LESSON
This is going to be a long post, so be forewarned; it won't be 'War and Peace', but it might edge toward 'The Great Gatsby' in length. It's the old story: give an old man a keyboard and he'll try to write about a room full of monkeys with typewriters...or whatever that old story is.
My presence on the Forum is not because it reflects my situation but the fact my wife and I took a cross-country van trip some years ago and this was the source of much of my information. Staying here rather than moving to one that's accurate, living in a park model with an old Class C in storage that'll become my Unabomber Cabin if my late-stage ALZ wife passes before me...well, that's because my belief in Voluntary Simplicity deems it the best place to be: if one thinks Simple, Small is the mindset to embrace, and there are few living spaces smaller than a van. Despite the way society seems to be going, actually living IN a shopping cart isn't in my knowledge base...but give it a few years at the rate we're going? There might actually BE a Cart Forum.
(got some ideas for that if the petrol runs out or becomes so expensive that we're all immobilized, but...maybe later for that discussion)
My purpose here is a cautionary tale.
This home is in a stable small-town park--mostly elder residents, a few Viet Vets like me, to give an era to it--and one of my "pals" here is a 50ish fellow that seems rather bi-polar (not my nature to pry)...whose not-terribly old (2015ish) Class A went up in flames and the ferocious explosion of at least one propane tank a couple of nights ago. He kept a nice rig and a nice area around it, but the fire was so ferocious that it totalled out the next-door neighbor, too.
He wasn't there at the time but his beloved cat was. And that's what's hurting him most of all.
Our hope is that since he leaves the door open the cat was able to claw through the fiberglass screen and escape and has been driven into the woods by the destruction of its home...especially because of the explosion(s) involved, but it's a wide area to search and his home is a 2/3-consumed shell down to the chassis, so about all we can do is hope that Booby returns and lifts his spirits.
(no, we don't know how it got that name; she looks neither like a waterfowl nor a mammary. there may be another explanation altogether. perhaps the old term for a Dunce. and 'Bubbie' means Grandmother in Yiddish, for example.)
The Lesson to which was referred to--if you haven't already guessed--is that he let himself become seduced by the stability and security of the park in his four-years-or-so here and let his insurance lapse, so now he's without even clothes or his celphone; his only possession left is his nearly-as-beloved Harley, which he'll now have to sell to keep himself off the street; he has no family we know of, and we're uncertain if he can even work.
He's not catatonic, but is shell-shocked.
So...advice to all of you, most of whom don't need it, but a reinforcement of a wake-up call...PREPARE. The End Times are always near, and Dame (or Damn) Fortune is always there with the cold steel suppository to wake you up.
(that last sentence may be a little overboard. if a re-read leaves it in here, blame it on my creeping senility. or Albino Brain Chiggers.)
Peace upon all your houses, movin' or sittin' still, and all your beloveds.
This is going to be a long post, so be forewarned; it won't be 'War and Peace', but it might edge toward 'The Great Gatsby' in length. It's the old story: give an old man a keyboard and he'll try to write about a room full of monkeys with typewriters...or whatever that old story is.
My presence on the Forum is not because it reflects my situation but the fact my wife and I took a cross-country van trip some years ago and this was the source of much of my information. Staying here rather than moving to one that's accurate, living in a park model with an old Class C in storage that'll become my Unabomber Cabin if my late-stage ALZ wife passes before me...well, that's because my belief in Voluntary Simplicity deems it the best place to be: if one thinks Simple, Small is the mindset to embrace, and there are few living spaces smaller than a van. Despite the way society seems to be going, actually living IN a shopping cart isn't in my knowledge base...but give it a few years at the rate we're going? There might actually BE a Cart Forum.
(got some ideas for that if the petrol runs out or becomes so expensive that we're all immobilized, but...maybe later for that discussion)
My purpose here is a cautionary tale.
This home is in a stable small-town park--mostly elder residents, a few Viet Vets like me, to give an era to it--and one of my "pals" here is a 50ish fellow that seems rather bi-polar (not my nature to pry)...whose not-terribly old (2015ish) Class A went up in flames and the ferocious explosion of at least one propane tank a couple of nights ago. He kept a nice rig and a nice area around it, but the fire was so ferocious that it totalled out the next-door neighbor, too.
He wasn't there at the time but his beloved cat was. And that's what's hurting him most of all.
Our hope is that since he leaves the door open the cat was able to claw through the fiberglass screen and escape and has been driven into the woods by the destruction of its home...especially because of the explosion(s) involved, but it's a wide area to search and his home is a 2/3-consumed shell down to the chassis, so about all we can do is hope that Booby returns and lifts his spirits.
(no, we don't know how it got that name; she looks neither like a waterfowl nor a mammary. there may be another explanation altogether. perhaps the old term for a Dunce. and 'Bubbie' means Grandmother in Yiddish, for example.)
The Lesson to which was referred to--if you haven't already guessed--is that he let himself become seduced by the stability and security of the park in his four-years-or-so here and let his insurance lapse, so now he's without even clothes or his celphone; his only possession left is his nearly-as-beloved Harley, which he'll now have to sell to keep himself off the street; he has no family we know of, and we're uncertain if he can even work.
He's not catatonic, but is shell-shocked.
So...advice to all of you, most of whom don't need it, but a reinforcement of a wake-up call...PREPARE. The End Times are always near, and Dame (or Damn) Fortune is always there with the cold steel suppository to wake you up.
(that last sentence may be a little overboard. if a re-read leaves it in here, blame it on my creeping senility. or Albino Brain Chiggers.)
Peace upon all your houses, movin' or sittin' still, and all your beloveds.
