Operation Minnie Winnie

So I bought a motorhome.

Sure, I'd had a few beers when the idea came to me. But the next day I had coffee and it still seemed like a good plan. Then I even had some water and it continued to seem like a sound proposition.

I’d learned of an RV being traded in for a sum I considered to be an outrage. So I called up and offered my friends the same outrage. They said OK. But I had to come fetch the thing down in Yuma, Arizona. Pronto.

It turns out depositing cash in someone else’s bank account takes some doing. I had to provide photo ID. Then I was asked to furnish my social security number…uh, this is cash, I mentioned. You'd better ask ol’ Ben Franklin there about his identity, not mine.

My sisters both worked at banks in the long-ago, so I’m aware of reporting procedures for large amounts of C-notes, keeping an eye out for highwaymen and the like. But this wasn’t all that much money, really. It’s not like I was asking to make a deposit in the form of kilos or fenced jewelry. Still, they wanted that SSN and they got it.

Drove home from the bank, winterized my house in four minutes, threw the dog in the truck along with a toothbrush and a sleeping bag, then hit the road.

For the next two days I would try to pass those goddamned RVers going too slow on the freeway, listening to radio commentators poke the corpse that is our national economy. ‘Disappointing indicators’ this, and ‘unemployment crisis’ that. I kept waiting for a report on how the used-RV sector was a bright spot. How that’s where the smart money was being invested. But no.

And that’s how me and a 29-foot Winnebago known as a “Minnie Winnie” started our life together. I’ve got some time, now that I’ve retired early and joined the RV circuit. So I’ll be checking in with updates as Operation Minnie Winnie progresses.

Because if NPR won’t report on second-hand motorhomes as a wise investment strategy, well then, by God, I will.