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CHAPTER 1
Mi Casa Es Su Casa on Route 66
We began our American camper van journey on June 5, 2016, at the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame Museum in Pontiac, Illinois. That evening we landed at the St. Louis West Historic Route 66 KOA on Old Highway 66 in Eureka, Missouri. Everything was wrong with the Bluebird. The inverter did not work. We blew fuses. We couldn't turn off the ceiling lights. We thought about getting a motel — on our first night. The whole project seemed like a bad idea. We spent much of the next day in Lebanon, Missouri, looking for mechanics and a Ford dealership.
We found our footing that night on a rural stretch of Old Route 66 in Carthage.
CARTHAGE, MISSOURI
Like secrets from a distant dream, ghost buildings punctuate Old Route 66 on the drive from Springfield, Missouri, to Carthage (pop. 14,378), roughly seventy miles west. There are vacant shells of gas stations, forsaken tire shops, and crumbling general stores. Maybe a long time ago an attendant smiled as he pumped your gas. Or beads of sweat rolled down the cold bottle of RC Cola purchased from an upright pop machine.
People came and went.
Carthage was quite the thing. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the capital of America's marble industry because of its gray limestone mine. Wild West outlaw Belle Starr was from Carthage.
A June 2016 drive through the tiny downtown finds the restored Boots Motel, a 66 legend, and a Springfield-style cashew chicken restaurant, a staple of the Ozarks. The 66 Drive-In Theatre can't be missed coming out of the western end of Carthage. The drive-in opened in 1949 on a rural nine-acre field. This stretch of 66 took advantage of the post–World War II boom when Americans flocked to their cars.
Suddenly, in the long shadows of the drive-in, something new emerges.
It is fresh and modern retro.
The young campground owner is on a roadside patio serving traditional Hawaiian snow cones with ice cream on the bottom. Kids and early-summer campers stand around her, patiently waiting for the sweet treat.
Good things take time.
Camp Mi Casa is a new year-round campground at 17601 Old Route 66 about three miles west of Carthage. The subtle Art Deco/Pueblo-designed space features thirty-five camping sites (twenty-five pull-throughs and ten back-ins). Camp Mi Casa opened on the site of the popular 1950s–60s Westgate Mobile Home Park. After the park closed, a wide-open biker bar called Los Amigos operated on the property in the 1970s. The grounds sat vacant after Los Amigos closed.
"We lived down the road and I'd drive by this place daily," says owner Stephanie Garber of Carthage on the morning after our visit to Camp Mi Casa. "It was such a waste. There were squatters on the property. Trash was waist high from corner to corner. And I'm not exaggerating waist high."
The couple broke ground in October 2014 and opened in August 2015. "Terrible timing for an RV park, right?" she asks. "We had a handful of travelers coming through that were heading south. That ended about October. We sat with one or two campers November through February. Come March [2016] things picked up."
Their dreams were coming to fruition.
After the Garbers closed on the property, their preacher and church family came on-site to bless the space. "The property had such bad history," she says. "People have been stabbed here. Nancy Cruzan left the Los Amigos bar and had a serious car accident." Cruzan made national news in January 1983 after the accident. She was left in a vegetative state for eight years and died in December 1990 after the US Supreme Court ruled on her right to die. Cruzan was thirty-three years old.
The Los Amigos Bar was a centerpiece of the February 2002 "Operation Cocaine Cowboys" drug bust, which uncovered cocaine, methamphetamines, and marijuana in different spots throughout Carthage. The Associated Press reported that at least forty-six people were arrested in Carthage and more than one hundred weapons were linked to one subject.
Light always follows darkness. A bright 1969 turquoise-and-white Kit Companion camper trailer sits on a nearby hill. There are small beds on each end of the fifteen-foot camper, along with a refrigerator and stove. The Garbers lived in the trailer for six months as they finished their rebuild of the campgrounds.
Stephanie and her husband, Dale, cooked up the campsite plan in 2000. She had worked in the banking industry and taught high school business in Golden City, northeast of Carthage. Dale is a full-time mechanic and tow truck operator who has owned his shop for twenty-five years. "Everybody thought I was crazy," she says. Even Dale had his doubts about Camp Mi Casa.
"I was wondering what she was seeing because I didn't see it," he says. "But I do now."
Dale is originally from Washington, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh. Stephanie was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but moved to the Carthage area during her childhood years to be nearer to family. The couple met through mutual friends and got married in 1992. Dale says, "This is her vision. And I'm not afraid to follow her. She followed me."
What brought Dale to a rural stretch of Route 66 on the Missouri countryside? "Do you really want to know?" he asks. "I was running from the law. Stealing cars, nothing to hurt nobody. I came to Carthage when I was 17 to see my uncle and I never left. I was a kid without any guidance." Dale has the deep voice of Toby Keith. He looks at his wife in the distance and says, "There's my guidance, right there."
