OT (waay OT) Old dreams, new possibilities?

Kismet

Kismet

Joined
Jan 30, 2002
Messages
7,269
In the early 70's, I was ONE interview away from getting a job with Winnebago Travel Club to follow along on the odessey in a Winnebago Scout, with my wife and kids, and do their Caravan newletter and pictures. Kids were pre-school, wife (now ex) was willing, and I was to be paid more than I was making, expenses, AND given a Winnebago Scout (I think) to travel along with them. Winnebago had just been written up in the Wall Street Journal (Little Town of Millionaires) because of the huge success of the RVs, which were the brain-child of a man who talked a bunch of local men into starting up the company to bring some industry into a dying farm town. The outstanding success of the firm prompted all sorts of travelling societies in the US (and made millionaires out of all the Iowa folks who invested). What an opportunity!!!

Then OPEC was formed and imposed the oil embargo. I never got that last interview, job was abandoned, gas lines formed...etc.

Life happens.

But the interest remains...although I'm too old and have things that prevent me from doing the country touring.

I came across this web-site, largely drawn from some of the images of the caravans and truck conversions of those days...non-Winnebagoes...and just time-travelled back to perhaps not a simpler time, but a different one. My perspectives were vastly different, but oddly, my values have stayed much the same. For all the opportunities lost, avenues not taken, relationships not formed...who you are really remains pretty constant, I think.

Anyway, enough. Here's the link:

http://www.mrsharkey.com/index.html
 
Traveled a lot when I was a kid. My old man was an outlaw so we had to keep one step ahead of the law, jealous husbands, and bill collectors.
I was in 24 states by the time I was 13 years old, several of them twice or more. One school year I was in seven schools in seven states in nine months!!!!:eek: The last school that year only had five days until it was out for the summer.
I had to stay in during lunch and recess those last five days in order to pass, and Pass I Did!!!! I still remember it being a rough five days.:) That year we started out from Florida, I was nine years old but can't recall the grade I was in, 5th maybe(?), and ended up in Minnesota, talk about language and culture shock!!!!:eek:
Times were hard and yet Great back then. You didn't meet strangers on the "road" and often having met and finding yourself liking the people, found you all traveling together if you were going in the same direction.
Small game was for the taking along the "road" and no one cared if you shot from the highway as long as you were careful and most people were. Also farmers back then didn't mind if you were traveling and stopped to pick your family a mess of whatever was growing as long as you treated their land with respect, and almost everyone did.
Kids still called their elders by Mr. & Mrs. and if you were close friends even Mr.Bob or Mrs.Sylvia was permitted, but when they spoke you obeyed them the same as you would your parents because they had the right and permission to spank yer ass if you didn't, and they would!!!!:D

Glad I have the memories, wish everyone did and also wish things could be like that again, but they won't.:(

Life is a virgin. If it was a bitch it would be easy.:)
 
I didn't travel that much but they never managed to take the farm out of the old Marine. I sure wish people acted the way they did back then too. Every body had their problems but they sure respected each other a lot more than the average person does his neighbors now. I try to respect any one I meet but, some of them don't give you much to work with now days.:)
 
If your part in the Book Life isn’t what you think it should be, turn the page. Maybe it gets better in the next chapter.

If it doesn’t, throw out the book and write your own. Dissatisfaction with Life usually comes from YOU trying to fit into THEIR idea of what Life should be.
 
Originally posted by Ben Arown-Awile
If your part in the Book Life isn’t what you think it should be, turn the page. Maybe it gets better in the next chapter.

If it doesn’t, throw out the book and write your own. Dissatisfaction with Life usually comes from YOU trying to fit into THEIR idea of what Life should be.
Click to expand...

+100
 
I have a friend who got hit with a large piece of rock, who's lucky to be alive. His spine was broken and he was told he'd never walk again. He died three times on the operating table. Today he can't feel one leg and half his digestive system is paralyzed. His wife divorced him shortly after he recuperated.

But he's rock-climbing, biking, swimming and working underground again. Competing in the Para-Olympics as a triathlete. The guy is in 4x the shape that I am. He was in New York in August and I believe he's in Czeckoslovakia competing again at present. He's lived in a VW bus in the past couple years, traveled around Canada and the States and experienced a lot.

He said that the accident may well be the best thing that ever happened to him.

When I graduate, I think I might just buy a trailer to go with my truck, sell most of my posessions and go travelling for awhile. Or I might spend a couple years in Quebec and learn how to speak French.

Life is what YOU make of it. No one else has that responsibility. So go out and LIVE it.

It doesn't suck or blow, it just is.
 
Accepting the outcome of those choices is a sign of both wisdom and maturity. And when real life come and kicks us in the teeth I think we have to be honest with ourselves and look at why we had our teeth at boot level in the first place. I don't have much money but I can't blame that on anyone else. I'm not a stupid fellow incapable of earning more money. I made a choice to pursue spiritual gains over material gains. Now I'm living with that choice. My wife is slowly healing from severe abuse when she was younger. I knew she faced these thing when I married her. Again, it was a choice. And I've never been sorry I made that choice. I have not seen Mt. Everest or The Northern Lights. I chose to have a house full of animals instead. The cats and dogs are our children. They need time and love but they give more than they take. I haven't given up on my dreams. I've simply adjusted the time table. Maybe rearranged where they sit on the list but I haven't crossed them out. What has this to do with khukuris? Everything. Namaste.

