Summer 2015 Tin Can Tales Forrest T Bone Tin Can Tourists Summer 2015 Tin Can Tales Volume XIII, Number 4, Summer 2015 Edition The Tin Can Tourists is an all make and model vintage trailer and motor coach club. Its goal is to promote and preserve vintage trailers and motor coaches through Gatherings and information exchange. Official Colors: Black and Tan Official Theme Song: "The More We Get Together" Stated Objective: To Unite Fraternally All Auto Campers Guiding Principles: Clean camps, friendliness among campers, decent behavior and to secure plenty of clean, wholesome entertainment for those in the camps [email protected] or visit www.tincantourists.com Address: 4 High Street Bradenton, Florida 34208 Summer April to October: PO Box 489, Gregory, Michigan 48137 Tin Can Tourists are on Facebook Tin Can Tourists Yahoo forums & member pictures The link below will take you to listings of Official TCT events as well as others that have been submitted by various hosts/sponsors http://www.tincantourists.com/rallyregistration1.php#.Ud17YvmTjZU You can view Tin Can Tourists pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbone2/sets Tin Can Tourists: Centennial Celebration 1919 to 2019 Sertoma Youth Ranch - Brooksville Florida - February 18th through 24, 2019 A weeklong celebration packed with historic events. Put the date on your calendar. Essential Links from the Tin Can Tourists Website Become a Member or Renew your Membership Attend a Tin Can Tourists Rally Tin Can Tourists Friendly Campgrounds Classified Ads TCT Trailer and RV Photos - thousands of pictures, please add yours! Trailer Information Identifying a Trailer Insurance Information Vintage Trailer Websites Restoration Help What is my trailer worth? Trailer Titles and Registrations TCT History TCT Representatives TCT Hall of Fame TCT Blog TCT Trailer and RV Photos - thousands of pictures, please add yours! Member pages - create your own page and show & tell TCT Pictures on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/tbone2/sets Yahoo Group - Discussions Facebook Group - Rally info, share pictures, ask questions Pinterest - Pinning the best vintage trailer images Twitter - Follow us From the Royal Chief Jeri and I are very excited about participating in the Super Duper Yooper Looper (Michigan’s Upper Peninsulas Caravan). The caravan sold out quickly. Thanks to Brain Quinn, Matt Tomanica, Brandon and Liz Morrison for organizing the caravan. The 18th Annual Gathering was highlighted by an outstanding North American Vintage Trailer and Motor Coach Concours. The entries were as good as it gets and the reaction when the winners were announced touch everyone heart. The pride taken in the restorations was reflected in the smiles and victory dances taken by the award winners. Thanks to Steve Hingtgen of Vintage Trailer Supply for his sponsorship of the awards and the entertainment. Terry Evans summed up the Annual Gathering experience in a couple of Facebook postings: “Think of how much fun we have had at Camp Dearborn…we first attended in the spring of 2002…have me lots of friends and have had great laughs…the Trailer Trash Party, THE WEDDING, the Hat and Wig Party. Can’t wait until May for the 2015 Spring Gathering, our 13th year and our 26th time at Camp Dearborn…whew, that sounds like a lot!!! “You know… since we retired our motto has been “if it ain’t fun then we ain’t doing it”. (Attending a TCT Event) is kind of like being in kindergarten when we go to the meet…we each bring a play house and our trucks. We have show and tell for the entire meet, we love being impressed with the skills of others …we share our meals and for a while we get to be kids again…we goof off and play around…forgetting all that grown up crap…work…bills…dr. apt…it is a great time. The only problem is the kindergarten class has gotten huge and we don’t have time to play with everyone. The word is out…the secret “show and tell” party has been revealed. I am glad to hear from new classmates that it’s a great event for them because I don’t get to hang with everyone…we are all in the “cool, in crowd”, aren’t we? Hardy thinks we are in the nerd group and don’t know it. Hardy and Terry were inducted in to the TCT Hall of Fame at the 18th Annual Gathering for their being a great contributor and example of the type of people that have made TCT great and a rewarding experience for the Bone family. Each year we lose a number of members when dues are due. Although I am sure the reasons for letting their membership lapse vary from individual to individual, my guess that for many the lack of opportunities to attend a TCT event is one