I'm very fond of refuse yards, junk yards, surplus yards, places where discarded stuff lies around neglected and in disarray.
For a number of years now, I've had a thing for bright metal, particularly stainless steel. I'm not sure what the allure is, but I like it in all it's shapes and forms. I've dragged home all manner of useless items and stacked em in my garage. It's shiny, sure, but there's an enduring quality that suggests staying power in a transient world. I'm heartened to think that in the way ,way distant future all of it will still be here. You can leave stainless steel out in the rain by the side of your garage and a little buffing returns it to new. In a world cluttered with rubbish a good piece of stainless seems one of the handful of things that one can truly have faith in, one of the few things that is actually all it's cracked up to be.( I would add to this short list, pre 1968 VW bugs, vintage BMW motorcycles, Stihl chainsaws, Belstaff rain gear, and Swanson chicken pot pies.)Of the various manifestations of shiny metal, I like old Airstream trailers the best. I realize for the sticklers among you that we are speaking here of aluminum not stainless steel, but I've grown quite enamored of both.
I believe I can trace my fondness for shiny metal back to my boyhood in Maine. We spent summers at my grandparents lake cottage and at least once a year a caravan of Airstream Trailers would happen by on their way to somewhere I imagined exotic. I think this was my first awareness that there was art in the world. These were objects so aesthetically pleasing as to constitute a thing apart from other things. I may be overstating my twelve year old musings but I l was smitten. I thought that someday I'd like to have such a thing and when the caravan came by I'd just pull right into line.
Other things came to supplant Airstreams on my list of wants but I never lost my fascination for those silver bullets. In the 70's I recall reading that Airstream had been gobbled up by AMC, the corporation that had bought and pretty nearly ruined Harley Davidson motorcycles. The feeling was that AMC had acquired this design marvel and quickly run it into the ground.
Sometimes, just out of curiosity I would check the newspaper classifieds
for Airstream Trailers. In the early seventies they were in abundance,
usually at very modest prices. Gas prices apparently had become
an impediment to the rootless life. By the late 70s and early
80s the ads were fewer. Airstreams, particularly the vintage models,
had become all the rage among pop trend setters. It was rumored
that Shaun Penn eschewed his lavish Hollywood digs for life in
his vintage Airstream.
In the fall of 88 I happened to be perusing the travel trailer section of the classifieds and spotted an offering for a vintage 1967 trailer. I mentioned this, ever so casually to Carroll, who as the reader might predict, thought it high time I act on my long standing yearning. I could have protested, insisted that we had more important uses for family resources, but, well, I think we've already touched on my unflattering character flaws. And so, much to my delight and surprise I came into possession of a 1967 24ft. Airstream Land Yacht. Now, the truth is I had no particular need for such a treasure, nor did I have a place to put it, or for that matter, a vehicle capable of towing it. What I really wanted to do was hang it on the wall and admire it. I got the previous owner to tow it to my house and park it in my drive. At that time we lived in a densely populated urban neighborhood and we actually shared a drive with our neighbor. My neighbor, a reasonable man in all other respects, apparently did not share my appreciation for these shiny works of art. And, to compound matters, the city specifically disallowed outdoor travel trailer storage in one's drive. This presented a quandary in that my garage was unavailable, being as it was ,entirely full of the useless stainless steel artifacts I'd dragged home from my forays to the salvage yards.
As I was pondering my predicament, I noticed an ad on the bulletin board where I worked. It advertised long term campsites available for rent at a private campground in the town of Mazomanie, about twenty five miles from my home. Well I thought, this may be just the answer and I determined I'd drive out to Mazomanie and investigate. For those unfamiliar with the idiosyncracies of my area let my say a thing or two about the town of Mazomanie. The city of Madison is an island of sorts. It's a proud bastion of progressive people, governed by progressive people. We have a lot of rules in Madison. Good rules intended to keep the place from going in the direction of other, less enlightened municipalities. These rules tend to aggravate those who chafe at any limits on their personal freedom, such as the right to drive drunk or hoist three old chevies up on blocks in their front yards. These people often seek refuge in Mazomanie and surrounding hamlets where a certain tolerance for such things still holds sway.
