by Phyllis McCrossin
I can’t believe we are entering year three of living full-time in our travel trailer. It’s a lot of togetherness, but we’ve found ways to make it work.
The other day I ran into a friend at the grocery store. She and her husband travel to warmer climates during the winter and return home to the house they own in the summer. I told her we live, full-time, in our 24-foot travel trailer. She didn’t listen, or didn’t comprehend, or didn’t care, or a combination of all three because her next sentence was they had just purchased a new, bigger travel trailer, complete with slide-out extensions because the small trailer they had before was just too small for living in for six months at a time.
After 40 years as a reporter, I should be used to people really not paying attention, but it’s still annoying. Annoying people are part of the reason King and I are so comfortable doing our own thing and ignoring the rest of the world. Without even saying it to one another we are tired of many (but not all) people.
And sometimes, if we are being honest with one another, the person we are the most tired of is the one we see 24-7.
So that brings me to living together in a tiny space.
I can lie on the floor and stretch out and my feet can touch the dinette table and my hands can touch the “entrance” to the bedroom. The galley and bathroom are in between on either side. The “bedroom” area has a folding bamboo-type curtain between it and the rest of the trailer. I’m not quite certain why there is a door since it’s not as if we entertain and have a need to close off the bedroom. If more than three people were to visit we’d head outside. As it is, three additional people means someone has to sit on the bed anyway.
But that little sliding door has been a lifesaver. When I’m tired of Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Tales of Wells Fargo or a host of other TV westerns that I’ve seen so often I can recite lines, I can turn the dinette into a reading nook by knocking down the table and turning it into a bed. I can slide that door closed with an exasperated sigh for emphasis. Or when his comments about the news get to be too much I can stomp off and he can try to slam door shut to show his displeasure at my not being able to “take a joke.”
I should add that politically we are probably on the same side, but he loves to torment me with asinine comments. The first presidential debate last year, the one where the two candidates kept sniping at each other, not only sent me to the dinette, but I put a blanket over my head and told him I was not going to come out until after the election. It lasted all of two minutes and the blanket came off and I looked at King and said, “Oh, you did not just say that.” (And no, I don’t remember his exact comment).
King was not always interested in politics, it actually developed over the past six years when our friend and neighbor tried to engage King in political discussions. The friend/neighbor watched a more conservative network. King started to watch it as well, but I informed him watching that network was deeply troubling for someone as steeped in news and politics as I was and if he valued our marriage and friendship (yes, he and I are friends) he would watch anything but that network. He obliged.
And so it goes.
In less than two months King and I will be back on the road. Then the REAL togetherness begins – long hours together in the cab of a pickup truck.
Then our conversations will be:
“Turn left onto Main Street.”
The truck and trailer will bounce over the curb.
“Well, I thought maybe you might try going out the driveway, but I guess moving when traffic is clear is a good thing too.”
It’s why when we are on the road I bungee the TV to its wall mount and pad it with four or five pillows. We certainly don’t want it to break. It would be devastating to miss out on any Gunsmoke reruns.
