In South Dakota: The Motor Homers Gather

By Michael Demarest

For many Americans, a home is not a house. It is a vehicle. The rolling residence, full or part time, may be a $330,000, 40-ft., custom-converted Greyhound bus or a third-hand '52 Flexible less than half that size and one-thirtieth as expensive. It can sport every domestic convenience or be almost as spartan as a Conestoga. But nearly all of those unwieldy looking crates on wheels are habitations, as legitimately and pridefully owned as any picket-fenced, split-level ranch. With one overriding difference: If you don't like the neighbors, the weather or the garbage collection, you can roll right out. If the parking site at Paw Paw, Mich., palls, if tornadoes threaten Thunderwoman Park in Iowa, if Oso Ridge, N. Mex., turns out soso, there's always another rallying ground down an Interstate. There, for a few dollars a day, the motor-home owner can hook up to a power line, fill water and fuel tanks, flush out the crud and replenish the refrigerator. The new friends come free.

Despite their nomadic ways, motor homers are intensely gregarious people. A great many belong to organizations around the country that stage rallies at which members swap tall tales of the road, expertise and quantities of food and drink (the fare runs to beef, beans and Bud). The biggest and most tightly knit group is the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA), which boasts 31,000 dues-paying members ($25 per annum per family) in 130 chapters across the nation. To qualify for membership, a motor-home owner must have a vehicle that is at least 18 ft. long, is "self-contained," meaning that it has an on-board sanitary system, galley and generator, and is built so that an adult can walk upright from driver's seat to back. Some come with multiple color TVs and air conditioners, CB radios, trash compactors, ice makers, built-in vacuum cleaners, music centers and, in the case of Jim and Dee Foss, a Hammond organ.

FMCA is not for vanners, camper-trailer haulers or owners of the cruder class of recreational vehicles. The distinction is not so much an economic or social delineation as a statement: the esteemed "goose egg" FMCA plaque on the front of a vehicle, be it a mansion of the macadam or a turnpike retirement pad, means that it is a livable, functioning home. Its owner belongs to what may be the largest extended family in America.

FMCA held its Grand National Rally last week at the Minnehaha County fairgrounds outside Sioux Falls, S. Dak. The motor homer's odyssey was officially dubbed the Great Plains Buffalo Roadeo, a name explicable only because 1) a sizable surviving herd of buffalo can be visited a few miles away (it had few visitors), and 2) there was an authentic rodeo for the road runners. The rally attracted some 7,500 people and 2,078 motor coaches, many bearing names such as It's a No Bus, Jackass Flats, Big Debt, Stick It Inn and Daddy's Dog House.

From the air, the event looked like something between an incipient tank battle and the ultimate traffic jam, with latter-day prairie schooners lined up nose to nose and flank to flank across the 225-acre fairgrounds and several ancillary sites. On the ground, Minnehaha's greensward resembled a living museum of transportation. Immobilized homers, after hooking up to electrical outlets and (in many cases) jacking up their coaches for the equilibrium needed for efficient operation of refrigerators and bars, fanned out across the grounds on bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, golf carts, dune buggies, compact cars, some replicated classic autos, an amphibian or two and a pristine Model T. The license plates came from about every state of the Union, plus some Canadian provinces.

I'M FULL or I'M DRY, said countless cards on windshields. Translation: toilet holding tank needs to be pumped; freshwater tank needs filling. The two functions, fortunately, were performed by different vehicles, the sewage carrier being known as the honey wagon. A do-not-disturb sign on several coaches warned: WHEN I'M ROCKIN', DON'T BE KNOCKIN'.

For nonrockers, there was plenty to do, see and absorb. Seminars in sewing, jewelry making, microwave cookery, diesel maintenance, fuel injection, hair care, towing techniques, junior ("younkers' ") fashion, vehicle insurance, security. A big exhibition building was aswarm with purchasers snapping up everything from miracle deodorizers to trailer-brake actuators. Several manufacturers offered a vehicular equivalent of the annual physical checkup (engine troubles were manifold). There was a poetry reading, hours of square dancing, trips to the local zoo and art gallery. A ham-radio center was sending out 100 free messages a day to anywhere. And just about everyone wanted to inspect everyone else's setup, from carburetor to Thermosan II, a new device that vaporizes and dispels en route the sewage from holding tanks.

Volunteers ran a cheery baby-sitting operation in the National Guard armory on the fairgrounds. In fact, volunteers just about ran the rally. There were only two paid security guards, both female, attractive and unarmed. A hero of the rally was walkie-talkie-packing Adelbert Smith, 63, a wiry, retired electrical contractor from Cortland, N.Y. The ubiquitous Smitty was responsible not only for parking and departing every single vehicle, but was a self-appointed and much-needed traffic cop, litterer scolder, Mr. Fix-It and (it was rumored) marriage counselor.

People who live on wheels constitute an American subculture. In spirit they seem first cousins to the pioneers--except that the next horizon does not promise rich bottom land or gold. Still, there are rewards along the way. Some business couples, like the Crowthers from San Diego, live year round in their bus, a Newell Jewel; Dick, 38, and Mikey, 34, make a good living selling French cookware at the two dozen motor-coach rallies they attend each year. For a few, like TV Actor Darold Westbrook, 46, and his wife, Darlene, 45, a converted 1950 vintage Greyhound is not only a convenience for off-beat locations, it has also become a passion. As members of six motor-coaching chapters, the Westbrooks roll up to a score of rallies around the country each year. "You lose a lot of friends this way," drawls Darold. "All my old friends wanted to talk about was show biz. But you gain a lot of new friends too. All they want to talk about is how to get 10 mpg out of a 225 hp Cummins Diesel with 59,500 miles on it." "Yeah," interjects the comely Darlene, "when you get to one of these rallies, all you see of your husband is his back end bending over an engine compartment." As bus owners--Darold spent a year furnishing and renovating their Greyhound--the Westbrooks belong to the Southern California chapter of Bus Nuts.

The Minnehahas have produced no Margaret Meads, alas. But to the amateur sociologist, it soon becomes apparent that the people who live much or part of their lives on axles are fairly representative of American society as a whole--apart from those itchy wheels. FMCA members are doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers, many retired, some not; they are construction workers and accountants and secretaries, many quite young. They are, literally, driven people en route but not rootless, seeking from rally to rally and clime to clime old acquaintances and new, scenes to remember, sun sets of a different hue. L.W. ("Will") Willette, a retired, seven-times wounded Marine Corps sergeant major who looks like Ollie Hardy and sounds like John Wayne, is typical. Will takes his 27 ft., rebuilt Travco and 21 medals from four wars from town to town, ole buddy to ole buddy, all year round, stopping only in the town he calls Lost Wages, Nev., to collect his ample pension checks. A reluctant hero, he has found the good life.

The cowboy, the American bedouin, is the original self-contained traveler, but even he and his coach and his equine van can be found these days at rally sites. A ruddy Oklahoman, watering his bronco at the Minnehaha Roadeo, articulated one insoluble problem of motorized life. "The trouble," he said somberly, patting his steed, "is they ain't yet developed a vehikkle with holdin' tanks for hosses."

--Michael Demarest

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.