of the top reasons. I wish more individuals would take the lead and host events. The “meet up” strategy used by Donna Spinelli is a model many could follow with a minimum of stress. Find a great location, secure a date for the meet-up, notify potential attendees through the TCT website about the site reservations process and advertise the area attractions and activities. Let people make their own reservations and go from there in terms of structure. Do what you’re comfortable with, whether a pot luck, open house, catered meals, day trip, etc. I think except for a few major events, just getting together and enjoying people that love what you love is enough. Safe Travels and Love to all Forrest, Jeri, Terry and Michelle Bone Teresa Baldwin, Texas Representative sent along a brief note on her very successful Texas Spring Meet: We had a great time at our Texas Spring TCT Rally. The rain was unexpected, but much needed. We played Farkle Friday afternoon, followed by a great potluck Friday night. Saturday – the Open House was a big hit. The resort was at capacity and we had a great crowd that toured the trailers. Awards for various categories were handed out on Saturday evening along with door prizes for everyone. Another great job by Teresa and the Texas gang. There was a nice article on the Vicksburg Festival. The TCT participation is hosted by Ken and Lee Evensen - http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2015/06/vicksburg_old_car_festival_fro.html#incar t_email_mobile The Measures’, Gerry and Sue, hosted another great event in Mission British Columbia for area TCT members. I read a series from OZY entitled “Trailer Park Nation: A Special OZY Series”. It might be of interest to some of our members. If you think it might be of interest to you, Google it by the title above and “Trailer Park Nation” to view the links to the various segments for the series. The article below is entitled “From Land Yachts to Trailer Parks: Taking the Wheels off the American Dream In a country as large as the United States, perhaps it was inevitable that the American dream would be conjoined with size and space. But that dream wasn’t always about four-bedroom homes, two-car garages, 60-inch televisions, 48-packs of toilet paper and an avalanche of throw pillows. There was a time when Americans didn’t seek to acquire space, they consumed it — in the form of adventure, mobility, self-sufficiency and striking out across new frontiers. There was a time when a nation raised in Conestoga wagons, one-room cabins and urban slums looked out far more than it looked in. And there was a time when having a trailer meant freedom and possibility more than it did confinement or scorn. The stigma attached to the trailer park today remains all too real. Mobile homes in America have become synonymous with pink flamingos and chain-smoking teenagers, with rednecks in “wife beater” tank tops and Camaros on cinder blocks, with “trailer trash.” However different the reality — and the history — might be, the stigma dominates the conversation, obscuring the fact that the mobile home’s bumpy journey has always trailed alongside the fortunes of everyday Americans. And if there’s something to be ashamed of, it’s not living in a trailer park, but in a society in which we let our conception of the American dream get so far ahead of the single-wide hitched to its back. Mobile dwellings may have been touted as “the resort of tomorrow” and “a convenient livable home for today,” but Schult Luxury Liner made clear in its 1945 ad that the manufacturer didn’t actually want people living in its trailers. They were designed to be parked beside breezy ocean fronts and golden mountain ranges, not in dusty, trash-strewn fields. The first trailer campers, which came out around the turn of the 20th century, were little more than tents nailed to a wooden platform to be hitched behind a Model T. Then in 1910, carmaker Pierce- Arrow debuted the first official motor home. The Touring Landau featured a backseat that folded into a bed, a chamber-pot toilet and a sink. It was called a “land yacht,” a symbol of wealth and mobility. And hewing closely to the popular marketing slogan, “See America First,” thousands of middle-class Americans took to the roads in cramped “travel trailers” and “auto campers” in the 1910s and ’20s bound for exotic destinations like Sarasota, Florida. “America was in love with the freedom,” says John Grissim, author of The Grissim Buyer’s Guide to Manufactured Homes & Land. But landowners were not in love with the idea of these “tin can tourists” parking on their property and leaving refuse behind.