It’s true.  Out to pasture.  We put an ad on Craigslist and got a buyer right away. He came to the house yesterday. Paul is in L.A. so I handled the transaction. (If you are new to my blog, click here get the back story on the Palomino Stallion.) He would offer close to our asking price as long as I could demonstrate that the camper could open and close without any trouble. “No problem.” I assured him. “I will be happy to close up the camper and reopen it so you can see that it is still in fine working order.” Now mind you, I have never done this before. Paul and the kids always did it while I managed to be in the bathroom. But I did not panic. I went into the house and got Mark who took charge. He took out all the polls, pushed the sides in  and hand cranked the lid down until it was just… about … closed. But not quite. We were two inches away from sealing the deal when the lid… would…not…f…king….close.  WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!!!

“Mark, why won’t the lid close?” I asked in a panic.

“This is the part where we have to stand on top of it and jump on it to get it to close.”

Our buyer had to be close to sixty and somehow I did not picture him doing that.

“Now surely Mark you must still be able to hand crank it down so that you don’t have to do that?” I asked, pleadingly.

“No. That’s what Dad always does.” And he proceeded to climb onto the top of the camper. Fearing that we had lost the sale, I mustered all the upper body strength I could and PUSHED THAT SUCKER DOWN.  And it closed.

As our buyer pulled away we all stood on the front porch and waved. I called Paul to tell him and he seemed kind of sad. He had a lot of fond memories with that camper.  I assured him that it was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

Maybe now is the  time for those cruises to Bermuda.