Looking For Fred

Years.

We have been looking into this mobile idea for a lot of years.

A decade? I’m not sure exactly but it wasn’t long after we signed these mortgage papers shackling us to house notes until we are almost 80 years old. I still remember the words of the attorney after we signed the papers. “If you pay, you stay. If you don’t you won’t.” He was a bit of a gruff old cuss.

That was about 6 months after my 48th birthday. I will be 62 in 14 months. Social Security age if I get on it early. Early has been the plan all along. Shirli is about 19 months later on drawing her pennies.

Talk about a couple realities that flat suck. Pay until you are old and dried up. If you get behind, for whatever reason, the bank is going to bounce that old ass of yours out on the street.

I’ll not say that we’ve studied every angle of it. But we’ve covered an awful lot of it. There are a number of ways to go about it. Some are more complicated than others. Some require a lot more finance than others. We considered hauling our 25’ Dutchmen and workcamping as a way. What with Shirli’s bookkeeping skills and my maintenance skills we would be a good fit for a workcamping lifestyle. Or so some of the research suggests. We may very well do some workcamping if we feel so inclined and the opportunity suits us. The idea of pulling a rig has a good many limitations that we wanted to get around though. It may work for a lot of folks but it just isn’t our cup of tea.

Van dwelling?

We stumbled onto the idea a couple or three years ago. The idea became something like a little smoldering ember. A little breeze came along now and then that fanned it. Our interest increased. The more our interest increased, the more we studied the idea. A small glowing ember grew into a passion that evolved into a passionate plan … a plan that we have been working, adjusting, and continuing to work.

We settled on a name for the van long before we found and bought it.

Sure. Why not? Folk give names to their boats. Folks give names to their guns. Folks give names to a lot of things to personalize them. So why not personalize this van with a name?

Fred. We named it, well in advance, Fred. Sort of jokingly but definitely honorably, fittingly, and respectfully after Shirli’s dad ... The Real Fred.

We started looking online for Fred. Everywhere we went we started noticing vans on the road, vans sitting in yards, vans in parking lots. Old vans. Newer vans. New vans. We got to the point where we could spot van dwellers at Walmart. How many times did the word … Fred … find itself spoken between the two of us?

The problems with the vans we were seeing? Some were too expensive. Some were too worn out. Some were being used. Another problem was that we simply did not have the cash to just go out and buy a van. Even one for a couple grand and the last thing we wanted to do was go take out another note on something. No way. Fred would be bought outright. No payments owed. Clear title. No liens.

Fred had a name. Fred had a purpose. We just hadn’t found Fred.

We were looking for Fred in all the wrong places.

We found Fred about a year ago through a friend. Not only did our friend know about the van. He knew the van. He had a personal mechanical relationship with the van and knew it bumper to bumper. He had done an awful lot of work on the van doing all the normal maintenance stuff for the previous owner making sure it was road worthy. The asking price was better than right.

The matter was a simple one. Get some cash together and buy the van.

Yard sale day … last spring. (2014)

I hate doing yard sales. All the work involved. It was a good one though. A lot of folks left here with stuff and they traded cash for stuff. The real kicker was the two old guys from outside of town that stopped by. They eyed our little vintage camper in the back yard, looked at it, and pulled away from here with it in tow behind their old rattling Chevy S-10 pickup. Both of them happy as pigs in mud on a summer day … and the two of us sitting here with the cash proceeds generated by the sale of something that was not part of the yard sale.

Watching the old relic rolling out the lane was a happy-sad thing for me. Happy because the proceeds it generated insured that we had the cash needed to buy Fred. Sad because I was more than a little attached to the old thing. Attachments, smart people say, make people sick. They keep people chained to whipping posts.

It is kind of odd. We had the cash to get Fred back in the spring. Circumstances and definitively working out the deal took some time. Longer than we had hoped but time honestly worked in our favor.

We brought Fred home last week.

P.S.- The vintage camper we called Arvey came back into the family. The two men who bought it turned around and sold it almost immediately to my son-in-law's sister. She loves it!