Chapter 20
On Becoming a Caravan
Indeed, Peaches and Sunshine were following right behind us. At the Arizona border Peaches pulled up alongside, leaning way over, almost onto Sunshine’s lap, he was shouting out the passenger window, “Look over there! Look over there!” pointing with his right index finger out Sunshine’s window. At first, we didn’t know what he’s pointing at. Then he pulled in front of us and Sunshine started pointing out the window.
“It’s an RV Park,” Max said, “they must want to stop here.” But this was no ordinary RV Park. It just kept on going and going for three miles to the next exit with hundreds, if not thousands, of RVs. So, of course, we followed Peaches off the exit ramp.
Then a big debate. We were planning on going straight through to Tucson, and though it was mid-afternoon, we weren’t ready to call it a day, so let’s not pay the $80 the guy at the gate wants. “No,” Steve argued, “this is a must stop. If we can win over the RV crowd, we can win over America. Skip would want us to. Let’s go for it! Remember how they liked us at that Candlestick Park? Even if this one is filled with Rednecks, I’m such a great lawyer, winning over juries, watch me, ‘the great persuader’ in action.”
“No,” Rocky said, “Leave it to me. The universal language is ‘What is Fun’.”
Thank goodness (most of us were thinking) no horns honked when we went down a row to the far end of the campgrounds. We figured we’d do better by starting off hiding the Land Yacht. Sunshine said, “Ohh, nooo – everybody loves everybody at these places, don’t worry.”
So under a clear sky, but surrounded by concrete, nary a tree or a bush or patch of grass in sight, we set up our grill, pulled out the lawn chairs, washed some vegetables, began shish-kabobing, and waited to see what would develop. Our immediate neighbors did admire our colors and asked what part of Minnesota we were from and how we all knew each other. We asked which part of Arkansas they were from and where they were heading. “Hollywood,” they said, “we’ve heard the mansions are fabulous.”
Patty asked if they minded being filmed as we talked, “You’re such nice people,” Patty said to them, “and we’re making a movie about how great America is.” They were flattered to be included.
But some other fellow RVers at the park started out not so friendly. A couple tall guys, looking 30ish, seeming too young to be RVers, with baseball caps on backwards, were walking down the row in our direction. They could have been twins, both with crew cuts, both holding Budweisers. “Got any weed we can buy?” one of them asked.
“Watch out. They could be narcs,” Peaches said under his breath, grin gone. We said we didn’t have any.
“What? Hippies without pot?” the other new arrival remarked.
“Hippies?!” Rocky retorted, looking pretty tough in his jean jacket and aviator glasses, “Grow some fucking hair. You guys look like rejects from a Hollywood casting call for ‘Back to the ‘50s’.”
“What the heck, you lookin’ for a fight ol’ man?” the first one said, clenching his fist.
“Come on,” the lady from Arkansas said, “either be sociable or move on.”
“Oh, we can be sociable all right,” the guy said, unclenching his fist. “What are you guys? Some kinda travelin’ hippy-political circus act?”
“Careful what you say next,” Patty jumped in, pulling her video camera out of her holster. “We’re making a movie about good guys and bad guys in America. Which do you want to be?”
“So what does it take to be a ‘good guy’? Do you have to feel the Bern?” one of the indistinguishable two asked, pointing to one of our bumper stickers. “I’m from Trump country.”
“You’re kidding me,” Rocky said. “I’d never have guessed. Thought for sure if you were old enough to vote in 2020, you’d have been a socialist for Bernie, or at least a fem for Hillary.”
That brought a chuckle from the other tall one, “Yeah, my buddy Austin here, a fem! A fem for Hillary. Ha-ha.”
Laughing with them, Rocky asked “Wanna couple beers?” popping three Sierra Nevadas.
“And by the way,” the lady from Arkansas said, “no dissing Hillary if you stick around. Pull up a couple chairs.”
“What are you guys driving? Where you parked?” Sunshine asked.
“Next row over,” the one apparently named Austin answered. “But we were surrounded by Trump-types, so we’re looking for a new space.”
“Okay,” Patty said, “our movie is a blend of politics and ‘what is fun.’ So you guys like walking around starting fights for fun?”
“Roll your camera, sweetie, and I’ll tell you what fun is. Call me Tex. Austin here’s my sidekick. We’re writing a book about how to meet strangers. We always start nice, like ‘Hey, that’s a great set of cowboy boots you got on’ (pointing to Patty’s footwear), but Christ, lookin’ for a little smoke wasn’t meant to start a fight. Just your buddy here, apparently doesn’t like being called a hippie.”
“Fuck you,” Rocky said with a smile. “I wasn’t sure you were going to take the Hollywood reject comment as a joke or not. I could have called you worse.”
Later that evening Rocky and Steve decided to walk over to the next row. Nobody knew where Huck was. Max and Patty stayed back. The guys who called themselves Tex and Austin were sitting with a half-dozen grown-ups and a half-dozen kids at a couple portable picnic tables set up in an empty parking space. We were introduced as “the hippies from the next row over, but hey – they know what fun is.”
“Grab some beers out of the cooler,” somebody said.
Rocky got everybody laughing right away, and poked some fun in Tex and Austin’s direction, asking, “So what happens when a bunch of hippies meet a bunch of rednecks?” That got some chuckles, and then he answered his own question, “I was a Golden Gloves boxer who loved beating the shit out of Rednecks. Your two goons show up. Us Hippies picked the fight. The Rednecks turn into pansies, flash the peace sign. And, hey, everybody agrees to get stoned.”
Before we headed back to our row, Steve did get in one defense of liberalism which at least one person seemed to agree with. “A conservative,” Steve said, “is someone who mostly sees the things that are going good; a liberal is someone who thinks we need to make some changes.”
“Well then, call me a liberal,” one of them said.
The next morning in our concrete Shangri-la, fixing breakfast, we learned what had become of Huck. Tapping his foot, bobbing his head, he told us Sunshine had corralled him into going for a walk to the soda machines, pushed him gently up against one, came chest to chest, and said, “Wanna make it with me?” Best way to describe Sunshine – “bubbly” – bubbly in spirit and looks, with no bra. She was always in short cut-offs, oftentimes shoeless. Everybody noticed her nice legs.
Huck continued, “What about Peaches? I asked her, and guess what she said? – ‘Oh, he’s probably trying to make it with some lady down the row if your friend Patty isn’t available.’”
“Just like I suspected,” Patty said, “two no-goods.”
As we were packing up, Sunshine and Peaches came over and said they’d decided to stick around longer and would maybe catch up with us again in Santa Fe – they would skip Tucson. We said good-bye to our Arkansas neighbors and promised to send them a video of the movie when it was done – “and by the way, if you stay somewhere where they have the internet, look us up.”