Times could be tough — especially when living together in a fifteen-foot trailer.
What is their advice for getting along in a tight spot?
"You stay busy so all you do is sleep in it," Stephanie answers with a laugh. With a coy smile, Dale adds, "We got along just fine. Just like sixteen-year-olds."
The Garbers bulldozed the land and kept just two buildings: the current bathrooms, which had been the previous trailer park's laundry facility, and a vintage gas station that is now the front office. "Anybody in this area knows this as the Los Amigos bar," Stephanie says. "The bar was over on the concrete patio where we were playing pickleball [hybrid of tennis and Ping-Pong] last night. That's how we derived our name and Spanish theme."
The Garbers lived about a quarter mile from the site since 2000. When they opened up Camp Mi Casa, they sold their house and moved on-site. The Route 66 connection has attracted campers from Belgium, France, Scotland, and a Japanese tent camper who was doing Route 66 on his bicycle. The campgrounds have been reconstructed to accommodate large RVs, and in future summers Camp Mi Casa will host vintage travel clubs.
Stephanie hired a seventy-year-old area sign maker to design the retro Camp Mi Casa sign with an inviting arrow. He hand cut each letter. The couple added an outdoor swimming pool and a covered pavilion with a fire pit. Our camping space was a bit muddy, which attracted mid-June mosquitoes, but the climate-controlled bathrooms were some of the cleanest we saw on our cross-country journey. "They will stay that way," she says. "You can come back ten years from now and they won't be any different."
American pride defines the Garbers' work ethic. They have made Carthage a better place for campers and community. "It was a beautiful piece of land that had been abandoned and abused for years," Stephanie says. "The mobile home park was its glory years. This was where people raised their families. It was a wholesome environment. The last twenty years or so, not so much. I'd drive by and think, 'What could somebody do with that?' I never thought, 'What could I do with that?'"
CHAPTER 2
All in the Family at Coeur d'Alene
Like the necklace of mid-June stars over northern Idaho, the connective spirit of American camping was clear at the Coeur d'Alene RV Resort. Everything came together. There were people on a family restoration project. There was the first of many traveling nurses I would meet in campgrounds across the United States. The Coeur d'Alene RV Resort was even within walking distance of a Walmart, the terminally happy place for campers.
POST FALLS, IDAHO
Campers at the Coeur d'Alene RV Resort were hopeful in the summer of 2016.
"The younger generation wants freedom," said Jodi Francis, who is traveling with her family and working full-time from her RV. Francis, fifty-one, looked over her shoulder at the family's forty-three-foot Palomino Columbus 377 RV and said, "And this is four hundred square feet of freedom. Over there is a neighbor with two children and three dogs. They just went [camping] full-time and they are in their early thirties."
Chris and Jodi Francis and their family met their friends, full-time RV campers Angela and Robert Schmid and their family, on the road in early 2014. Angela is a traveling nurse. Now the families reunite on the road a couple of times a year.
They call themselves "fremilies."
"We try to connect a couple of times a year on their assignments," Francis said. "First we followed them to Arlington, Texas, when they left the park we were at. They went to Arizona. We didn't follow them there. Then they went to Pueblo, Colorado. We followed them there and spent six to eight weeks together. They went to El Paso. I have a brother in El Paso, so we went there for a very short time. Then we followed them here."
I followed the group from my slot because I saw them having a fremily picnic under a dramatic late-night sunset. Their children were smiling and riding bicycles. A large American flag hung from a pole over their picnic table, and the group removed the flag when the sun went down. Robert Schmid's white goatee and declarative glasses made him a dead ringer for Chicago Cubs manager/RV fanatic Joe Maddon. The pastoral setting recalled the French painting Sunday on La Grande Jatte.
Angela Schmid, forty-five, is an OB travel nurse. Robert, fifty-two, homeschools their children, Rachel, fifteen, and Baylee, seven. Blu is the family's friendly three-year-old blue heeler dog, who has been with the Schmids since she was six weeks old. Blu even gets mention on the Schmidfamily business card, which reads, "Home Is Where We Park It." Chris and Jodi were traveling with Jade, their seven-year-old grandson.
"Every three months we go to a different hospital — anywhere in the country where I'm needed," Angela explained. "We do contracts with the hospitals. We sold our house in Ruidoso, New Mexico, about six years ago. We went on the road with Baylee as a baby." Angela and Robert bought an Open Range 413 RV with two full bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a rear living loft, a regular tub, full kitchen, and a closing slide door to regulate the living room.
She continued, "A lot of the nurses I work with are doing this. The travel industry for nurses is growing. You have to find the company that's right for you. For us, we like to go to certain locations. Nurses will ask me how we do it with the children, even if they're in sports. Rachel was able to do sports through the YMCA when we were in Arlington [Texas]. She played volleyball. It's fun because they can still do the things a 'normal' kid can do."
