Veteran’s Day. In years past, I’ve elaborated at length about my appreciation to those who have served. I should again today, but there are more pressing concerns in my midst, and I don’t have anything new to say, so simply: Thank you for your service, no matter your reasons.

I had promised JA to accompany him to Powell to look at a bus. Let me stop myself right there. Not a bus, as in a school bus. More like a tour bus. I don’t know why this set doesn’t call them a motorhome, but I understand that the correct terminology is either “coach” or “bus”. Perhaps this is to differentiate from the Class A and Class B rating in an effort to sound a little more recognizable. My friend from college, her parents kept one, and they called theirs the same thing: “the bus”. They are anything BUT a bus, they’re a house on wheels. And the ones I’ve spent time in are not like a mobile home, they have high quality cabinetry and solid (often heated) floors. Most people don’t have a clue when you say “bus” what you’re actually talking about.
So it turned out the bus wasn’t in Powell; it was in Maynardville. No big deal, I was just along for the ride. But the best part was, he fixed me breakfast! A chorizo breakfast burrito. Kevin is the only other man who has cooked for me lately, so it was a real treat. He’d found another bus he wanted to look at in Sweetwater, so we had our whole day scheduled for sightseeing East Tennessee. I guess I wasn’t going to get to watch Woman of the Hour after all, since JA refuses to watch scary movies after dark. I wasn’t too keen on it, myself.
The GPS didn’t take us the interstate, surprisingly. We went through the country, which was also fine by me. We started into this development, I guess you’d call it, that goes over to the marina on the lake. And of course there are switchbacks due to the steepness and it’s narrow. Plus all the leaves falling off the trees made for an arduous journey. I couldn’t believe they could get a 45′ motorhome in here. JA went back and forth between saying, “Ain’t no way, I don’t see how,” and “Oh yeah, I could get one in here,” so who knows. I was just glad we weren’t in my car, because even though Maggie is much smaller than his old rattletrap Dodge dually and is able to turn on a dime, it was SO STEEP.
Anyway, we eventually made it to the pinnacle and we’re looking around at the houses and mailboxes, searching for the box numbers. The road name didn’t match where we were supposed to be, but I know from working for 911, addresses are a hairy business. I start looking instead at the homes, trying to discern who would be most likely to be harboring a 45′ motorhome.
“This cat’s got a lot of toys,” I say, nodding to our left, where there sat two UTVs and a bunch of other crap I won’t name for privacy purposes. “There it is!” I said jubilantly, pointing. I was always a pretty good egg hunter.
The RV was in a very fine, very tall, bricked garage with a full glass roll up garage door.
“Derned if it ain’t,” JA said, and cut the wheel left.

We sat there a minute, just looking. “I bet the view from the back of this place is phenomenal,” I breathed.
An funky lady stepped out a side door, holding cleaning supplies. She wore flamboyant glasses and obviously had hair extensions. Not the cleaning lady, then. Likely the wife.
We stepped out and before we could introduce ourselves, she said, “You must be John.”
Then her husband whipped in the front yard in a Jeep and bounced over. He looked the opposite of his wife, beige and a bit stressed.

The guys went straight into the bus, while the wife took me on a little tour.
Their house started as a “tiny” cottage, with two bedrooms, a little kitchen, a small living room, and two baths. They had just built a monster of a house in a new development somewhere down the road, but would come out here on the weekends and didn’t want to leave.
So they didn’t.
I think she said they stayed in their new house one summer, and then never set foot in it again. They started building on to this one. It is now nine bedrooms, eight bathrooms, three living rooms, and I don’t think she told me if it has more than one kitchen. It probably does. It’s about 10,000 square feet plus the pool and porch area. Not sure if the pool house was included in all that, but that’s where the bus stays. There’s no yard to speak of, but I reckon they own the majority of the top of the mountain, so they can run around up through there.
“Our neighbors don’t like us very much, we’re not very good neighbors,” she explained with a shrug. “We get out here and party and have our music up and they used to flash their porch light at us but then we built that building, and we can’t see if they do now.”
I giggled, but at the same time grateful they weren’t my neighbors.
“We close that gate right there and we’re blocked off. We can be running around back here naked and nobody knows,” she said, about the same time I was thinking, “they probably get back here and smoke dope and jump rope naked, and I don’t blame them.” I couldn’t take my eyes of the view. It was stunning, and I imagine only more so in the summer when the lake level is up. She spoke of the noise, how the different boat motors sound in different seasons between the fishermen and the ski boats whizzing around. She granted me permission to take pictures. I tried not to get their infinity pool in it. I just wanted to sit there all day, but she eventually said we should go see what the guys are talking about.
Bah, humbug.

