A Junkyard Tale

Benton, AZ
January 11, 2009

I’ll bet you think that by now we’re old hands at this RV stuff. I’ll bet you think that with six months of driving under our collective belt, we’re not only road-savvy; we’re the Unsers, Knievels, Pettys, Newmans of the big rig. That we glide around obstacles; we ace bridges, dirt roads and skyways; we back up, in, and out with ease, never breaking a sweat the whole time.

Okay, maybe you don’t think that. Maybe you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or the other fender to fall off, to be a bit more automotive about it.

Actually, we've been doing pretty well. Aside from the occasional bay door that pops open as we drive along, giving our fellow drivers apoplexy, and causing them to gesture frantically to us that something is amiss. (We pull over and close it; no biggie.)

However, and of course there was bound to be a however. Today, we made 260 miles from Phoenix to Benton, Arizona, safe and sound, thank you very much, until it was time to pull in to the campground.

Our Tom-Tom is really a wuss. He panics when we don’t follow orders. He said to turn in 300 yards, so since he’d been nice to us for three whole hours, we obeyed, even though it really didn’t look as much like a campground as it did a junkyard.

To be sure, there were some RVs there, but these rigs looked like my grandfather might have built them, and my grandmother might have said, “You’ll never get ME in that thing!” Once we were past the gate of no return, we realized: it really was a junkyard.

Okay, we’d go in one gate and out the other. No problemo. Except that the second gate was locked. Now I ask you, why lock one gate when the other is wide open?

John looked for an escape-turnaround and found none, but there was one skinny road that seemed to loop around, just behind that dilapidated old truck carcass. There was also some unidentifiable tent of metal rods that we’d have to get around, but otherwise it looked negotiable. We went for it.

Scrittttcccch. That was the right rear-view mirror as it scrunched up against the cyclone fence on the right. Crrrrunnnnch. That was the sound of the left side coming into contact with the metal teepee thingy. I got out to investigate.

Well, the mirror scratch wasn’t too bad. It probably could be polished off. I walked around the back to investigate the other side of the coach.

The teepee, as it turned out, was a tent of rods protecting some sort of underground/overground pipe. Hmmm. The coach hadn’t hurt it, but it had ripped off the cotton batting and vinyl cover on the pipe.

Which also revealed the gauge. Which showed the gas pressure. Slowly, it dawned on me: we were sitting on a gas pipe. Now what? “Don’t move!” I screamed.

John got out the sledgehammer and banged on the connectors that tied the Jeep to the RV. With each bam, I flinched. Was I about to fly skyward? And what about John? At least I was in the Jeep. On the other hand, the Jeep and I were both prisoners of the car’s gas tank, weren’t we?

John finally got me separated from the death van, and I scooted backwards and out of the way of impending shrapnel. Now all we had to do was get the RV off the gas line without incident. Or course, we were sandwiched between it and the fence, which would make maneuvering problematic.

I took charge. Running to the back of the RV, I yelled into the backup camera, “Watch me! Turn up the volume! Listen to me! Don’t do anything until I tell you it’s okay.”

What a responsibility! On the other hand, what power! What control! I was the one! I put on my metal bra, my steel tiara and my thigh-high boots. I was Wonder Woman! Only I could get us out of this! Only me! I clicked my metal bracelets together! I would do this with all the exclamation points in my arsenal!

I forgot to be worried. I forgot everything except my charge – get us out of here, whole!
(I still had another exclamation point in my bag, obviously.)

“Watch me, watch me! Are you listening? Listen to me!” I yelled. I pointed right, I pointed left, I signaled come back straight, now turn, now pull those wheels all the way to the right, now straighten up, now stop, now pull forward, now get the hell out of here.

I’m typing this, so you know I was successful. We had a couple of small scratches on the left side where we broached the gas line and almost blew ourselves up. We probably have a scratch or two on the back of the mirror, but I didn’t even bother to look after the first quick glimpse.

Why should I? I was the hero of the hour. I didn’t need to sweat the small details.

Forty yards to the left of the junkyard, we pulled in and found a lovely campground. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear the Tom-Tom blushed.

In the reception office, the sweet lady in charge greeted us with the usual, “Welcome, how was your trip?”

“Terrific,” we said.