Ed, an elderly farmer with a dwindling number of teeth owned the
campground. He'd built it himself as a hedge against the uncertainties
of farming and as a cushion for his retirement. I don't know much
about farming, but his place was a mess. If farming was his livelihood
he looked to need a hedge. The campground was built on a high
bluff above his farm. It was a gorgeous piece of ground high above
the surrounding farm lands. The towering Baraboo Bluffs were visible
to the west as was the Wisconsin River and the valley it had
carved. The campground abutted protected DNR property and Ed
told me the state bureaucrats were trying hard to wrest the property
from his grasp. Something about his not complying with their soil
runoff regulations. He took me for a tour of the campground on
his tractor. It was a decidedly strange but appealing place,
like a low rent vacation destination from another time. The majority
of the sites held quasi permanent travel trailers some with wheels,
some without. Most were in various states of neglect and disrepair
and none seemed likely to roll any time soon. In stark contrast
to these, were a number of very trendy looking, meticulously
maintained trailers with hanging flower baskets and well tended
gardens.
Ed told me his wife had died a while back. He missed her a lot and after her passing he'd been moved to construct a monument to her on the highest point of the campground. It was a cross, twelve or fifteen feet tall, maybe eight feet wide. It stood on the cliffs edge overlooking the valley. The cross had a couple hundred high wattage lights outlining it's perimeter. At night Ed would turn on the power and motorists from 30, 40 miles away glimpsed heaven.
Ed told me he had one site available, a beautiful spot with a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. The previous tenant had just pulled up stakes and left in the dead of night. This mystified my trusting host Ed, but I thought from the looks of things there was a pretty good chance the guys parole had been revoked. I loved this place, I loved my spot, and I loved old Ed for that matter. This is just what I had in mind. I paid up for six months, we shook hands, and the deal was sealed.
I paid the Airstream's former owner to tow the Airstream out to
it's new home on the following weekend. He got the trailer properly
situated while I got my lawn chair situated. An older gal happened
by and stopped to chat. She provided my orientation to campground
life. She said that the inhabitants tended to be of three distinct
sorts. There were, she said, a number of vicious hillbillies,
some likely on the lam, who spent their time drinking and squabbling.
The other two groups could be explained by the close proximity
of Wisconsin's only legal nude beach. It was just down the road.
Some were families of "naturalists" or nudists. The
larger group, however were gay men who had staked out the beach
as a gathering spot. The nicer sites, she reported, the pretty
ones, usually belonged to the men. Well, I thought, this will
suit me just fine.
I would drive out to my surreal little trailer refuge whenever
I tired of the rigors of urban life. Others in my family failed
to see the demented charm in the place, so I was generally by
myself. In the weeks following my arrival I was visited by self
appointed ambassadors from the factions populating the park. It
was a decidedly offbeat welcome wagon. Apparently I was deemed
an enigma by the vying factions as noone claimed me and I was
left pretty much to myself. My immediate neighbors appeared to
be a festive lot who entertained often. I sometimes caught fleetinging
glimpses of bare flesh through the pines. It was not an uninteresting
place.
I liked to go up there at night. I'd settle in to my lawn chair,
build a fire, stare up at the stars, and listen to the snippets
of conversation wafting their way from other campsites to mine.
There was one evening in particular. We'd had a brief cleansing
summer shower at the tail end of a hot June day. A full moon rose
from behind the Baraboo range into a perfectly clear, star studded
summer sky. I fed my fire, stripped off my clothes, and smeared
warm mud from a summer puddle over my naked self. I danced with
an escalating frenzy around my blazing fire. Just when I imagined
I could know no greater ecstasy Ed flung the switch on that big
blazing cross and my spirit soared to unfathomable heights. Actually
this never happened but I loved that scene in Dancing With Wolves.
It could have happened!... Well, ok, maybe not the dancing part.