I was exploring the bedroom and closet when she made some comment about the shower being big enough for two and I was like, “Oh, we’re just friends.”
Silence reigned. Her and her husband both just kind of blinked.
JA and I are quite used to this. Most male and female friends don’t go furniture shopping or to land closings or bus picking out excursions together. But most friends ain’t went through what he and I have endured.
“Y’all aren’t married???” She said at the same time the husband recovered enough to say, “I really thought y’all were married.”
I flitted my hand around as John Alan said, “Everybody does.”
“We couldn’t get along to the bottom of the hill,” I said.
“Ha! We couldn’t get along to your mailbox,” he corrected.
I nodded. “It’s true.”
“But y’all are….you….”
“We finish each other’s sentences, yes. Almost 30 years of friendship will do that,” I explained. “We used to be married,” I went on when I could see they weren’t satisfied. “Not to each other, but to other people.”
They just shook their heads while JA and I grinned at each other. If we had a dollar….

We eventually made our way off the bus and out into the driveway, where we continued to exchange stories of traveling on the road. The paint job on this thing was really flashy, a navy blue color that I’d never seen before. She said they get compliments every trip. But I wasn’t sold on the layout, or the black woodwork that she was so crazy about. But the people were worth meeting. What a hoot.
When we made our way down the mountain this time, we followed the husband as he scooted down their private road in his Jeep. THAT’S how they get the bus to and from their house, not those hairpin cliffhanging curves. I still don’t think I’d want to ride in it till we got to the highway, but it was a burden off my mind that they didn’t take the GPS route.

We got back into Maynardville proper and stopped at the Marathon to teetee and get snacks. It was one of the cleanest bathrooms I’ve ever encountered- like seriously, Buc-cee’s level clean. JA got some chemically orange peanut butter crackers and I got a Whatchamacallit. I looked around at the patrons scattered at the few Formica tables down the windowed wall.
Two men in overalls, not visibly chewing anything apart from their tobacco. A construction type headed out the door, clutching two energy drinks and leaving clods of dried mud in his wake.
I could write a book here.

JA called the owner of the other bus he wanted to look at in Sweetwater. It had been listed by a family member for an ailing uncle or something.
“We can come right now,” he was yelling into the phone. “We’re up in Maynardville, it’ll be about an hour….alright, sounds good, we’ll see you atter while,” he said, hanging up. He looked over at me. “I like him. Reminds me of my dad.”
We backed out and headed towards the interstate.
“This reminds me of that road between Tazewell and Middlesboro,” I remarked after a few moments of observation.
“What do you mean?”
“Just…like, the terrain and businesses.”
“That’s because it is,” he enlightened me.
“No way!! They STILL ain’t done with this road?? They were working on it when we were in college.”
“You ain’t tellin’ me nothin’.”

And so we go.
JA and I were in agreement on not being crazy about the rounded glass on the shower and all the black. Sure, it was a nice bus, but not really his style. So we’d look at this one and hope it checked more boxes.
We got off the interstate and are looking at road signs when we’re about on top of the place. “Well, I don’t know about the road, but there’s the coach,” I said, pointing. It was parked in the front yard.
“That’s it.”
Life hack: sometimes it’s easier to look for the vehicle than it is the road name.
So turns out the road used to just be this guy’s driveway, and they’re building a development behind him. The grass was mashed down, but that’s about all I could tell was happening so far. I popped out of the rattletrap and bounced over to the old man and stuck my hand out. I noticed his Vietnam Veteran cap right away.
“Thank you for your service!” I chirped. “And on Veterans Day, to beat all!”
He smiled in a genuine fashion. JA joined us and he led us over to the bus, telling us about his liver biopsy he’d had that morning.
“I hear those feel really good,” I quipped. He managed a laugh.
“My appointment was at 6:15, so I got there at 6. At seven, I went up to the desk and they said my appointment wasn’t until 6:45. I told them I didn’t have much interest in having it done anyway, and I was leaving if they couldn’t take me back. I’d done sat there longer than I’d intended to. So they put me back in a room. And I still sat there longer than I should’ve.”
John Alan winked at me.
“I won’t know nothing for a few days, but the Lord’s took care of me so far. So anyway, here it is.” He sat down heavily on the couch. “Y’all make yourselves at home. It’s got all kinds of storage. My wife had this thing crammed full. It’s amazing, it didn’t all fit in that 1600 square foot house. You can get a lot of crap in here.”
I tried not to snort. “I like it,” I told John Alan as we stepped towards the back. “Look at this shower!” Very nice. “Look at that sink!!!”

