THE DAILY GRIST…”There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” (Washington Irving)
When I go to a bluegrass festival I like to have good accommodations. For many years I camped in a tent and that was fine. I envied people who had the wherewithal to haul massive trailers to make a literal home on the road for themselves but that has never been my style. Camping for me has always meant a bit of roughing it.
I have a few of good friends who camp near me at Grass Valley every year and they inhabit very cool little trailers which are called teardrops. Back in the days before people thought about driving around to camp sites in the humongous RVs of today, hobbyists created little streamlined metal-plated shells to make camping more convenient without tarnishing the rustic getaway adventure experience that it was supposed to be.
Teardrops are natural song starters. Sometimes we’ll be sitting around under the canopy next to a teardrop and a song like this gets called:
Love ‘em and leave ‘em
Kiss ‘em and grieve ‘em
That used to be my motto so high
’Till my Sophronie left me so lonely
And now there’s a teardrop in my eye
Teardrop trailers were constructed as early as the 1930’s but they became really popular in the 1940’s after World War II when surplus equipment from the military was available. People took old jeep wheels and aluminum wing exteriors and they created moveable works of art. A light weight trailer that can be towed behind an average vehicle meant a lot to the weekend warriors of the post war ear and the expanding highway system made camping trips to the great outdoors a popular option.
Love me or leave me alone dear
Until the day that you decide
I’ll wait for our knock on the door dear
And count the teardrops that I cried
When I’d set up camp near my friends Loraine and Anne (the intrepid teardrop owners), it’s interesting to observe how often they interact with roaming admirers of their classic vehicles. Some of these fans are tear-drop-wanna-be’s. And some have similar metal plated trailers, or hand made wooden versions called Woodies. But take my word for it, a teardrop is always a good conversation starter.
Page by page our lives are written
In the Master’s book above
Wonder if He makes an entry
For each darling mother’s love
Like the one I saw this morning
Enter through the station door
She was crying, softly crying
Teardrops falling in the snow
By the late 1950’s teardrops were definitely falling. Falling away. Gas was cheap and family vehicles had lots of horsepower. Gradually, teardrops were replaced by larger and larger trailers. Nowadays you see pop outs with as many as 400 square feet of space. That’s more than a modular apartment in a big city where people live every day.
Roll on, Big Mama
The highway is my home
Perhaps the teardrop trailer has become a dinosaur. On the other hand, maybe it’s ready for a comeback with high gas prices and public fascination with the tiny home concept. Unfortunately, if you want to buy a teardrop trailer today it’s not all that easy. Most RV dealers don’t stock them and you either have to shop around on the internet or build one yourself. Maybe it’s worth the effort. I’m sure you’ll get a lot of interested comments from strangers at your next campout.
And I’ll have eyes that will never fill with teardrops
I’ll have legs that will never ache with pain
I’ll have hands that will never age nor wither
And a heart that will never break again
After years of admiring my neighbor’s teardrops I bought Anne’s classic 1947 Modernistic trailer. (Anne was in the movie business and my trailer was actually part of a movie called Here, There and Everwhere filmed by the famous ski film director Warren Miller). My friends Jack and Lorie bought a tricked out new teardrop and we have had many a great campout with Loaine (who is now selling her 1946 teardop if anyone is interested)
My trailer has a little pop up hatch at the back where you can set up your stove and there’s plenty of room for sleeping in the main area I call the living room. There I will be completely safe in my metal Faraday cage if a cataclysmic lightning storm strikes like it did at the Good old Fashioned Festival a few years ago.
Then she said, goodbye my darling
Dry those teardrops from your eyes
Promise me, my little darling
That you’ll meet me up on high
Long live the teardrop. Although I sometimes envy the sumptuous comfort of my big RV friends, I really love my teardrop. Maybe even with body and soul:
Tomorrow as the sun sinks low
The shadows will cover her face
As her last sun goes down, she’s laid beneath the ground
And my teardrops are falling like rain
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