How to bake a mouse

Turn oven to 350.  Wait ten minutes.  Smell cooked mouse.

It seems when we were using the oven, we indeed smelled mouse, because (no surprise here) the insulation was chuck-a-block filled with dead mice and poop.  So, the Preway stove/oven is apart in many, many pieces, the disgusting mouse-nest filled insulation has been removed from around the oven and you'd think it would be an easy thing to find oven insulation to purchase....like at the big box home improvement stores, or an appliance store or even the local woodstove dealer.  Nope.   Not even close.  Seems, like the Hudson car, this little item is rare and costly.  So, onto the internet and found a place in the midwest who will graciously send us a small piece for another C note (are you kidding me?)  So, I sucked it up, ordered it, and hopefully will remember where all the parts and screws go to put this thing back together.  I decided NOT to take a pix as I was disassembling it, so hope my aging brain can put this puzzle back together...stay tuned.

Open House

Seems our trailer was a hit with all the visitors we had.  In fact, we were overwhelmed with the response.  We so appreciated all the comments and oohs and aahs, not so much for our benefit, but for the fact, we all get to see and enjoy a trailer in it's "just off the 1955 sales lot" glory.  Our deep appreciation to D.N., who so graciously allowed us to take this beauty out of his barn and clean it up and take it on the road.
We sure enjoyed meeting new folks and re-connecting with our Pismo rally friends, and are looking forward to the next get together.  Thanks to Margaret Martan for putting together this rally.

A few of the tweeks that we will be doing:
1.  replaced all the light bulbs with cool, low watt "curly-que" style bulbs.  That should save some juice running through the old wiring.
2.  Leaky gaskets seemed to fix themselves!  No more drippy anything, so debating on whether to mess with them.
3.  Pull apart stove and look for more petrified mice.
4.  Reverse hall closet door so it opens toward the kitchen. Since we don't need it as a closet (that is why it faced the bedroom), but as a pantry, it makes sense.
5.  Add another piece of wood to the bottom of the magazine racks so the old mags don't slide out.
6.  Hmm, well actually that is all.  Not too bad for it's first run out in 38 years!

The Mousemobile

So, we pulled the Boles to Meek's Bay RV Resort for 5 nights to work out any bugs before the rally on the 15th.  We were pleasantly surprised that we had no big surprises....well almost none.  Darn, if we don't still find a few dried mouse poops that fall from who-knows-where on counters or the floor.  But, after using the oven, which, by the way holds the set temperature absolutely on the nose, we smelled MOUSE.  We can both smell mouse at 100 yards, so the hunt was on.  It seems, when we took the stove and oven apart to clean it we neglected one area..the insulated space between the top of the oven and the bottom floor of the burners.  We tucked a mirror alongside the space there, and we could see insulation, and we think we saw some petrified somethings, but we won't know until we get home and take it apart...again.


We have a drippy shower head, which I can fix with a petcock arrangement installed after the shower head, which will actually help taking navy showers easier.  The hot water side of the bathroom sink is also drippy, so we turned off the hot water side of that faucet.  That shouldn't be too bad to fix.  Our new 5 gallon hot water heater seems to be the perfect size.  The 3 gallon porcelain flush toilet works great, the old Marvel fridge is amazing.  Not only does it not ice up too fast in the ice cube area, but it keeps everything perfectly cold, and the shelving arrangement allows for lots of food that is easy to access.  We are cozy at night, albeit with lots of blankets.  Those old wool twin size blankets folded in half sure are warm.  We found that a small portable heater takes the chill off very quickly.  


The one thing you have to watch in these old trailers though is how many things are plugged in at one time.  We turn off the water heater, which of course is electric, to use the microwave or the heater or a blow dryer.  So we try not to have two big heat producing appliances going at once.  If you keep that in mind, you won't trip the breaker.  


So, the rally begins and we are looking forward to meeting like-minded old-trailer enthusiasts and swapping stories.

pastures full of trailers

My husband and I drive a lot, and I do mean a lot.  We have 2 children in Oregon, 1 in CA,  a cabin in WA and we like to spend winters in the Newport beach area of CA, so we know all the back roads up and down the whole west coast.  Plus, we love to camp.  We could pull our teardrop off-road, so off we'd go.  Since becoming a canned ham owner a year ago, and then obtaining the Boles in February of this year, we keep our eyes peeled for those forlorn trailers parked in pastures, next to barns or old houses.  There are HUNDREDS.  I'm sure the owners would be glad to get rid of them for free or just a few pennies.  We see real classics, collector's dreams for sure.

 I could never figure out why many of these farm families would buy a trailer in the first place.  They work on their equipment most of the winter, the kids are in school, and in the summers they put in long days harvesting, so exactly when did they use these things?  The answer I think, is, they didn't.  Maybe once.  Then it got parked and forgotten...just like our Boles.  Or, just like this Aero Flight shown here.

