gmc motorhome 1973 (2)

August 22, 2019

On RV Names

In the course of writing my kink modern Western, I began compiling the names of the older, weathered, 70s-80s-early 90s RVs I would see while driving around Oregon because these RVs and their inhabitants figured prominently in the novel.

My list has now topped 50 and I keep compiling because these rigs keep coming out of the woodwork in this ongoing new American diaspora. Surely you’ve seen it.

I always have a notebook open on the passenger seat and record the better names as I drive.

My only wish is I had a photographer riding shotgun with me. What a photo essay this would make! Shooting these rigs while they’re on the move and often falling apart. Not to mention the graphic design styles to document, styles created before the Digital Age.

The names of current RVs have changed dramatically since the 70s-80s-early 90s and I am still trying to figure out why. There is a novel in this big change but I won’ write it. It’s well beyond my ability as a writer. Someone else take it up.

Below are some the mores arresting names of the older models:

Spirit of America

Sprinter

Golden Falcon

Proud Eagle

The Executive (The model Bob Dylan drove on The Rolling Thunder Revue Tour! Watch the new Netflix doc on this remarkable event and see BOB DRIVE IT.)

The Nomad

The Adventurer

The Ambassador

The Pioneer

Escape

The Reflection

The Hornet

The Bounder

Freedom

Brave

Clark Cortez (Steve McQueen owned one!)

Searcher

Observer

The Seeker

Conquest

Midas (I don’t get this one at all.)

Endeavor

Argosy

The Prince

There are more, of course. I often wonder what went into the naming of these rigs. They represent so many metaphors and dreams and aspirations, some ironical, some irony-free.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

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In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

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Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

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In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.