It’s been nine months since I moved into my 172.5 sq ft travel trailer that I named the Scrapes of Wrath. Two weeks ago I hooked my camper up, and I dragged it 50 miles or so to near the tippy tip most point of Northwest Ohio to some friends of mine’s homestead farm. My friends offered me a chance to come for a few weeks to work on finishing some remodeling on my tiny camper home, to work on my poetry manuscript, and to catch my breath and figure out my next moves.
This week I started a job working as a budtender in a small Michigan town 20 miles away.
Today, I write this story to tell you how it’s going, my third installment of camper life in nine months. Prolific, but spread thin.
I made it safe to my destination, something I no longer take for granted, especially when it involves towing a 6,000 pound, 22 year old trailer that contains most all my earthly possessions. And although there is something that scratches that inner freedom itch, about driving down the highway on a sunny day in a big truck, good music blaring and moving on to set up camp somewhere new, I’m always anxious about tire pressure, and having to make tight right turns. This is my fourth safely arrived at camp spot in 9 months, and my first time bringing my home back to Ohio.
The Little Bryant Homestead consists of a few acres, and maybe 50 chickens, 20 turkeys, 20 ducks, three geese, two pigs, a couple of gardens, four barn cats and a few wild ass farm dogs. My friends, the farmers, are a musician and an artist, and they’re the best people.
Scrapes looking photogenic on the homestead
As soon as I got my camper set up next to the barn, I got my paint cans out, and started working sun up to sundown. I’ve had an idea to build a custom desk out of the dining area of my writer’s shack on wheels, but I hadn’t had the time and energy to get to it, so for nine months I’ve been using a small folding table as a temporary desk and work station.
My buddy, Jereme, the musician farmer, he has a large shop and barn on the farm, and is a custom building genius. He’s the kind of guy that looks at something, says, “oh, I need a part like this,” then goes to his shop and makes the part with his bare hands out of scrap materials laying around. I helped him build a duck shack out of found pallets, and a tarp last winter, and recently I spent a Saturday helping make the “pecker palace,” a pen and house for turkeys and baby chicks. We built a pallet fence around a three sided metal building using metal stakes, industrial strength zip ties, and chicken wire. Jereme’s design. I helped with the grunt work.
So, when I told Jereme my idea of repurposing the closet door that I’d removed from my camper, he started pulling saws and sanders out, and using scrap blocks of wood from a pile in his barn, we made “L” shaped brackets to mount the desk along the window by where the dinette set used to sit, and Jereme cut away the door knob area of the closet door, to make room for all the computer and other electronic devices plugs, and it being a hollow body door in a lightweight camper, he wood glued and finish nailed a finished edge around the cut out area. After a lot more painting and reinstalling cabinet doors, and after nine months of life on the run RV style, I finally have a permanent writer’s work area complete with a four foot long book shelf underneath.
I couldn’t be happier writing at my new desk
You can see where the cushions will go eventually on the benches. Someday, maybe a small comfortable desk chair, too. Look at my bookshelf! Ps. I chose these colors because I wanted it to look like a sunny day inside no matter what’s going on outside. The yellow paint is named “sunshine,” even.
And I still have some projects to complete. I need to build a pantry in the closet area, and find a curtain to go in front of it. I gotta find a small refrigerator still, and I might remove the propane stove and oven and install an electric cooktop. Haven’t decided yet. I need to find some cushions for the seating area. I’ll still have room for two to sit in the dinette area near the desk, and I have a tv tray I use as a tiny dining table often. The bunk area has to be reinforced, camper bunks are only made to support 150 pound humans, and my children and potential artist friend overnight guests may require more support than that, so I’m still working on ideas to rebuild the bunk supports, and then that’ll be the last indoor area remaining to be painted. And I’m hoping to get the outside of the camper repainted in early August. Got plans for a custom retro look that’ll hopefully make the Scrapes of Wrath pretty and shiny enough to get accepted at most any campground in the U.S. One thing you might not know, many RV resorts and campgrounds have age restrictions on the campers they allow in, in an effort to keep their parks looking new, neat and orderly. Most will allow exceptions if your rig is well maintained and looks decent.
So, there’s still a lot of work to do in the coming weeks, but baby, ole Scrapes is feeling mighty homey. I finally started hanging some of my collected art work and photos on the walls this week. Now, this tiny 172.5 sq ft travel trailer looks like a writer lives here. It looks and feels like home.
I printed out the poems that’ll go into my first full length poetry manuscript, and I’ve started working on laying them out and cutting them down to book size. I work on this project a little every day. Wish me luck.
This week I started budtending in the evenings at a dispensary in Michigan. It’s a busy one, and the work is insanely, non-stop busy, but like I told the manager on my first day, it’s my first time working in a dispo, but not my first time slinging weed. There’s a lot to learn about the overwhelming amount of THC products for sale, but I got a pretty good head start on the learning, walking into work smells incredible every time, and I get to talk to people about my lord and savior holy cannabis my entire shift. Eh. Not too bad.
But, the downside to giving hours of myself away for an hourly wage is that it trips an alarm inside my heart that reminds me that the other hours each day, the free hours, the days off, they matter so much more now. I know I said I quit my UAW job a year ago to be a full time writer, but we all know I’ve been working as a full time writer for several years now, and no matter if I’m making it on an hourly wage somewhere, or on book sales, I’m working as a writer every day, and I know that many of my best friends are even hearing less and less from me, and some worry, and fuck man, if you’re them, I apologize. I do. I’m sorry. I love so many people, but I have so few hours each day to accomplish the things I’m trying to do in life.
Tip your budtenders. Give that truck pulling the camper down the freeway a little extra wiggle room. Say grace for small farmers. Say thanks for good friends. Go do something to prove you have freedom today.
Love,
Dan
View of the sunset from my camper patio on the 4th of July
That’s Hank the baby rooster. He comes to visit every morning and I read him poems.
*this post, like most posts, was available yesterday to my paid subscribers on patreon.
I love that part of Ohio and into northeast Indiana and into Michigan. Lots of lakes not far away and I've fished a lot of them. I can see why people like living there. Your hosts have a nice place!
I love it out this way. I’m not too far from
lake La Su Ann where Craig Ackerman fishes sometimes.