How I Started RVing

One of the RV forums I frequent asked it's members how they first got interested in RVing. This was what i put in there and I thought you might be interested in the story as well.

Back in about 1949 or '50 when I was four or five, my dad had a cabinet making shop in Edmonton, Alberta. A customer could not pay his bill for some work he had done so dad took his Ford pickup truck in payment. I don't know what year the truck was but it was not all that old at the time, maybe a couple of years. This was long before you ever saw campers on the road. Dad came up with the idea of building a tall box on the back with a table, benches and a drop down "shelf" for me to sleep on. It had no cabover and mom and dad slept on the table. The "kitchen" was a Coleman stove and an ice chest with cooking done outside. The bathroom was a bucket with a wooden seat that dad made. It was very primitive but we spent at least one month per year traveling the northwestern States in it.

As we traveled, people were looking at the rig, taking photos and making sketches. After a few years we started seeing the odd similar rig on the road. Dad should have started building these contraptions! We could have been rich.

On one memorable occasion they were driving late at night to get home and I could not stay awake. Mom put me to bed on my "shelf" in the back and they carried on driving. At some point dad dozed off and sideswiped a telephone pole, knocking the "camper" off the truck! They ran back to it and as they heard no crying they feared the worst. They opened the door and there I was, still sound asleep. I had fallen off my shelf and landed on the pile of their bedding without waking up. I always have been a sound sleeper! Dad got some help putting the only slightly damaged rig back in the truck, tied it on and drove home, this time with me in the truck! I guess I had the "bug" then.