Frank
 
Originally posted by philthygeezer
When I graduate, I think I might just buy a trailer to go with my truck,
sell most of my posessions and go travelling for awhile.
Click to expand...

After a couple of weekends at the Flea Market getting rid of all our accumulated middle-class junk, we took our $200, 1966 VW delivery van and turned it into a motor home. By being innovative with space utilization and conservative with possessions, we had enough room to sit, sleep, cook, and eat. It was small, but very comfortable and well organized like the cabin of a small sailboat.

This was our home for the next three years as we traveled the country. Our summers were spent along the Pacific Coast in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Back then, logging and fishing were a vital part of West Coast economy and there were many free, undeveloped places to camp along the coast. We would find a nice place and spend a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Local people were always telling us about their favorite special spots as well as inviting us to park on their property.

We knew every town, beach, camping spot, and fishing dock from Bodega Bay to the Olympic Peninsula and out into the San Juan Islands. Seafood was a major part of our diet, and the local folks would show us their variety of fish, crab, or clams and how to catch them.

Fall and Winter we spent in Florida, mostly along the Gulf coast, but we had friends in Gainesville so that became our Winter headquarters.

When the Spring Onions came up we headed West to the Death Valley Desert. Our annual purification rites consisted of a couple of weeks of fasting and meditating in the shade of a Mesquite bush in a shallow canyon at a spot where the Amargosa River emerged from underground and formed a little waterfall. Some magic usually happened during these times. Like the time a Coyote and her pup came and sat down within five feet of us. A few minutes later a partridge and a brood of chicks came and sat on the other side. We all sat that way for about an hour.

After a visit with old friends, like the writer-poet named Bill who lived in a little trailer behind the Opera House or sometimes behind the Whore House, it was up the Coast again for the Summer.

Then one day, it was time for a change. We made a couple of small backpacks, took our sleeping bags, a couple of bowls, and a change of clothes and left the van and everything in it at Bill’s aunt’s house in Cherokee, Kansas. Hitchhiking around the country was interesting, but it was dangerous and strenuous. After our circuit up the coast and over to see some friends by Grand Coulee Dam, we returned to Sacramento and moved inside. Soon after that, my wife got pregnant. We gave the the van to Bill for his son to play with, and he sent us a box of some stuff that we had left in it.

That was the end of that era and the beginning of another. All that remains of the van, except in our memory, is it’s picture embroidered on a faded patch of denim that was once the jeans I wore as we navigated the Sea of Discovery. It hangs in our living room in a carved gold frame, like a religious icon.
 
Ben,

Your post is tugging my go-strings. I want to get out and do the same thing when this commitment is finished. I don't know where I will go, but I think it won't matter, as long as I get to wander my own road.

Thanks for sharing,
Phil
 
Remember I posted that........... "Life is a virgin. If it was a bitch it would be easy.:)

I don't think life sucks, never have, even on my worst days and as Bill has often said, "No one said it was gonna be easy."
If it weren't for the hard times we wouldn't know when we were having good times and life would be boring.
There's been a few things I've done that I regret to some degree or another, But I wouldn't change a thing even if I could. All that's went by has made me who and what I am today.
I have a wonderful wife. kid's, grandkid's and greatgrandkid's and a reasonably comfortable retired life.
And still get to go exploring our great USA now and then. I made peace with my Maker long ago as well as with the Dark side of myself.
I'm ready to go today if that's the way things tumble. Not much more I could ask for.:D

With the exception of a 17"-18" Foxy Folly made by Bura just like the original he made!!!!:rolleyes: :p ;) :D
 
As kids go, I was pretty lucky and grew up near a logging camp in what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The loggers lived in a bunkhouse, chewed their snoose on a bench out in front, and ate next door in a cookhouse at a long table. They seemed to get along pretty well, and I don't recall ever seeing any of them engaged in an argument.

It was quite a while ago and there was only one chainsaw in camp - a big yellow McCulloch which was very noisy and didn't run very well. They still used crosscuts, double-bladed axes and trimmed around the buildings with scythes. Probably those early observations of cutting tools are what incline me toward khuks.

By the time I was 21 I'd traveled up and down the Voyageur's Highway and all over the Quetico Park by canoe - sometimes with good people, sometimes with jerks, sometimes alone. Everything I needed fit into one #3 Duluth Pack, and everything I owned fit into two of them.

Recently it seems the place has changed, but not changed at all. There is no sign of where that camp was and all kinds of Federal paperwork is necessary to go in there. People now use nylon packs and plastic canoes rather than canvas and wood, but when I go back the shorelines look just as they did and the portages haven't moved.

As usual, some bad stuff happened back then but the memories are all good ones. Unfortunately my boy can't have the same deal, but maybe he will be able to acumulate good memories of other things.
 
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