Sometimes the RV lifestyle allows us to not only go to new places, but to return to where we came from. We’re in Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA rally, and yesterday afternoon we drove 20 miles up to Toledo, a place with a lot of memories for me.

My father’s work kept us on the move for much of my earliest years, but when I was 13 we returned to our hometown of Toledo, and I lived there until I graduated from high school and went into the Army. I’ve only been back a couple of times since then, the last time almost ten years ago. So it was interesting to wander through the old neighborhood reliving memories from my youth.

South Toledo was a poor part of town, blue collar at best, but I never felt like we did without or were deprived. I had a loving family, good friends, and lots of good times. I would not have traded my teenage years for anything.

Yet, I knew I was not going to live there forever. When I was a teenager, everybody wanted to land a job on the Jeep assembly line or with Libby Owens Glass, or else get on the police force or fire department. A job that would “take care of you.” I didn’t want to be taken care of, thank you very much. I knew I could take care of myself, but it had to be someplace else. The first chance I got to leave, I never looked back. So why now, a lifetime later, do I feel drawn back to those narrow city streets of my youth?

The area certainly hasn’t improved. There are plenty of boarded up storefronts, yet many of the same little corner grocery stores and neighborhood taverns I remember are still open and doing business.   

Here is a picture of me at the duplex house I lived in during high school. When we moved in, we had the upstairs and my buddy Ray Pitzen’s family lived below us. His sister Rachel was my first love and my friends were all jealous because she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Today the old house is vacant and there was an eviction notice taped to the door for the last tenants.

After Ray’s family moved away, a series of neighbors rented the bottom half of the house. One New Year’s Eve my parents and I were standing on our upstairs porch when the neighbor below, who had had a lot too much to drink, came out onto his porch and decided to celebrate by popping off a few rounds with his .38 revolver. The bullets tore through the wood at our feet, narrowly missing us, but a chunk of wood embedded itself in my mother’s leg.

My Dad was a cop at the time, and when he grabbed his gun and handcuffs and ran downstairs, I wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot the man, or arrest him. Dad administered some street justice and then a black and white came and hauled the fool away.

My first job was working at Mr. Tsakos’ corner gas station. I begged my Dad to intercede on my behalf when the old Greek businessman didn’t want to hire a kid, because kids were unreliable. Then a week or two later all of my friends were having fun on summer vacation and I decided I wanted to play too, so I told my Dad I was quitting the job. He told me that I could either go to work every day, as I had promised Mr. Tsakos, or I could spend those eight hours a day in my room (way before a kid’s room had computers and TVs), but I wasn’t going to goof off after he had given his word I’d be on the job. I earned quite a bit of money that summer, and came away with a little bit of work ethic too.

And here’s my old school, Libbey High School. Boy, I couldn’t wait to leave that place! A few years ago there was talk of tearing the old school down, and I was sure glad to see that so far, it has survived budget cuts and consolidation. Now, please don’t tell my daughter this, because I have always told her that I walked eleven miles to school in knee deep snow, barefoot, and that it was uphill both coming and going. But we checked it on our van’s odometer, and it turns out it was just 1.2 miles from my front door to the front door of the school. (And I think I remember a pair of shoes or two, to be honest.)

One of our favorite hangouts was Walbridge Park, on the banks of the wide Maumee River, and across the street from the excellent Toledo Zoo. This was where we came to smoke cigarettes, away from parent’s prying eyes, where we came to “duke it out” to settle teenaged arguments, and where we brought our girlfriends when we had our first cars, to watch the submarine races. (Yes, some of them really did fall for that!) It was also here that my family had a going away picnic for me the day before I boarded an airplane for a ride that eventually ended in a jungle halfway around the world.

Terry and I sat on a bench overlooking the old river and I told her about some of my good times at the park, and the goofy things my pals and I did there. I sure am glad I have her with me to share those memories with, instead of some of the young ladies I steamed up the windows of my old Ford with!

