Trailer Trash And Treasures

Unless you have a copy of James Lileks' Interior Desecrations on your coffee table, you cannot achieve a higher saturation of interior tastelessness than taking a trip to the recreational vehicle lot.   And there, brave and helpful friend that I am, I went.

My friend's uncle, through the vicious doings of time and circumstance, needed to be relocated in a modestly sized and potentially movable unit on the family acres.  An RV seemed a good solution; or, as we accepted after exhausting other possibilities, an unavoidable deal with the devil.

It remained only to find, if we could, something tolerable for a man who, though now aging and a little crotchety, was once a paragon of stylish dress, decor and deportment.

My day at the RV lots left me with some hard questions, for which there seem to be no answers fit to print where children and the morally susceptible might read them.  If you have any information, please email it at once to the manufacturers of RVs.  The survival of our species may depend upon it.

1.  If the plastic interior of a bargain priced RV can be made in 17,539 different tones, shades, textures, patterns, weaves, designs and hues, why can't it be made in one simple, pleasing, airy, light, and cheerful one?

2.  If the kitchen is made to fit a midget, why does the RV come with promotional materials for Sam's Club, where even the cans of cheese whiz are sized to feed entire football teams and the basic shrink-wrapped  unit of paper towels would entirely fill the "master" bed?

3.   Last but most important, when the "captain's" chairs (for the driver and front passenger) take note of America's fondness for pork rinds, and will fit the most ample couch potato behind, then why is the toilet scaled for the average eight year old?   Indeed in many of these rigs the person who came remotely close to filling the drivers seat would not be able to pass through the door to the bathroom, much less actually stand in the shower and be able to bend an elbow to wield a washcloth.

I'm just asking.  And my friend bought a vintage airstream for his uncle, which being engineered for the smaller Americans of 50 years ago is bigger, better and brighter than anything he could have bought new for ten times the money.

Lileks,  beam us to the trailer park.