was old but he was hungry to hear new ideas. Although Steinbeck was a fan of television and radio, he believed the rapid development of communication was destroying regionalism.
As I learned very clearly over the weekend, each place can still have its space in America. All you have to do is look someone in the eye and listen.
WARSAW, Ind.—The meaningful solitude of driving reaches a higher level by taking a trip in a camper van. I don’t mean an RV where you bring along friends and family, or even hitching up with an Airstream trailer. I mean a small camper van: where you are alone as a question mark, one bed, a workspace, a fridge and Greg Brown music about backroads and broken hearts.
And that’s where I’m going.
While driving around America for the past 30 years I’ve learned how the real American pastime feeds the imagination. Reflections in the campground river are unfiltered. Driving puts dreams in motion.
Vicki Shepherd and her younger brother Scott Wiley are examples of this pursuit of happiness.
I connected with Vicki through her whimsical art work of camper vans and RVs on a dark January afternoon. As I was researching my next book I saw a stack of her prints in the corner of the gift shop of the RV Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Ind.
I loved the bright colors and escapist nature of her self-taught work. Vicki draws on art paper with ink markers and sharpies. I bought a print of 16 campers on dual Ferris wheels. A carnival sign advertised “CAMPER RIDES.” I had to find out more about her. Like twinkling neon around a gloomy corner, I made an authentic discovery.
Vicki, Scott and Vicki’s husband Jeff Shepherd purchase old camper vans and trailers and restore them.
They call this “Camper Pickin’.”
Vicki and her brother Scott Wiley (D. Hoekstra photo, March, 2016)
This summer and fall I’ll be driving around America in my 20’ by 8’ Ford Transit conversion van. Ford did a similar job for the “American Pickers” television show from the new Ford plant in Kansas City, Mo.
Vicki will custom design the inside of any van, even mine. In the past, she has done baseball themes and Jimmy Buffett influenced campers.
Scott generally restores the exterior, although they also work separately on found vans. One of their jobs became a concession stand at the University of Notre Dame. Another restored camper is part of a Bed and Breakfast in Georgia. A Michigan photographer bought a reborn 1956 Vacationette to use as a studio.
Vicki has drawn 50 van/RV related pictures. She makes van drawings for friends, family and did one for Camping World. Vicki has restored about 55 camper vans and trailers. I’m asking her to do a subtle tiki motif for my van interior. Bamboo brings good luck.
During the late 1960s Vicki was a dancer (not a stripper) at the Cat’s Meow in Fort Wayne. Ind. In sort of a Hooserized version of the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, she danced in white go-go boots along side music greats like Fats Domino, Brasil 66 and Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders. Little Richard headlined the downtown Fort Wayne club from April 21-26, 1969.
The Cat’s Meow was an upscale club with catwalks and an illuminated dance floor. In her later years, Vicki was a hospice nurse, so I guess that’s go-go to gone-gone. From 1984 to 1985 her brother was team chaplain for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. This is one remarkable family.
Vicki during her Cat’s Meow years (Courtesy of Scott Wiley)
Their father Don Wiley was an industrial engineer who was plant manager at Magnavox electronics in Fort Wayne. He was best friends with Fort Wayne legend Philo Farnsworth, who invented the television system.
“The first thing I ever played with was a slide rule,” Vicki cracked during a March afternoon conversation at Scott’s log home in Warsaw. “I took it out of Dad’s pocket.”
Their mother Maxine Wiley was a Justice of the Peace in Auburn, Ind. who also owned the Carnaby Square Dance Club in Warsaw, about 38 miles east of Fort Wayne. During the 1960s the Chicago-based Buckinghams played Carnaby Square.
Vicki’s memories of Carnaby Square
The kids lived large in Indiana’s wide open spaces.
“In 1995 there was a resort park down by Silver Lake,” Vicki said. “Friend of my husband’s. He had these old trailers, 1920s, 30s and 40s. Nobody wanted them. He couldn’t get lot rent. He said, ‘How bout if I give you the trailer, you fix it up, sell it, and that way I’ll get the rent.’ None of this was popular then. If I had known then what I know now, I would have bought every one of them.”
Vicki, Scott and Jeff restored them and sold them for $2,000 or $3,000.
She pointed out, “These weren’t canned hams (tiny trailers hitched to a truck.) They were things like Lucy and Ricky’s (1954 hit comedy) ‘Long, Long Trailer’.”
What is home? Where is sense of place? French psychoanalyst Oliver Marc spoke of how early man took possession of space. He wrote, “It is through self-expression that man sets out on the road back to unity. It is a road that passes through the exterior to reach interior unity.”
The quest is the most exciting part of Vicki and Scott’s self-expression.
“There’s a 1958 Mallard I’m trying to get,” Vicki said. “It’s a hoarder’s house. I mean it’s in ‘Deliverance’ down there by (rural) Laketon. I go up to the door. Jeff wouldn’t even get out of the car–he’s a chicken. Dogs are barking and there’s these great big geese. I didn’t know they stretched their necks way out like that. Garbage bags everywhere. They had their Venetian Blinds on the outside of their house! They didn’t answer. I left a note. I’ve been back there three times.”
One of the family’s cute restorations
Vicki is retired and Scott has a full time job as Director of Development at Lakeland Christian Academy. His wife Debra is a 2nd grade teacher at the school and their daughter Baylee is a 10th grader at the school.