I know I could never live in Toledo again, and I know I made the right decision to leave so long ago to pursue my own path in life. But it was interesting to go back to see the old neighborhood once again.

It was nice to take this trip down memory lane. Thanks for indulging me and coming along for the ride. 

Thought For The Day – It was all so different before everything changed.

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We spent most of the day yesterday playing tour guide at the RV Hall of Fame Museum to members of the Heartland Owners Club, who were in the area for their annual rally. It was a lot of fun.

Here is a picture of Terry sitting with her new friend, Poker Alice. Poker Alice was a famous lady gambler and madam who was well known in Deadwood and Sturgis, South Dakota in the old days for her luck with cards, the cigars she smoked, and the .38 revolver she carried in a pocket in case some card sharp tried to cheat her. I wrote a story about her which is in my book Highway History And Back Road Mystery. Of course, this isn’t the real Poker Alice. That luminary died in 1930 and is buried in Sturgis. But this likeness of the old gal on display at the museum is pretty accurate.

Things got off to a slow start, because of a scheduling mix up so Terry and I, and several other volunteers called in for the occasion, spent the first couple of hours just chatting with regular visitors to the museum. Then the chartered buses pulled up with the Heartland group and the floodgates opened. Over 150 folks from the rally had a good time seeing all of the neat old RVs on display, and we had a good time visiting with them.

In ten years of publishing the Gypsy Journal, we have been approached by several RV manufacturers about advertising, but Heartland is the only one we have accepted advertising from, because they convinced me that they build a quality product and stand behind it.

The Heartland owners we talked to at the museum were just as impressed. The factory is located here in Elkhart, and they sent a small army of service techs to the rally to handle any problems owners had with rigs. Everybody was impressed with how accommodating they were. One comment I heard was “They promised less and delivered more.” A fifth wheel does not fit our needs or lifestyle, but if Terry and I were going to buy a fifth wheel, Heartland would be the first and last one we looked at.

I also talked to some of the vendors who were at the Heartland Rally, and all of them were impressed with the reception they got and the amount of business they did. I really wish we would not have been sick so we could have attended.

Unfortunately, we did have a Bad Nick sighting at the museum yesterday. One of the most unique vehicles in the collection is this wild custom motorhome called Star Streak II, built on a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado chassis, which has been featured on the Discovery Channel.

I enjoyed taking visitors into the RV to show them its many unique features, including a large screened roof vent. One family had a little boy who immediately started flipping switches and pulling on things.

His father immediately chastised him and told him not to touch things, but you know how kids can be. In no time at all he was reaching for a toggle switch on the wall and I told him “Be careful there, I’m not sure which switch it is, but one of them operates the ejector. A while back we lost a nine year old who touched it and went right through that hole in the roof. We looked for him everywhere, but the place closes at 5 o’clock, so what could we do? He still hasn’t turned up.”

The boy’s eyes were bigger than the RVs’ hubcaps, and his mouth was hanging so far open a sparrow could have flown in. I couldn’t resist taking it a step further, so I said “The security guard says sometimes late at night he hears the boy’s voice calling out, but it’s a big place and he’s an old man, so who knows?” The boy stuck his hands deep into his pockets and never took them out until he was well clear of the RV! Bad Nick!

I had another one of those small world events that happen to me all of the time while I was giving some folks a tour of the Cadillac motorhome. Paul Jones, the man who built it, was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the car has two West Point emblems mounted on the front fenders.

Back when I was a young solder, about 100 years ago, I spent a couple of years at West Point as a firearms instructor. (Sleep well tonight, I helped train the guys running the Army today!).

As one couple was looking at the RV, the husband saw the emblems and commented that he was sure familiar with them. “Were you a cadidiot?” I asked him, using the slang term we enlisted men assigned to the Academy used for cadets. “No, but I was a firearms instructor there,” he replied. As it turns out, he had the same job I did, only about four years before my arrival! How cool is that?

Thought For The Day – Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.

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