An Airstream Christmas
12/27/2008

Earlier this year, my husband and I bought an Airstream.  Actually, my husband Micheal bought it.  He’s the one who makes big purchases like that.  Of course he asked my opinion and discussed his doubts with me, but he’s the one with the cash or the line of credit, and besides, he thought to use the Airstream as a mobile office for his construction business, particularly when we started building on our property in Washington.

This year, we took the Airstream on our Christmas travels, driving across country from Santa Barbara, California, through Yuma, Arizona, all the way to Beaumont, Texas. 

I’m always optimistic when we set off on these adventures.  I like being on the road and seeing the country.  I like camping out.  (Even the inconveniences of cooking over a camp stove or shitting in the woods are preferable to the plastic institutionalism of all the mid-price hotel chains.)  I have a fantasy of pulling the Airstream into some campground, unfurling our awning and our Astroturf, hanging our prayer flag, mixing a couple of cocktails and firing up the barbecue—just like retirees, only hipper.  But of course it isn’t quite like that.

This trip, we spent our first two nights in Yuma parked outside my sister’s house, where we celebrated an early Christmas—and my son’s 26^th birthday—with her quadruplets and my Mom.  Although it took place five days early, this was my Christmas—surrounded by most of the people I love, enjoying the glow of togetherness and the hilarity of life with children.

Less than 36 hours later, we were on the road again, driving across Arizona.  We spent that night at a KOA campground in Willcox, Arizona…a ghostly wild-west sort of town now gone to Pizza Huts and other franchise operations. 

It looked as if the recession was hitting Willcox pretty hard, but maybe the Willcox economy always looks this bad.  I stood outside the Food City and watched a stream of locals file in and out.  Most were driving either dirty diesel pick-ups or rusted clunkers.  They were a lined and weather-beaten lot:  old ranchers, young migrant workers, acne-faced teens, and toothless, tattooed meth-heads.  No one returned a shopping cart from the parking lot, but each one returned a smile.  This, too, is what America looks like, I reminded myself, sorry about the hard life they were having.

Back on the road, I was surprised by the beauty of the Arizona and Texas landscapes in winter.  Southern Arizona is prairie desert with ancient-looking hills and buttes and spectacular sunsets.  West Texas has rolling hills (that’s why they call it “Texas hill country”), with rivers, lakes, native limestone, and bare oak and cypress trees feathered against the winter sky—all of it beautiful.

Our second night out of Yuma we spent at a KOA RV Resort in Van Horn, Texas.  RV “resorts” are a curious slice of Americana.  This one had a store, a KOA Kafé (get it?), a dirty, under-sized swimming pool, and even a tired-looking miniature golf course.  I guess you had to bring your own clubs and balls.  Still, funky and rustic as it was, it had free Wi-fi.  Is this a great country, or what?

The third night we were still in Texas…in fact, still in central Texas.  It's a big state.  And we don't exactly make good time hauling the Airstream.  Still, it’s faster than covered wagon. 

Anyway, this night we stayed at Guadalupe River RV Resort, in Kerrville, Texas, located as you might guess, on the Guadalupe River.  A paradise among RV resorts!  Acres of forested parkland on the river…a store, restaurant, saloon and dance hall, heated swimming pool, Jacuzzi, video game room, fire pits and cement picnic tables at every site…Airstream heaven! 

A lot of the residents had obviously been here for a while.  Their big rigs were festooned with Christmas lights and some even had mechanical reindeer or inflatable Santa’s villages alongside their Harleys, fishing boats, golf carts, and other “camping” gear.

We awoke on a foggy Christmas morning, had bacon and eggs alongside our potted table-top pine tree, then traveled the last couple hundred miles to Beaumont, an hour outside of Houston.  Eastern Texas turns to swampland, like Louisiana.  Swampland and refineries.  Downed fences and trees and missing roofs, courtesy of Hurricane Ike.  Brown-water bayous; boxes on tripods in the woods for deer-hunters to hide out in.  I-10 in serious need of repair.  It’s a whole other country.

The dry desert air turned soupy.  It was 82-degrees with humidity covering the ground when we finally pulled up on Christmas day at my brother-in-law’s palatial home in Brownstone Estates.  Micheal’s family was assembled on the lawn to welcome us.  They ushered us into the house and presented us with piled-high plates of turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, cornbread dressing, creamed spinach, broccoli cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, turnip greens, hot tamales, cranberries, dinner rolls, fruit salad, potato salad and tossed salad.  I’m probably forgetting something.  For dessert there was banana pudding, chocolate pie, pecan pie, pound cake, banana nut bread, assorted Christmas cookies, truffles, toffee, peanut brittle, pralines…in short, surfeit of everything.  I needed a drink.

They’d waited to open presents, so after eating we spent a happy hour uncovering and examining our new possessions.  I was glad we didn’t have to get up and drive anywhere the next morning.