Scott keeps a vintage 1963 Trailerorboat” on his back porch that overlooks a small river and wooded area where blue heron, deer and a bald eagle can be seen. “There were only 18 Trailerorboats made,” he said. “It’s a little camper with a boat molded into the top. You take the top off when you arrive at the campground and use it as a boat.”
Trailer-or-boat—get it?
The Trailerorboat (Courtesy of Scott Wiley)
Scott’ collection also included the Camp’OTel (“For people who like going, not towing”), which he found, restored and sold. “It went on the top of your car,” he said. “It folded out into a place to sleep, shower, it had a picnic table built in, a gas stove and a sink too. It even had a little front porch.” The Camp O’ Tel was manufactured in the mid-1960s in Fort Worth, Tx. An advertisement ensures, “Fits on 98 per cent of all cars…A woman can set it up.“
Camp O’ Tel. Some construction needed.
Vicki, 70, recruited her brother who previously restored cars and motorcycles.
Scott’s showcase item is a 1964 Ford Fairlane four door called “The Spaceliner,” where he removed the top and added sleek white bucket seat and dual bubble tops.
“Campers are fun and cute,” said Scott, 55. “When we started getting into it people had no idea they were collectibles. We’d knock on doors and people would say, ‘If you can get that hunk of junk out of here, you can have it.’ People would give them to us. Or, we would get a camper for $200, put another $100 into it, clean it up and sell it for $3,000. It was a great profit margin. Now, it’s becoming real popular. People are into tiny living.”
Scott Wiley’s concept for my van (Courtesy of Scott Wiley)
Vicki said that 90 percent of the 55 campers she has restored were made in the Elkhart area, an hour north of Warsaw.
Scott explained, “A lot of cars were made in Northern Indiana. (The Detroit Pistons began in 1941 as the Fort Wayne Zoller Pistons before moving to the Motor City in 1957.) Because of tax breaks it was cheaper to build stuff in Indiana.”
I learned that 85 per cent of America’s RVs are manufactured in the Elkhart area.
Vicki and Dave Hoekstra lost in The Spaceliner (Photo by Scott Wiley)
Scott Wiley attended Spring Arbor College in Jackson, Mich. where he majored in Business Administration and Sports Administration. During his senior year in 1984, he obtained an internship with the Pistons. Scott’s first job was editing highlight reels for halftime shows.
“I got to be friends with (Pistons center) Kent Benson,” he said. “Kent was a Christian, I was a Christian. When I was with the Pistons it was Kent, Isiah Thomas and Ray Tolbert–all Indiana graduates. Bill Laimbeer and Kelly Tripucka were from Notre Dame. I felt at home and they were all my age. I got to know Larry Bird. His point guard at Indiana State was Steve Reed. They called him ‘The Bird Feeder’ and he was our neighbor here in Warsaw. But it was Kent who asked me to be chaplain.”
Sports lines run deep with Vicki and Scott. Their mother was a big Chicago Cubs fan. Their uncle Everett “Deacon” Scott played in 1,307 consecutive major league games, a streak later broken by Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, Jr. Everett Scott broke into the major leagues in 1914 with the Boston Red Sox when Babe Ruth was a fellow rookie teammate. Everett’s brother Walter Scott played for the St. Louis Browns.
“Everett’s roommate was Babe Ruth,” Vicki said. “I have the rocker that Babe Ruth rocked my Mom in.” Jeff added, “We had two (1923 Yankee World Champion) baseballs a long time ago. One was lost and never found.”
Vicki added, “We had another ball and it went down the storm sewer in Auburn. Uncle Skippy was playing with it.”
Uncle Skippy lived for the moment, just as you do in a camper van.
When Mom Wiley was seven years old the Bambino gave her a necklace during a visit to Auburn. Scott recalled, “When her brother Skippy began dating, he gave it to his girlfriend!”
With an sigh, Vicki continued, “Now Uncle Everett suffered from carbuncles. Of all the things to suffer from. Carbuncles are like cysts. We in the family don’t call them boils. He had a big zit on his ear.”
Everett Scott was also an accomplished bowler, racking up 50 perfect games. Scott pointed out, “With a two finger bowling ball.” After Everett retired from baseball he opened Scott’s Bowling Alley in Fort Wayne. He sold that bowling alley to build Northcrest Lanes, in Fort Wayne, which in the 1950s was the biggest bowling alley in Indiana.
Everett died in November, 1960 in Fort Wayne. He was 67 years old.
“Now this may be interesting to you, Dave,” Vicki said. “He had a Sealy Posturepedic mattress in his casket. And a satin robe. It scared the tar out of me when I saw him.”
Scott said, “Evidently he wanted to be comfortable.”
Evidently interior design is also part of this family’s DNA.
Vicki and Jeff Shepherd. I told him he reminded me of country singer Billy Joe Shaver.
The camping world calls interior van decorating “Glamping.” Vicki’s children Kip, Matt and Katrina also help out with camper design. Husband Jeff assists with woodwork.
Vicki admitted, “Some glamping is so over done and tacky. I do things with Hawaiian lights. Bamboo on the counter tops. I don’t do wallpaper unless I have to. If it looks good I keep what’s inside. I don’t keep the campers. Everybody thinks I’m this huge camper.
