Famous Airstream Owners

I saw this list on the Airforums site a few weeks ago and figured it was pretty complete.  Sean Penn once owned an Airstream also but I heard it was destroyed in a wildfire in California.


Arthur Godfery
Fatty Arbuckle
Gene Shepard
Lawrence Welk
Ben Blue
Joe Lewis
Joe Bolton
Veronica Lake
Gale Storm
Anne Jefferies
Milton Supman
Zazu Pitts
Leo G Carol
Manny, Moe & Jack (shared)
Jack Cones
Jame Gumb
Ed Gein
Billie Thomas
Danny Thomas
Maurice Jarre
Andy Devine
Rufe Davis
Edgar Buchanan
Gunilla Freeman Hutton
Slim Pickens
Gertrude Hoffman
Virginia Christine 
Randy Whipple
Ann Southern
Frank Yensan
David Jansen
Jonathan Harris
Bill Mumy
Veda Ann Borg 
Walter Pidgeon
Sterling Haydin 
Art Linkletter
Howard Hughes
Matthew McConaughey
Eddie Vetter
Lance Armstrong
Ted Cassidy
Mark Harmon


Well and of course Wally Byam the most famous of all.  

God Bless America?

So this happened toward the end of winter, I think actually the first time was during the Super Bowl.  It was still cold at night and warm during the day, but cool enough over all that the air conditioner was not running in the tin can.  While Airstreams are pretty sound proof when compared with other RVs there are times when you do hear everything.  The perfect conditions are as follows; the air conditioner is off and the noisy party is walking right next to your trailer.

As I've mentioned before, I work at night and sleep during the day, this can be complicated by noisy neighbors but I have become able to sleep through just about anything.  Well almost anything.  I was sound asleep on Super Bowl Sunday with the dogs curled up around me like furry hot water bottles, it was one of those nice sleeps you have when the air is cold but you have a nice warm blanket to cuddle up under.  When suddenly it happened, something jolted me out of my sleep and the dogs began to bark tentatively.  

What was it you ask?  A loud, drunken rendition of the chorus of God Bless America.  Just the chorus nothing else.  And as loud as it was the singer in question was stumbling through the space between my fence and my neighbor's trailer.  He was just wondering around singing God Bless America at the top of his lungs at 9am.  

I thought I was losing my mind, seriously.  Was I really hearing this?  Was this a dream?  So I called Wynn at work to tell her about it, if only because I wanted to see if I was dreaming or if she would mention it when she got home.  You guessed it, I wasn't dreaming, she asked me about it when she got home.  Great, I kind of wished I'd been dreaming because the other alternative was that Airstream living had finally gotten to me and I was losing my mind.  

The next day Wynn was home and off work and at 9am guess what woke her up.  The drunken chorus of God Bless America being sung drunkenly at full volume.  Yes!  I'm not crazy, or either we're both now crazy. So being the type A person she is, Wynn called the office and they went on a hunt for the drunken song bird.  He was real and we weren't crazy.  They told him to keep it down and we didn't hear him again.  

So about a week later I'm out in the yard emptying the black tank before a cold snap and I see this man wondering around in the dark with a light on his hat and one on each bicep and a light strapped to his dog.  Okay cool, he likes to see where he's going, great.  Living in an RV park you get used to having a few people around that are just a few bricks shy.  It's part of every day life.  Fine, live and let live.  I finish what I'm doing and usher the dogs inside before they can bark at this guy.  

I don't think anything of it and I decide to go up to the shower house.  There's the light man, dressed like a frontiersman, you know, coon skin cap, scraggly beard, buckskin jacket with fringe and this fluffy little dog. Okay great, cute dog.  As I head to the shower I over hear him complaining to one of the guys that work at the park that someone made him stop singing in the mornings.  You guessed it, this was Mr. God Bless America himself.  

I found out later that he started to deteriorate after a few days and the police had to take him out of here.  I felt bad, he was just trying to live life the only way he knew how.  I think that's what we're all trying to do out here.  

Pseudo Friday

It is officially Pseudo Friday, even though I just got off work and haven't gone to bed yet.  This will be the first time that my last shift doesn't bleed over into the morning of my day off in a very long time.  Generally I would got to work at 11pm and get off around 7am on Wednesday morning, the first of two days off.  Now I will actually get off tonight.  I'm not sure what to do with myself.  Oh yeah, I suppose I could take care of the laundry monster that's making the Airstream bunk/ hallway almost impassable.  And I suppose I could actually continue the Airstream stories.  Maybe if it's cool enough I could cook out instead of reheating cheap prepackaged food or running out for fast food.  Alright never mind I have plenty to do and since Dakota is all new and improved now I don't have to worry about leaving him unattended.  His stitches are out and the cone of shame is no more, I guess I'm out of excuses.  Ooh I could get a haircut, I really need one of those, ahem after the laundry of course.

