Levelland, Texas
Levelland is a short drive north of crazy person’s home in Brownsfield. Beans and I have stayed here before a few years ago. The name for the town came from...are you ready? The land of the new townsite was level and so it was named. Someone really had some imagination back in 1921.
I wouldn’t have been too surprised to have found Arkansas and Illinois there when we arrived but fortunately they were not. Instead we found Gene and his unique form of travel.
Gene was from Pennsylvania.
The car was a Mercedes of 1990-95 vintage. I spent a lot of time searching online but could not find a model that looked like this. And no, I never did talk with Gene. I kind of felt I would have regretted starting up with Gene.
Gene wasn’t up when we arrived. I bit later he opened the doors. On my, Gene was a hoarder. I couldn’t believe all the crap he had inside. Maybe you can zoom in a bit to see. He had so much on the dash he couldn’t put up the sunshade inside. He had to clamp it on outside. The figure 8 is some type of antenna I think. He had all types of gizmos, gadgets, stickers and such attached to the car here and there.
When he briefly opened the passenger door there was an unbelievable rat’s nest of wiring behind it.
I couldn’t get a photo of that unfortunately.
He had made a front bumper out of diamond plate aluminum. Having bits left over and not one to waste anything Gene crafted pieces of trim work around the wheel wells and along the side panels plus a windshield visor. He needed that to clamp the sunshade to.
The cargo trailer continued on with all types of things he might need or couldn’t part with. I walked around back on the way to the trash can to peer inside. He had a motorcycle in there too. I must say at least Gene’s junk was well organized.
Gene eventually got started on today’s project - painting the white sidewalls of the tires white. He turned on his music. It was Roy Orbison. I like Roy so that was okay. Its just that Only the Lonely played over and over at least a half a dozen times before he fixed it. Gene had jacked up the trailer so he could slowly rotate the tire to apply the paint. He went to the front driver’s side of the car to do that tire next.
Then he quit for the day.
I figured the next day I would screw up the courage to go over and visit with Gene. After all, he only got around painting just two tires. He had four yet to do. But Gene left that next morning and I had lost my opportunity. Not only that but I had lost my entertainment so we too left Levelland for our next stop.
Hmm...it does indeed look quite level.
5 comments:
Oh dear! My husband I had just had a conversation this morning (and not for the first time). He's got 4 garages filled with things. He's now talking about loading up stuff from one garage and moving it to another. I believe we need to realistically decide if these things serve any purpose before moving them. He hates that. A few years back, we had a garage thief in the neighborhood. I challenged my husband that he had so much stuff that he'd never even be able to tell if he were robbed. He walked to the garage and came back to tell me we'd been robbed. I thought he was joking. By the time the police arrived, he had serial numbers. They did catch the guy and the stuff was removed from HIS garage and my husband got his things back.
PS: Perhaps Gene and my husband are related.
With the current price of fuel, it must be pretty pricey to haul all that stuff around the USA. Definitely not travelling light.
I don't think I've ever seen a vehicle like that before. He has too much stuff for me!
A fun post. Really enjoyed it. I've never heard of painting your own whitewalls before. What an interesting character!
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