In the course of writing about the crisis of Oregon homelessness and living for three years in a 1978 Minnie Winnie Winnebago RV (with an 8-track player!), I began compiling the names of the older, weathered, derelict 70s-80s-early 90s RVs, trailers and fifth wheels I encountered.
Why? I have no idea. I just started one morning with The Flair (possibly because of its outrageous logo of a silhouetted buxom woman with wings!) and my list has now topped 50. I keep compiling because these rigs keep coming in and out of the woodwork and are some of the most visible, weird and utterly impossible sights of the homeless crisis, the very antithesis of what the Conestoga wagons were to the Oregon Trail and the hope of starting over and starting something better. (Of course, it’s not often mentioned by historians that many immigrants who made it over the Oregon Trail eventually gave up and returned East, so there is a precedent for quitting out here, but the reasons for quitting these days are vastly different, and currently under investigation in this writing project.)
Surely you’ve seen these battered and bruised rigs everywhere. In fact, not too long ago, I saw a 50-year-old trailer where the owner had mounted real Conestoga wagon wheels over real rubber tires so it appeared he was driving a covered wagon. They spun like pinwheels as he drove. I did a double take on that sight and figured it was a master artist or satirist at work. I see that kind of sly commentary all the time with the homeless, as if they are showing us something. Think the bust of the Founding Father, the television antenna, the pool table, the Lazy Boy recliners stacked high on pallets like thrones, the decorated Christmas trees in July, the blow torching of crawdads for supper, and the wagon wheels. Bob Dylan said life was “but a joke,” wrote a song called “Jokerman” and one about being stuck inside a mobile home and maybe someone believed him.
Is the homeless crisis one big fat grotesque and squalid joke on stereotypical American life that doesn’t have a scrap of humor in it? Jokes don’t have to be funny, you know? Check out the joke of real democracy in American life.
Back to RVs. I consider myself an expert on them and know one day I will put this specialized knowledge to good use.
Never in a million years did the manufactures of these vehicles ever think their products would end up being the last gasp domicile for so many beleaguered, blasted Americans. I must say, some were built pretty damn well (mine was union made!) to withstand the wear and tear of year-around living, something the older models were never originally constructed for. (Now they are, with absurd luxuries, but who can afford one?)
The names of current fancy RVs have changed dramatically since the 70s-80s-early 90s and I am still trying to figure out why. There’s a novel in this jarring change but I won’ write it. It’s well beyond my ability as a writer.
Below are some the mores arresting names of the older models:
Spirit of America
Sprinter
Golden Falcon
Proud Eagle
The Executive
The Nomad
The Adventurer
The Ambassador
The Pioneer
Escape
The Prowler
The Vixen (!)
The Reflection
The Hornet
The Bounder
The Chalet
Freedom
Brave
Searcher
Observer
The Seeker
Conquest
Midas
Endeavor
Argosy
The Prince
The Defender
The Vanguard
Now, contrast those great names with the names for the newer models: Ultra Maxx, Super Lite, Intent, Attitude, Voltage, Fuzion, Elite, Magnitude, Momentum, Vegas, Era (Era?)
Somewhere along the way, RV names stopped being existentially-themed, aspirational, and became banal or stupidly contrived with misspellings to boot. Think The Seeker from the 1970s versus Nite Hawk today. Think Bob Dylan who toured in The Executive on the Rolling Thunder Revue versus the Instagram fantasy of the Van Life. Think Steve McQueen who drove a Clark Cortez (same model that transported Apollo era astronauts to the rockets!) with 40-foot mobile palaces of pleasure used to tailgate at corporate university football games.
Why the big change? Who knows? But there is a novel in the change. It probably has something to do with the general dumbing down and branding up of Americans in recent decades.
During the New American Diaspora currently unfolding, I’ve taken to inventing new names for the battered RVs that might better reflect our strange times and suggest a fresh way of existential thinking for the millions of Americans gripped by panic, poverty, apathy, addiction, resignation, defiance, insanity and anger who somehow ended up living stateless and mobile or shipwrecked in RVs, trailers or fifth wheels. How these people came to own these vehicles is one of the great mysteries of the homeless crisis and something I’ve always wanted to research. All I have to do is ask.
Some Suggested New Names for Older RVs in Contemporary America
The Shitshow Express
Meth Wagon
Done
Take this Country and Shove It
Ronald Reagan Did This to Me
Loser
Loser Deluxe Extra Lite
Born Not to Run
Long May I Never Run
Let’s Get Lost (Chet Baker Junkie Special)
The Malaise
The Listless
The Plague (Camus Edition)
Checking Out
God is Real and Dead
Booze is my Co-Pilot
Not On the Road
Pills and Stripes Forever
Nirvana Or Bust
The Anti-Mayflower
The Anti-Oregon Trail
The Existential Septic Tank
Satan’s Sweet Ride
Join the Devil
Hotel California
Douse My Fire
Love Hangover
Elk You
Hell, Yes!
Hell, No!
Willie Nelson for President
America the Banal
The Great Unwashed
Ride it Slant
Nowhere to Run
Moby Dick Ain’t Gonna Sink Me
Jesus Wept (then made more wine)
Socialism Paid for This
Travels With Charley (the pit bull, not the poodle)