USK | Prose | Alvary

Chieftain

I'd forgotten when Jonny asked me: "What do you mean you had a Winnebago growing up, that's like not telling me about a member of your family."

I'd remembered certain cars we had like family, but I'd forgotten the appliance white motorhome that once cast a shadow over the family picture we tried to take in front of it, and it seemed, after twenty five years, more like a distant relative, the kind we met occasionally on a faraway childhood vacation, and couldn't get away from fast enough.

I remember the Friday it arrived, a thirty-two foot Winnebago Chieftain, its dark green windshield like giant sunglasses setting off the huge chrome grill stuck in a sullen, smokeshop Indian scowl. Everything about it was impressive, except for goofy Marty Stoffel crawling all around it, showing my father the surgeon the little intricacies of how everything worked, or nearly worked or ought to work, and I laughed watching that first rocky test drive, with dad gently backing over the reflectors lining our driveway and Marty hunched over between the front seats, pointing them down in the big mirrors as they disappeared one by one under the rear wheels.

We had it loaded and out of town before we realized the magnitude of our error. To America we rolled, twin tanks of hi-test, cooking gas, a hundred gallons of fresh water, a frozen chicken in the freezer, and all the comforts of home squeezed onto a four ton bus chassis. It was comical, really; two little kids, two teenage daughters, our parents and the dog duped out onto the road by golden photographs of Airstream trailers in the National Geographic, and dad's office manager's weird-deal motorhead husband.

The Chieftain was substantially longer than the living room it promised to be the highway, but no bigger inside than a broom closet in a Greyhound terminal, which are actually more functional accommodations, but we hadn't learned that either, and the fantasy remained of a vacation without stopping to pee every forty-five miles, and no worries beyond deciding on which touristy vista to anchor our road yacht...

...until the first time dad cut somebody off he hadn't seen in either of the billboard-size mirrors, rocking our rolling teepee to the sound of clanging, unsecured housewares and a satisfying tha-thud from the chicken in the freezer. Ultimately, we were not allowed out of the mother ship when the engine was running, as it became obvious that dad was not capable of keeping the Chieftain's corners away from things.

He made a science out of scraping leaves and seeds off of tree limbs and into the windows. He threw us and our overhead stowage onto the floor bumping the curb each time we turned right; backed into the pumps the first time we stopped for gas; and it wasn't always his fault. The big Chief went through life extra wide, pulling a wake of disrupted traffic, angry pedestrians and minor collision damage, creaking and swaying from town to town like a DC3 in a thunderstorm.

Early on, the thrill ride had some fine moments, especially the entertainment value of Mom's visible anxiety every time the engine started. But we soon learned that the Winnebago was under-engineered in every area, and we began to feel so sorry for dad, because he get stuck trying to make up the difference.

We watched him like treed cats, out in the dark by himself trying to remember the special instructions for dumping the holding tanks, burning his hair and fingertips relighting the gas oven we nicknamed "blowout", and otherwise so miserably failing to keep the domestic facilities provided that we gave up trying to live in the big Chief altogether, and began to operate it like the overgrown airport limo it probably became. Within one day, what had started off as a self-contained family adventure quickly became a grim, dusty search for clean roadside bathrooms and a diner with a booth for six. When we finally got it home six motels and 900 miles later, we acted like it belonged to someone else, and left it beached on the driveway.

I realized Jonny was right about the Winnebago as family when I remembered going outside after dinner that night to see it one last time, unrepentant and magnificent in the dusk of our yard. It sat leaking fluids of various description from eight different places, with green and yellow bugs bigger than my hand stuck and baked onto the grill. A bouquet of weeds was jammed into the corner of the bumper, the aluminum roof ladder that once beckoned to the sky now hung bent in a big curve, with a crease from the picnic table dad pushed halfway across the parking lot behind Abraham Lincoln's house The Chief was more than a machine, filling the carport and hanging out under the eaves, smoking like a fat uncle with a cigar after Thanksgiving dinner.

And in the morning it was gone...

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