The trailer ads in the magazines were too tempting, and after all, if you had a nine to five job in suburbia, and the kids are off for the summer having a trailer was a dream.  But, not if you are a farmer.  So, I'm not sure how to go about starting a trailer adoption business, but it would be easy to gps the location of all these diamonds in the rough as we drive along, post it and hope that all the restorers and collectors would go out and gather them in.  Just think how the trailer rallies would grow!  Not to mention how the many companies, like VTS who supply the missing parts, would benefit.  A real stimulus package if you ask me!

p.s.  Hwy. 395 north of Reno to the OR border is full of them.  Look to your right driving north.  

Reflections on 1955

Reflections on the year 1955:

The year our Boles Aero was built, I was 5, my husband was 10.  The American culture, in ten years,  had shifted from the high energy, gritty determination and angst of WWII to a calm, mellow and “cool” suburban lifestyle.  Gone was the fast beat and rat-a-tat-tat of the swing era music, in its place stepped Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como and Andy Williams crooning to our parents while they had their 5 p.m. martini, lounging in their Eames style chairs in the livingroom listening to the hi-fi.  Some of the chart toppers included "Mr. Sandman", "Sincerely" by the McGuire Sisters, "The Yellow Rose of Texas" by Mitch Miller and "Love is a Many Splendored Thing".  Had my husband and I been a bit older, we would have been spinning "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Halley and the Comets.  Lawrence Welk and champagne bubbles were prime time t.v. fare as was "The Honeymooners", "The $64,000 Question" and the Johnny Carson show.  As kids, Mike and I were watching the Mickey Mouse Club, and Commando Cody.  

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Home life was modernizing quickly, and housewives had more time to take trips to the beauty parlor, cook recipes using the newest ingredients on the store shelves like Velveeta cheese,  and decorating their homes in the new modern look.  No more victory gardens, give me a new t.v. dinner, served on modern t.v. trays in front of the t.v. for an extra treat.

  

The aircraft industry of the war had matured into the rocket industry and the space age was becoming the wave of the future.   The “House of Tomorrow” at Disneyland propelled us away from the overstuffed, dark, clunky furnishings of our grandparents and into the sleek and modern.  Even the cars sported fins that gave them a look of going fast just sitting in the driveway.  I lived in a house in Palo Alto that was an "Eichler" clone.  If you don't know what an Eichler was, google it.  It had a flat roof, floor to ceiling windows to bring in lots of light, a quarry tile floor (no more heavy Persian rugs), a big patio for outside summer living and an outside BBQ.  This style of home was tantalizingly chic.  No more Craftsman style for us!  Our furniture was Danish modern, lots of teak and sleek.  Plastic and Formica were introduced, and kitchen appliances were now available in pink, yellow or turquoise.  (Have you seen these colors in the stoves in the old "canned ham" trailers?

Parents had time off from work now for actual vacations.  The plethora of travel trailers made the camping and trailer experience one that every family wanted to try.  But, they wanted to take along their new, modern house, albeit in smaller form, to the lake.  Hence, the Boles Aero Ensenada.  You could still have your formica kitchen and table, upholstered sofas, twin beds, and flush toilet....all in a rustic setting.  What a deal!

Pictures from the 1950’s of travel trailers and the families that pulled them hither and yon with the Nomad station wagon, or Ford “woodie”,  showed mom, decked out in pedal pushers, an ironed blouse, a smart bandana tied around her neck, earrings and a nice hairdo.  Dad had on pleated trousers, an ironed shirt (a tad more casual than a business shirt, but not by much) and a hat.  Usually he had a pipe in his mouth, to look really suburban and more like “Father knows Best”.  They sat in nice camping chairs alongside the trailer, while junior and little Debbie played contentedly nearby.  A fishing pole was usually propped against the tree.  No wonder trailers were flying off the trailer lots.  Who wouldn’t want to live like that for 2 weeks or so. 

And so today, our generation, who were junior and little Debbie, want to re-live that magical time, when life was simpler, more predictable and our parent’s choices of coffee in the percolator were either Maxwell or Folgers (not a soy, skinny, double shot, de-caf latte, with a shot of caramel), our bread was wheat or white, our lettuce was iceberg, our cereal was Wheaties, our milk was always whole and homogenized and delivered by the milkman.  We lived for a tootsie roll and a Marvel comic to read.  We played outdoors and made forts or played with dolls, and dreamed of being a fireman or a nurse.  

So, if you see us now, daydreaming in our vintage lawn chairs, under the vintage awning of our vintage trailer, cooking in our vintage kitchen, eating on our vintage formica table, you will know why.  We are livng the good life once again.

Here is the finished project

Project completed

Yup, it is all done.  It sat at the truck shop for a few days, got the axle raised, new rims, hubcaps and tires, a new jack hitch, an anti-sway bar, heavier hook up chains, and when I pulled it home to the body shop the hitch got painted black, and I painted the propane tanks a nice grey.
We are looking forward to our first trip with it to the vintage trailer rally at Lake Tahoe in Sept.

All in all, it wasn't too bad of a project.  There may be a few things we will decide to do later....Lori is really thinking she can't live without a water holding tank under the kitchen sink, and we may decide to polish out the window frames to get rid of the black pitting.

After staying in it for a few days, there are always things you find that you want to tweek, so my next posts will probably be about that.  Until then, the trailer is tucked away in a covered storage area, safe and sound.