I'm Doing it Again

I'm reading old houseblogs when I should be blogging here.  Today it's the Bangor Bungalow, I can't help it... we have a bungalow of our own in another city and we are looking to buy one here.  It's so easy for me to get distracted when there are so many people doing such neat things to bring their old homes back to the era in which they were built.  So I'm reading this and bookmarking that and just futzing around in general today.  I will pick up where I left off with the Oklahoma Blizzard, just bear with me I'm more in the mood to move ahead than to remember.

Sustainability

I think the hardest part about Airstreaming full time is my urge to become sustainable.  Sure we buy recycled and organic as often as we can afford to and my cupboards are stocked with non-perishable foods, but we depend way too much on Whole Foods and Farmers' Markets for foods that we could grow ourselves if we had the space.  Yes, yes, I'm yet another person jumping on the sustainability bandwagon.  I grew up with a garden and later with beef cattle, I ate farm fresh eggs, butter and milk and I knew where my food was coming from if it didn't come from my own home.  Now that's not to say that I don't know where half of my food comes from.  I know when I buy meat from the woman who runs a farm outside of town that it's coming from her farm.  Or if I buy veggies from one of the farmers at the farmers' market I trust that they have grown them in their own gardens.  But there are certain things, like what I made for lunch today that come prepackaged.  


Sure I didn't run and get fast food but it did come out of a package.  


Kielbasa and sour kraut, the kielbasa came from a big box store and was made by one of those infamous meat makers that all of the grocery stores stock, the sour kraut came from a can.  Now realistically I know the fine art of sausage making is well beyond my abilities, but that is something I can buy from the farmers' market.  Also I am trying to get rid of prepackaged meat, and it's better to eat it than it is to throw it away.  But the sour kraut realistically I could buy my own cabbage and pickle my own, but in the Airsream I just don't have the room or the means.  Eventually I would like to get to the point that we are growing a small garden and putting up produce from that garden for the winter so that our cabinets aren't full of food that came from wherever with scary chemicals in them, that we just pour into a pan to reheat and serve.  

Thaw

We eventually thawed out from the blizzard but it was staying really cold at night.  It was in fact cold enough that our pipes stayed frozen pretty much until March.  Towards the end of the winter it got cold enough that pipes froze and burst all over the city.  In fact the sprinkler pipes at my work burst and brought down a ceiling.  During that time our pipes at the Aistream were still frozen, not much had changed about that until the thaw.  Last winter we'd gotten away with our pipes intact and we had just assumed we would this winter too.  Not so.  Remember that there is an oil heater running off an extension cord plugged into a surge protector in the bathroom and that's where all of the pipes are.  So it seemed like a good idea at the time and I'd still run it the same way this winter if I had to.

I had come home from an overnight shift and it was still dark and cold outside when I went to bed.  At approximately ten am or so I awoke feeling warm like the sun was shining in on me.  It felt all warm and cozy so I just kept my eyes closed and hoped I'd fall back asleep.  I then became aware of something, an odd noise keeping me awake.  It sounded like a pressure washer in the bathroom or behind the trailer.  So I leaned over the side of the bunk and waited for my eyes to adjust.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  The bathroom was flooding, and the flood was creeping up the sides of the surge protector.  I ran outside and opened the trunk first just so I'd know what had gone wrong.  Was it a fitting (we can fix that) or was it a burst pipe (we can't fix that)?  I could tell that it was a PVC pressure fitting that twisted on and off the copper, but I couldn't twist it down tight enough to stop the high pressure spray that was hitting me in the face and spraying into the trailer, so I just turned off the water and cleaned up inside, the surge protector was unharmed and nothing shorted out.

Hottest Day of the Year?

So apparently it was the hottest day of the year today, well yesterday, and the Airstream stayed pretty cool.  I didn't really notice how hot it was until I went to work.  I guess our air conditioner isn't set for this kind of heat and we can't get to the controls until Monday.  Yay!  I get to sweat for eight hours tomorrow too.  I can't wait.  So my first day back was good.  I only knew two of the kids, but I wasn't too surprised.  I work in a homeless shelter so kids are always coming and going and after being gone for ten days I would have been disappointed if all of the same ones were still there.  I like to see them change and progress and move on and it saddens me when for whatever reason they get stuck.  So it was nice to only see a couple of familiar faces.  Change is good especially in my line of work, and no two days are ever the same.  I love my job, I do, that's one thing I can say.  I love what I do.  I don't make much money and it can be extremely stressful but in the end youth work is something I will do until I die, even after I retire.  This job is the only reason we chose to stay and live in the Airstream.  I'd never found a career path that I love until I found youth work and Wynn and I decided that it is certainly something worth staying for.