Rachel is a major country music fan who likes Luke Bryant, Blake Shelton, and Carrie Underwood. She was prepping for a fall semester of chemistry, English III, US history, and algebra II. She dreams of being a veterinary technician.
Baylee proudly declared, "We are homeschooled!"
For her children, Angela likes the control of confined space. "Our kids also make friends easily because they're around kids and adults all the time. That's how it should be. It shouldn't be, 'Well, you're my only friend.' They make friends every three months when we go to a new place."
Rachel was born in Ohio. I was born in Berwyn, Illinois, and by the time I was five, my father was transferred to Columbus, Ohio. He was sent back to Chicago when I was twelve years old. I told Rachel moving at that age was very difficult for me. "Moving is different for sure," she responded. "But it's a lot easier living in a trailer because you don't have to pack boxes every time. I like adventure. We saw where the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. We've been to Mount Rushmore. It is fun and I get to meet new friends."
It's also good to make friends with itinerant medical workers.
Campground workers always know that Schmid is a nurse and her husband is a former EMT and firefighter. The Schmids have been called on when a neighbor's fifth wheel caught on fire, when someone had a drug overdose, there's been a stroke, chest pain, and multiple falls by elderly and children. In February 2012 a neighbor's RV caught fire at the Mystic KOA in North Stonington, Connecticut. "The lady pounded on the side of our rig, which was fifteen feet away," Robert recalled. "When I opened the door, I could see the orange glow." He immediately went into EMT-firefighter mode and started barking orders to Angela to seek help. Angela moved the family rig. "She put the kids in it to keep them safe and then comforted the neighbor lady," Robert said.
Robert attacked the fire with a garden hose, hosing off her rig and the side and roof of their RV. The volunteer fire department showed up within ten minutes and campground operations returned to normal. Investigators said the fire was started by a faulty electrical converter.
My emergency was the inability to get proper reception on my camper van television set.
The Coeur d'Alene RV Resort is actually in Post Falls, Idaho, ten minutes from upscale downtown Coeur d'Alene and twenty-five minutes from downtown Spokane, Washington. Angela was working at Kootenai Health hospital in Coeur d'Alene. The family arrived in March 2016 with a contract until June 2016. "They asked me to extend," she said. "So we will be here a total of six months, which is unusual for us. We've been in this spot the whole time. Next we're going to Eugene, Oregon."
Coeur d'Alene was named in 1878 by French-speaking traders who also named the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe. The trappers knew the Indians as sharp traders, which led to the name translated as "heart of an awl." My reference to Coeur d'Alene was the lonely Iris DeMent ballad "Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day," in which she sings, "Wished I could run away to Couer d'Alene / Take nothing with me, not even my name." Now, there's a camping muse about freedom.
Sense of place is often perceived as something permanent and framed by memory. What happens when sense of place becomes fluid? Schmid nodded her head and answered, "Our environments are constantly changing. You have to be able to adapt. And I don't want to be stagnant. Because when you're stagnant what else is there? You're not learning anymore. This is why we embrace this lifestyle. Every place I go, no matter what hospital, or what town we're in, we are always taking something with us. And it is growing who we are. And it is helping us mold our children to talk to people and understand things from their point of view. They are very adaptive children and you're going to need that in the future."
In his camper van book Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck laments the emerging loss of regionalism in America. And that was in 1960. Local language was fading away, but Steinbeck still found a distinct dialect in Montana. He liked that. Now, on first conversation, there was no way to know that Schmid was born in West Virginia and moved to Belle Center, Ohio (pop. 813), when she was ten years old. She earned her bachelor's degree in health education from West Virginia Wesleyan College. "People are hanging on to their heritage and some of the values of their ancestors more and more," she said. "We see it a lot. We saw that in New Mexico. A lot in New England. It was fascinating to us to see the different ways people live. I didn't know people still heated with oil in New England. It shocked me. The kids get to experience that. You have to be flexible. And patient sometimes."
Jodi Francis does payroll for an Australian energy and gas consulting company. "I support all of the Americas and a few global business units, so they don't care where I sit," she said. "We're pretending we're retired. I'm fifty-one. He's fifty-eight. We're getting to do the things now that our parents had to wait to do."
Angela said, "My parents passed away nine weeks apart. They were sixty-one and sixty-two. They were married forty-two years. Mom died suddenly. When Dad came to live with us, he said, 'I want to travel. There's places I need to see.' He had a list of places planned out. The Grand Canyon. Mount Rushmore. But his health deteriorated so fast after Mom passed. He was devastated. Then, after Dad passed away, I said, 'We need to see some of these places on Dad's list.' We hope he can live vicariously through us, watching us from heaven. We have nothing holding us down. When they passed away, it was time for us to focus on us.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Camper Book"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Dave Hoekstra.
Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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