The Old Broke Rancher Names His Pavement Princess

Longtime readers of my humor column may recall that one of my ambitions is to own another RV one day. I've had a couple in the past, which I regard with the same wistful melancholy usually reserved for ex-sweethearts and pets no longer present.

There was the old 1987 Pace Arrow in whose spacious cabin we watched many a leisurely mile roll by. We didn't get it in 1987, you understand. By the time we got her, she was herself old enough to rent a car. It got four to five miles to the gallon, and made a noise something like a dyspeptic walrus trying to swim through Elmer's glue as it struggled to climb mountain roads. As it struggled, as a matter of fact, to make any grade that wasn't totally flat. Come to think of it, it would go downhill, but only if you pushed it.

Eventually, we sold the Pace Arrow to some poor sucker, which enabled us, in those more comfortable economic times, to get a Monaco Signature Series. I feel sorry for you, dear reader, denied the sight of a younger, less broke rancher sailing down the blacktop in his Monaco Signature Series. It was a big, handsome rig. 42 feet of diesel-pushing power. But this was no mere brute. No, this was a triumph of aesthetics, with an elegant color fade and strong, sporting stripe that ran down the length of its handsome bulk like a fin on a shark. How many drivers saw that gorgeous and, let's come out and say it, girthy stripe pass them on the interstate like a bolt out of the blue?

Sure, it was a little city-unfriendly, but it was like a magic carpet on the super slab, carrying us in perfect comfort to our kids' soccer matches, rickety old hot springs, and hole-in-the-wall steakhouses. And the best part was that, whenever we wanted, we could pull over—whether on some dusty byway, or even in the middle of the interstate at peak traffic—and take a nap.

I can only paint a picture, but had you seen her, you could only have said, voice hushed in awe, "That's one hell of a pavement princess." And had you seen yours truly, her captain, sitting handsome and resolute in his captain's chair, one hand on the wheel, the other dipping in and out of a bag of donut holes, well, your heart would swell.

We sold the Monaco Signature Series only after her suspension began to give out, and, like having to shoot the proverbial horse, it fell to us to make her someone else's problem. We listed it on Craigslist and sold it—to some sucker.

Then we lived, for years and years, a joyless life of drudgery and toil, until my wife texted me something she saw in a Facebook listing: a real pavement princess, if you catch my meaning. I bought her probably a week later, emboldened by the undeniable fact that my wife had encouraged me to, in a sense at least. I had her towed home before the wife could ask too many questions.

"Did you inspect it?" she asked, watching the tow truck deposit my prize in the driveway.

Of course I had. I'd looked right at it, hadn't I? I'd pored over the images on the Facebook Marketplace listing. Did I mention that whoever owned this thing before me must have been a photographer because the photos were so good? They looked like Ansel Adams had taken them or something, every dent and spot of rust so artfully composed that they could have been on postcards. And the listing itself? No Japanese poet of the 18th century could have composed a haiku with the same brevity.

Honey, I assured her, I can fix anything that isn't broken. Huh? she said.

Having gotten the rig home and admired its (somewhat faded) beauty a while, I set about trying to figure out what it would take to get it running. It took me probably three or four days before I had to admit that this thing wasn't going to be sailing down any blacktop anytime soon. Maybe I should have been tipped off when I had to tow the damn thing home.

Beautiful but immobile, majestic but inert, it sat in my yard. It sits there still.

Note here that to work on a motorhome, a mechanic should be young enough to get back up after crawling under the camper on a creeper. It can take a man my age half an hour just to return to standing position after discovering the bolt I'm trying to loosen is a 9/16, not a 1/2 inch—and on the third-try-is-a-charm principle, it eventually turns out to be a 14mm. You math wizards will realize I just spent an hour and a half loosening one bolt.

After a few days of crawling in and over and under it, my back aching and my eyes watery from squinting, I concluded that the problem was that its whole ass was busted.

The problem, as it turned out, was that a 1997 RV is now 28 years old, which is a good age to be, say, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, but a bad age to be an RV. Everything that could corrode had corroded. Everything made of rubber—belts, hoses, seals, tires—had hardened into something resembling fossilized tree bark. The fiberglass had developed a fine network of cracks like a spider's web. The alternator was shot. The air conditioner had given up the ghost. Water lines leaked. The sewer tank leaked, which was considerably worse. Everything needs replacing, but you'd have better luck finding replacement parts for the Space Shuttle Challenger (to which she bears a little resemblance, come to think of it).

It took hundreds of phone calls and several hundred dollars just to locate a replacement alternator, and the first one they sent me was defective. They replaced that with a second alternator, also busted. Screen door weather stripping, refrigerator door locks, and cabinet latches have all proven as elusive as Bigfoot; you can see pictures of them and persistent rumors suggest that they exist, but you can't exactly buy them on eBay.

So I gave up in frustration and sat in front her, my little princess. She's still beautiful, I thought.

Plus, it occurred to me, it means that my mother-in-law has someplace to stay when she comes. It'll be a little cold in winter, but she can always light a small fire inside. Plus, it gives me a place to go when I'm in the metaphorical doghouse. Which, I began to suspect, I might soon be.

Yes, I thought, rubbing my chin and looking at all the grandeur of her 38 feet, she was a good investment after all. No matter what. I got my RV. Even if she was totally, utterly inert. Immobile. Paralyzed.

But how to tell the wife?

The screen door closed with a bang as I entered the kitchen, wiping oil off my hands with a rag. She turned from the sink and looked at me with an arched eyebrow.

"Well?" she asked.

"Let me put it this way. I've named our little pavement princess. We're going to call her Christopher Reeve."