In order to tell this story, I first must start with where we are now. We sold our house at auction in December of 2013 and took a bath on it. After the IRS and the county got done with us over back taxes we had very little left. Very little is the understatement of the century. We got out of there with few possessions and very little cash. We had to buy an RV to live in and a truck to pull it. The new owner of our home was less than sympathetic of our situation so as we were trying to figure out what we could buy with the money that was left, he was always present in one form or another asking when we were going to vacate the home.
The auction service explained to everyone at the sale that we need a little more than a week to get an RV, move into it and head south. That didn't seem to phase him though as he was more than a pain in my ass as I tried to salvage what was left of our lives. To make matters worse, we found an RV, a 36 foot fifth wheel, that we could afford if the owner would come down a grand on the price, but it was 160 miles north of us. The snowstorm of the century was coming out of Canada and headed right for us! We left around 1 P.M. and headed north to see this RV the day before. It was an older 5th wheel that had been restored inside and out and it was just what we needed.
The gentleman listened to our story of despair and still refused to sell it to us for what we could afford. He said he needed to sleep on it so we headed back south 160 miles with heavy hearts. The only other RV in our price range that was liveable was more than 300 miles away damned near the Kansas border. Now, I have the new owner or should I call him, "Slum Lord"? yea I know that is a bit harsh but he is known for having multiple rental properties in the area that he got for next to nothing and charges large rent for. So he is still on my back and I have no clue when or if I will ever find something liveable in an RV. Oh yea there is still a huge snow storm coming with minus zero temps right behind it. At this point driving Damned near to Kansas is out of the question.
I thought that I made a decent offer on the 160 mile north RV with some UN-needed construction tools to boot. He called us back on the way home and accepted that offer but I told him that the wife and I needed to sleep on it because with the coming storm we may just be loading a rental truck and rolling south. The next day as we pondered our desperate situation he called back, I told him that we would have to pass on his RV and just head south because of the impending storm. He then counter offered with my original price and said that he had thought about our situation and the coming storm, he believed that we in a desperate position and would take my offer without the a fore mentioned construction equipment.
let me explain our price range for a second without giving the actual price, what I offered him for this 36 foot older 5th wheel was about $300.00 MORE than we could really afford. So when he took the offer, we were still scared to death about not having enough money to pay campground rent when we got down here.
At this point it is about noon or better on the day that it is supposed to start snowing. With that in mind we rolled north at a high rate of fuel consumption to buy this RV. I knew at that moment that if I could get this RV home, we could get out after the snow was done. With all the paper work finished we rolled south back to our little piece of hell. I bought a big block ford F250 to pull this with but I had to pay someone nearly $400 to fix the lights on the back of it and install the plug for the trailer lights. it used over $100 in gas just getting it back down the 160 miles to Hell Headquarters. I had pigtail problems on the way home and that brought two state troopers into my wake.
I got two tickets for no tags or insurance on the truck! Two tickets that I can't afford to pay. It was so nice to tell them our story of despair only to have them write me two tickets and threaten another on our way out of the state! What a nice parting shot from the Obama state of Illinois! I was in no way shape or form going to pay Illinois for new plates on two vehicles that were leaving the state as soon as I could get out!
We get the damned thing home, backed into the yard as it started snowing, and waited out the storm. We were so tired and angry that we didn't want to attempt loading it until the next morning. Well the next morning brought what could only be described as a blizzard, with almost two foot of snow that would not relent until the day after next. Remember the Slum Lord? Yea he called twice and came by once as we were loading the camper in near two foot of snow and -15 degree temps, not including the wind chill! He had the nerve to ask me if I could pay him rent for the week we spent in HIS house after the sale! Can you believe the Gaul of some people? I basically told him to go eff himself and that we would be out the day after next which was a Thursday. That was the last time I ever saw him and IF I ever see him again the results may be a lot different.
Fast forward to the next morning and we are loading the fifth wheel with everything we have left, which isn't much. It is like I said -15 static. the truck was stuck in a ditch because it is a road truck, meaning it was designed to pull a trailer on the highway not deal with snow. There are three good tires on it with the one exception being the drive tire which is bald or near bald. With two foot of snow there is no time to swap the rear tires so the better of the two is on the drive side. We loaded the RV up, got the truck pulled out of the ditch, and proceeded to attempt to hook it back up. I said attempt right? Well there was too much snow to get the truck up under the nose of the trailer.
Remember when I said that we sold damned near everything? Well that is exactly what we did! I had no shovels, snow or otherwise. Just a hoe and a push broom left in our pitiful inventory of things salvaged from our lives. I used an old garden ho to rake the snow from the driveway in order to get the truck under the trailer. I bought a 5th wheel that did not have your typical king pin hitch on it. It has a ranch, goose neck adapter. So when you hook up you don't have the luxury of getting close and letting it ride on in, you have to be on the mark. Try that in -15 and two foot of snow!
Long story short again, we got out! A family member gave us a financial gift that over half of went to gas for the trip down. Yea, I drove the truck at 55 MPH all the way down and it still ate over $250.00 in gas. That is not including the gas the wife's car used. So we got here at the campground with a little over $600.00 left in the bank. Did I mention that we took a bath on our house? Just imagine that you are selling a house that at best is worth Forty grand as it is still on sub floors, and you sell it at auction in the middle of winter in a horrible market. Then have the IRS take a huge bite out of it because you owed taxes from failing as an owner operator trucker. With all this in mind you can do the math and see how we got here.
A little back history on the job market in southern Illinois? Obama forgot what state he came from, if that in itself was true. I lost my job as a truck driver due to obesity driven diabetes. I was on short term disability for six months trying to get back in the drivers seat of all things. When that didn't pan out I took the only job from the only business in the county that was hiring. Walmart. It was a 120 day temporary job that seemed to have a promise of full time work after the 120 days. While I was unloading trucks on the night shift my wife was working nights at a local hospital. The ends were meeting ok but not great. When the 120 temp job at Walmart came to a close they laid me and about 50 others off so they would not have to pay benefits. No warning, just took us off the schedule! I didn't need benefits as my wife had the insurance where she worked but they didn't care.
If you shop at Walmart because you think you are saving money I want you to know that you are contributing to the poverty of millions of Americans not to mention the employees Walmart has in foreign countries. If low prices mean hurting your fellow Americans then I'll pay more somewhere else. There are many different alternatives for low price shopping that don't include wally world. That subject is better told on another blog, which may arise in the near future.
so here we were with one job and no hope to make it through the winter before we went absolutely broke. Yea I could have sat there and dreamed about fixing the floors over the winter but that would have been only dreams. there was just too much to be done and too little money to do it. So we did what anyone else in our situation would have done. We hired an auction house and sold it. Sold it to a less than enthusiastic crowd I might add. I had over three grand worth of our final possessions on the wagons and got a little over a grand for them. Then they sold my house for a mere fraction of what it was worth even in the condition it was in. So when Mr. Slum Lord came calling I pretty much treated him as a thief once he made it clear that he didn't care about what we were going through.
Now we are back in the south pulling into the campground that we got lost trying to find, and I hit an unseen speed dip, you know, the reverse of a speed bump, and break a safety glass window in the living room of the 5th wheel. We checked in with the night campground host and went to bed in the RV with a busted window and downed spirits. Broke and scared. It isn't over, I'm still scared!
Stay tuned, it gets worse if you can believe that!
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