“Oh, there’s a washer and dryer too, but we’ve never used it,” the gentleman called from his vantage point on the couch.
We moved back towards the front.
“Lemme tell you what all’s wrong with it so we can get that out of the way,” he says without preamble. “We never used the dishwasher. We intended to take it out and make it a pull out cabinet. Never got around to it, though. About a year ago, and my wife loaded it and the thing wouldn’t hardly come on. Called Lazy Days down there in Florida and my guy said they ain’t worth nothin’, ‘specially after they sit, so jerk it out and put you another cabinet in there, is the best thing you can do.”
JA nodded along.
He went on to tell something about the batteries, and then something about controlling the windshield wipers from the steering wheel. And the cruise control. But everything else is good. There’s a TV that comes down outside, but he’s never watched it. We trooped outside to watch it slide out of the side of the bus. It was pretty cool. So that would be nice, if you’re the TV watching sort. JA asked him about this screened device that was plugged in front of the passenger’s chair.
“Oh, I don’t know what that thing is. Pretty expensive to keep it up, though. My wife could look at maps or something on it.”

He asked what we intended to do with the bus, and JA filled him in on a few ropings he tries to hit. So we did a bit of tire kicking and talked about mutual acquaintances among the cattle end of rodeo. Then he settled back into his chair in the garage pointed at a TV that was broadcasting Fox News. “I’d just as soon listen to these liars as any of the other’ns,” he grouched as he lit a cigarette.
We didn’t disagree.
He started saying again how he wanted it to go to somebody who would use it, and we fit the bill. I didn’t bother trying to explain to him that we weren’t married; that was not a conversation I was prepared to have for the second time in four hours. I asked him where his favorite place was that he’d ever traveled.
He didn’t hesitate.
“My old Army buddy bought an abandoned campground in Utah. He wanted us to come out and help get it up and running again. So we went out, all the waterlines were old and corroded so they had to be dug up and replaced. We stayed out there doing that for three years.”
“Big place!”
“It was, about 300 campsites. He’s added on since. It’s still up and running.”
I shook my head, amazed.
“So that was fun. We’d get up early, and work till it was so hot we couldn’t stand it, about eleven, and go in and eat lunch, then go back out about six or seven or so and work till about eleven.”
Then we got his Army story. He’d joined up, like everybody did back then, with the draft. Or actually, I’m making that part up. I can’t remember if he said he was drafted or not. And he sure didn’t say anything about going to war. But he did say he served 12 years, then bought a truck and drove it till it was wore out, hauling produce out of Florida. He said about the time it wore out and he was trying to decide what to do next, buy another truck, or do something different, another old Army buddy called him up and said he could come back, at the same rank, doing the same thing.
“I asked him, ‘Where do I go?'” He grinned. Pretty sweet deal, I guess.
So that’s what he did till he retired for real. Then they took to the road. After the stint in Utah, they moved to Florida, but came back to Tennessee regular, as this is where their hordes of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren reside. “That’s why I didn’t wanna move back here, you turn into a taxi service and a babysitter,” he told us as an aside.
This isn’t his first time around the block with cancer, he’s had two previous run-ins with it, but he said he ain’t scared this time, either, the Lord’s seen fit to take care of him so far.
Ok.
It’s good not to worry, I think, but it’s also prudent not to light one cancer stick off another, in my humble opinion. But he’s seen more than I ever want to, and lived through things I probably couldn’t endure even in passing, so that’s for him to deal with. Probably one of his few enjoyments at this point.

JA told him he wanted to take a day to think on the purchase, and he waved his hand dismissively. “Take all the time you need. Only one other guy has called about it, but he said he couldn’t get it till after the first of the year, he’s got a daughter getting married. He ain’t gonna get it. He ain’t got no money!”
That’s the God’s truth.

So we drove back to New Market, talking pros and cons. I liked the bus, but like I told JA, I wasn’t sure if I liked it because it was pretty much a replica of his last one and that’s what I’m used to, or if I really liked it. I knew I liked the sink and the shower. I thought he’d be more comfortable when problems arose having this bus, since he had experience with this brand.
“Well, what I know is, as soon as you set foot in this one, you said, ‘I like it.’ You didn’t say that at the other one.”
“Well, I didn’t like it,” I explained, shrugging.
“I know it.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t stop at Loco Burro or Aubrey’s on the way in, and then he wanted to drink a beer in the hallway of the barn before we walked down and gauged the status of the arena for roping tomorrow. So I knew I wouldn’t be getting to watch the scary movie, dang it.
Then we tried to order the burgers from Hardees with the onion rings, but couldn’t find them, then he decided that was because it wasn’t Hardees after all, it was Sonic.
So there’s that.

All in all, not a bad day. Seems like every time we’ve got something to do, we get good weather for rattling around. I’m glad I’ve got a friend.