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Making up Stories

I do this thing sometimes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, where I make up stories about people we see in campgrounds. Mostly it's only the people whose operation seems a little sketchy or mysterious. It doesn't help my imagination (or, it helps it, whichever way you look at it) that various camp hosts have shared stories with us about campground meth cookers, people dying in RVs, and other not-necessarily-sinister but odd situations… My natural tendency (thanks Mom!) is to imagine some crazy scenario to answer the mild questions posed by, for instance, the soggy little moss-covered trailer next door, where the two tiny dogs sleep in the cab of the truck, and the occupant(s)? leave every day after loading many black trash bags from the little trailer into the back of the truck (what is IN those bags?)

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Or the flat black camper/truck combination that swoops nervously in and out of the park to fill a water tank each day and get out quick before anyone talks to him. I heard him yelling when he went inside the camper…maybe he's got a prisoner chained up in there. Or maybe he was just talking loudly to himself, because he overfilled the tank. See what I mean? I can't help it.

What about the couple in the huge red Peterbuilt motorhome with the American flag tacked across the grill? She, mid-60s probably, wearing a leopard print coat and white pants, black leather gloves, and large sparkly earrings…going for a bike ride? I know, I have zebra print towels… Is this my future?

Then there was the campsite full of people (maybe 5 of 'em, not counting the cats) who brought a truckload of shipping pallets and kept a pallet-fed fire going almost all hours of the day and night. They'd periodically disappear into their tents for hours though, probably to sleep off the effects of the hooch they were drinking from the Nascar foam cup cozies. Were they homeless? Skipping from one state park to another after snagging a load of pallets from that place behind the truck stop? 

What about that one motor home with a little tiny dog door in the back that led to a little ramp out into a dog run? How nice for that dog…a yard! But then one day when we walked by, the dog run (with the ramp) was out at the campsite curb with a "For Sale" sign on it. Had the dog died? Or chewed the owner's favorite slippers? What happened? And then, the next day or so when we walked by again, the dog run was back attached, with the dog in it! Like nothing had ever happened.

All these things make me very curious.

(Posted by Laura)

4 Comments

  1. Haha thanks for the laugh! I love your blog and I hope that one day my vintage airstream will look half as pretty inside as yours does when it grows up (or gets put back together:)

  2. Teela Teela

    Please make this a regular feature of your blog! We all have weird neighbors but the Airstream has an endless rotation of weird neighbors. Seems silly not to take advantage. Some of these stories are so full of WHA? that I can’t even work right now.

    xoxo,
    T

  3. @Laura: You’re welcome, thank you, and I’m sure it will! Keep up the good fight. I admire you restorers greatly!!

    @Teela: Will do! I was kind of shy about it at first, but I always crack myself up with my imaginings and figure others probably do the same thing… (“What the hell? They’re smoking ribs on a Traeger?? In a campground?? Are they insane?”). And if they don’t, maybe they’ll just laugh at/with me on it. 🙂

    -Laura

  4. Teehee! You’re hilarious!

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