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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 1996)
J list Another Brother in a Motorhome... By Warren Brown Bias is the child of ignorance. Take the m atter ol motorhomes. I’d always hated them. 1 had mv reasons: •Motorhomes are big, which means they take up lots of highway. •T hey are slow. A good H yundai economy car can outrun the fastest of them. • I heir bigness and slowness makes them rolling nightmares, at least for driv ers unlucky enough to be stuck behind them on a m ountain-road or lane-re stricted highway. But those were surface justifications lor my prejudice. 1 grew up in Louisiana, where the only people who lived in motorhomes were poor whites, or so it seemed. Surely, 1 d never seen any ol mv people in trailer camps, perhaps because I never looked. Every’ black adult with au thority, my parents included, warned me to “stay away front those places.” So, it was with some trepidation that I accepted an assignment to discover America in a motorhome over the sum mer. Outwardly, I bragged about mv great good luck. “W hat a job!” I proclaimed. Inwardly, I trembled with uncertainty, partly because I didnt know the first thing about driving or operating a motorhome; but mostly because ol racial fears stoked IS AFRICAN AMERICANS ON \\ HEI 1 s by family members and som e w ell-m eaning black colleagues. Said one black friend: “Are you sure YOU want to do THIS. Not too many of us in those places, you know." Turns out that my motorhom e instructor was a brother, Ed Hicks, a retired N aw man who handles training lor the Reston, VA-based Recreational Vehicle Industry Association. Hicks , who has all ol the mannerisms and directness ol General Colin Powell, made everything look easy. I learned. O n my last lesson, Hicks tried to teach me something else: “You will be among the lew blacks in those camps," he said. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. I've been RVing since 1976. Eve never had any problems. It the rest o f America behaved like the people behave in most o f those camps, wed all be a lot better oil." Experience proved Hicks right. Even at the Bryn Mawr Ocean Resort in St. Au gustine, FL., where some campers pre ferred flying Confederate Hags on the Fourth ol July, my wife and I had a good time. (One ol the recalcitrant “rebels” apolo gized tor displaying the Stars and Bars, saying: “I don't mean to be offensive. It’s a regional thing with us, nothing political or racial. Its just like your Redskins flag in Washington." Words that make you go, “Hmmmmm.") We did meet other African Americans on the road. O ne ol them saved our butts at the O utdoor Resorts ol Virginia Beach. 1 was trying to back our test vehicle, a 1996 Pace-Arrow m otorhom e, into a parking spot in pitch-black darkness. I was doing poorly. “Whoa!, shouted Aaron Cameron, a black fellow who owns a hair salon in St. Louis. “Stop! Stop, now! You’re about to back oil the pad! Cameron came run ning from his motorhome, an elegantly outfitted Champion, to help guide us onto the docking pad. “Your first time?,” he asked. “Yeah," 1 said. Cameron, a sell-described conserva tive, laughed. “Man, welcome," he said. "Its good to see some more ol our people out here camping.” Cameron and his wife, Doris, a school counselor, came here with friends, Beverly Dailey and her husband, Clarence Dailey, Jr. Beverly Dailey is an operator for A T& I. Her husband is a conductor on the Union Pacific Railway. The Daileys were driving a new Winnebago. In a subsequent conversation, I asked Aaron Cameron how he knew I was black, inasmuch as 1 was pulling into the resort in the dark and trying to dock at a site a couple ol hundred yards away front his trailer. “I did n 't know w hat you w ere,” C ameron said. 'All 1 knew is that you were about to lose it with that trailer. The only wav I knew how to stop you was to veil at you as loud as I could. That's the wav things work in these camps. We trv to help one another. I hope you didn t mind.” I he next morning, we awakened to the sounds ol birds and rippling water. And there, in the dawn, I saw what Aaron Cam eron saved us from — a lagoon a couple o f yards behind our concrete park ing pad. Had we continued our errone ous backing maneuver, our motorhome would have turned into a sinking house boat. . CONNECT THEM . A ircefc THE NEW ES 30 0. W h ile B o tt's D ots e x i s t f o r s a f e t y re aso n /e a t Lexus o f f e r an a l t e r n a t i v e u sage: e n t e r t a in m e n t . S im p ly f i r e up th e 2 0 0 -h o rse p o w e r V6 engine th e new Lexus ES 300. F in d a p r i s t i n e s t r e t c h o f a s p h a lt , And then d is c o v e r how, w ith more power, mor jx u ry and more e v e ry l h in g , th e new ES300 can u lt im a t e ly co n n e ct you to th e pavem ent. The new ES 300. The road i s c a l l i n g . Answer i t . 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