Camper "Renovation"

Last week, I shared our Laundry Business that a friend and I started up in Tribune years ago. While we were living there that two years, we did several things that we probably should not have done. One of those things included a SURPRISE renovation on Stan's brother, George's, camper...

He had been living in Oklahoma at the time and had come across a very old camper at a good price. Given the fact that Stan's parents, John and Joyce, really enjoyed the fine sport of camping, George did also. He bought the camper and had brought it to our home in Tribune.

Now, George was a computer programmer and teacher in a school system in Oklahoma so he spent his business weeks there and most of his weekends in Tribune with us. (Oh, how we loved that!!! I just wish we were still able to spend time together like that...)

At that time, my friend, Cathy, worked with us in Tribune and stayed with us a good portion of the time. That, too, was a VERY enjoyable time for us. We had so much fun together!!!

Anyway, George's camper was unlike any that I had ever seen before,,,or since. The interior of the camper was a sleeping room only. The kitchen was at the rear of the camper. Whenever you needed to cook, you opened the two exterior doors and then you saw the stove, refrigerator and countertop. It was really kool!

Now the exterior of the camper was original complete with large wide pink stripes that surrounded the camper. The spaces were white. Now, George is a manly man. He was none too proud of the pink. In 1983-1984, men were not sporting pink as they do today. SOOO...Cathy and I decided to update his camper's exterior while he was away at work. So we purchased a gallon of blue paint for exterior surfaces. Back then, I had basically had no experience with house paint. I didn't realize that there was a difference between paints that were to be used on wood or metal. As it turned out, George's camper was made of metal. We purchased paint for wood surfaces. Then, Cathy and I set work on covering all of the pink surfaces with blue paint. Another thing that I did not realize was that you were supposed to allow each coat of paint to dry thoroughly before you added the next coat. Keep in mind that George was totally unaware of our plans.

I guess I also decided that though we had no experience in painting, we would be professionsals and had no use for taping or covering the white areas. Oh, no! We didn't need to do that!!! So, we had blue paint drips EVERWHERE!!! The once pink areas were not smooth by any means of the word. It was rough and peeling all over the place. I began to worry when I saw the mess that we had made of the camper that George was so very proud of.

We went back to the lumber yard and purchased some white paint to cover the mess on the white areas of the camper. But, again, we STILL did not buy any tape... SOOOOOOOO DUMB!!!

This time, we made an even bigger mess. There were no longer any straight lines between the blue and white. We had blue spots on the white areas and white spots on the blue areas...

All of this had been done in one afternoon's time. Stan had been working all day and had no idea what Cathy and I were doing. When he got home, he was flabbergasted to say the very least. Back then, Stan suffered from a very short temper. As soon as he got out of the pick-p, Cathy and I (plus the rest of the neighborhood) knew that we were in big time trouble!!!

Now, Stan has never been a violent person but inanimate objects were in danger of being thrown across the street, etc. This time, rocks were cast towards the street. It was a good thing that no cars were coming down the street at the time...

When Stan had cooled off just a bit, he surveyed the damage that we had made. He told us that basically we were shot. The camper's exterior consisted of medal siding that was rolled--not flat. It was impossible for us to sand it down. A short while later, George arrived. It was still light outside so he had no problem of seeing what had been done to his lovely camper that had been next to perfect the last time that he had seen it.

George's temperment is usually very even. He was and still is always a fun person to be around--EXCEPT for that evening. Oh, mercy! Cathy and I were in so very much trouble that evening and for several more days to come. To this day, I am not totally convinced that he has managed to entirely forgive us. LOL!!!

Tribune is a WONDERFUL place to live!!! People there treat each other like family. It is a tight-knit communty where everyone works together to complete a task. It didn't take long for word to travel through town. People came over to see what they could do to help us fix matters. Try as they did, there was no fix other than to peel the siding off and start all over. We never did get around to doing that.

The camper remained in our yard until we moved from Tribune to Garden City. The house we bought came with a very small yard so George took his camper elsewhere. He continued to use it when he went to the lake. I am quite sure that more than one chuckle came from the viewing of this poor misfortunate camper. The good news is that the interior was still in A-1 condition! Cathy and I never did any renovations to it...

VLE-B