RV’s, Vandwelling and Hobos

It was a long day.  I worked from 8am – 7:21pm again.  It’s 7:21pm.  I’m sitting in Mike’s Jeep, relieved to have taken the weight off of my feet.  The sun is going down now, illuminating the long rows of wind-blown clouds from below.  Cooking the clouds from the bottom like fluffy strips of bacon.  I’m hungry, and the clouds are bacon.  My feet are ham.  My life is a salad.  By life, I am referring specifically to my mind, my body, my living situation, and all of my possessions that I have ever owned or will ever own.  It’s a salad, so I might as well eat it.

But back to salads.  Back to the fluffy, cooked clouds.  Back to who Mike is.  Mike is one of the RVers who is staying in the same campground.  He is one of the older RV set that I mentioned having carpooled with.  Mike gave me a ride today, because we worked the same surprise extra shift, which was offered to us yesterday.  We talked on the twenty-or-so minute ride back to headquarters after work.  We talked about modern-day hobos and Roth IRAs.  We had a good discussion, including personal experiences, opposite opinions, and agreement on superficial matters.  I think that a dreadlocked hitchhiker sitting on a guitar case is a safe turkey to stuff into a passenger seat.  This concept raises Mike’s eyebrows, in spite of the fact that he has hitchhiked, and enjoys gravy.  We talked, and the conversation was good.  I’m as comfortable talking to Mike as I am talking to the wildcats who are sitting around the hobo trashcan fire in the other corner of the campground.  I’m equally comfortable with either type of person: retired RV guy, and wildcat who flips the bird to society using overall appearance as a finger.  I look my part well enough to fit with either crowd.  I can squish in with either group, but the squish isn’t nearly a mesh.  I don’t have big ears and an NRA hat, and I haven’t gotten “FIST FUCK” tattooed on my knuckles yet.  I can somewhat fit in with both – but also neither.

I thought about all of this while I was eating a few sandwiches.  It was then that the symbolism hidden in the arrangement of this campground appeared to me.  I am parked equidistant from the RV’s with their slideouts, and the dirty fuck-yous making a circus in the corner.  Is my van not a kind of small RV?  Is a vandweller not so often portrayed as a bum with one last worthwhile possession?  Here I sit.  I talk to everybody here, but at the end of the day I just sit inside my van and type.  And type, and type, and type.

I look forward to future times when I can scare people into eating couscous and watching movies.