Drizzle falls outside the coffee shop. I am drinking the house drip and it’s burned to a crisp. I don’t mind the burn.

I love summer drizzle. More of it. Summer drizzle retards economic growth on the Oregon Coast.

It’s early morning. Cheap Trick plays on satellite ready. I’ll never understand why these locally owned coffee joints don’t play local radio stations. I suppose the ads are just too annoying, but it feels like they should be helping out one another. I still believe in local radio stations and newspapers. They are holding on, somehow.

I sit at a window table with a grand view of Highway 101 and watch the ongoing diaspora of old RVS, battered bicycles, shot cars and ragged men and women on foot. Where are we going as a country? Is anyone asking that question? I am.

Drizzle wets the sculpture of the town’s high school mascot that’s standing across the street. I bet a million dogs have whizzed on it. He’s wearing a football helmet.

Yes, football season is upon us. I am indifferent. Others are ecstatic. They now have their social lives scheduled for the next four months.

Drizzle is turning to rain. I am watching the transformation. Is there a metaphor in there?

A woman near me is reading Trivial Pursuit cards she pulled from the shop’s library. Our eyes meet and she says, “It’s better than playing on my phone.” Yes. We talk for few minutes about the value of trivia and how it sometimes comes in handy. It’s the first interesting conversation I’ve had in a coffee whop in a long time. They are so difficult to initiate these days. They are disappearing as a cultural pastime. I lament that.

I have a big day ahead of me. This burned coffee will set me up well to handle some new tasks and new personalities.

In the course of writing my kink modern Western, I began compiling the names of the older, weathered, 70s-80s-early 90s RVs I would see while driving around Oregon because these RVs and their inhabitants figured prominently in the novel.

My list has now topped 50 and I keep compiling because these rigs keep coming out of the woodwork in this ongoing new American diaspora. Surely you’ve seen it.

I always have a notebook open on the passenger seat and record the better names as I drive.

My only wish is I had a photographer riding shotgun with me. What a photo essay this would make! Shooting these rigs while they’re on the move and often falling apart. Not to mention the graphic design styles to document, styles created before the Digital Age.

The names of current RVs have changed dramatically since the 70s-80s-early 90s and I am still trying to figure out why. There is a novel in this big change but I won’ write it. It’s well beyond my ability as a writer. Someone else take it up.

Below are some the mores arresting names of the older models:

Spirit of America

Sprinter

Golden Falcon

Proud Eagle

The Executive (The model Bob Dylan drove on The Rolling Thunder Revue Tour! Watch the new Netflix doc on this remarkable event and see BOB DRIVE IT.)

The Nomad

The Adventurer

The Ambassador

The Pioneer

Escape

The Reflection

The Hornet

The Bounder

Freedom

Brave

Clark Cortez (Steve McQueen owned one!)

Searcher

Observer

The Seeker

Conquest

Midas (I don’t get this one at all.)

Endeavor

Argosy

The Prince

There are more, of course. I often wonder what went into the naming of these rigs. They represent so many metaphors and dreams and aspirations, some ironical, some irony-free.

As a result of my construction job, I have more physical strength at the age of 55 than ever before in my life. At times I am frankly astonished how it keeps building. Where once I couldn’t lift a piece of scaffolding over my head, then one morning I can.

Up on the ladder, scaffolding and roof, the acrophobia comes and goes, but it seems to be slowly dissipating and what used to make me nervous, doesn’t so much anymore. It’s all Freudian anyway, right?

The various subcontractors who flow through the job, plumbers, roofers, concrete man, windows, etc, are truly fascinating characters who defy stereotyping. They are rich for some kind of literary treatment, but probably not by me. We simply need more writing about these people, in all genres. When’s the last time you read a poem or heard a song about a plumber?

I continue to learn the work jargon and have become semi-fluent. New word—screeding—as in screeding sand or concrete.

This job almost makes me want to go full Thoreau, except slightly larger than 12 by 12 in cabin size. If I ever could obtain the property I would give it a go, with some substantial oversight from my boss, who continues to be a master teacher of the construction (and gathering lobster mushrooms!) trade.

I can’t wait for the bonfire of scrap wood we’ll set off this winter. It will burn into the night atop a mountain, a signal to someone or some entity. We’ll warm the French brandy in the coals and chase it with cold crackling Hamm’s. We’ll talk to elk and tell scary stories.

Being a good construction worker means demonstrating acute awareness of everything around you so that you perform a task correctly the first time, and also so you don’t die or get injured. Teaching was never like that. I wish I’d had some construction job experience before or during my long teaching career. I could have applied these lessons to the classroom and been a much better teacher.

One of my favorite aspects of the job continues to be that I get to piss outside and eat blackberries at the same time while ospreys circle overhead.

Swearing more profanely on a physically grueling construction task always makes for better task completion.

I like working to the sounds of classic soul music better than any other genre, although old country music is a close second.