As I’ve said before, we love seeing new sights but more than that, we so enjoy meeting all these fascinating people and listening to their stories.

Enter Jerry and Pat who hosted us at their home just north of Springfield, MO.

These folks are retired educators, Pat having been a school secretary and pre-school age teacher and Jerry a math and physics teacher, principal and ultimately a school system superintendant.

But far more interesting than their “real” jobs was their retirement career.

They joined the circus!

Jerry, while perusing the newspaper, was caught up by a classified ad .. and that’s what newspaper ads are supposed to do, right? The ad sounded too good, it read something like “get paid to travel the country .. earn a living meeting people” or something like that.

To make a long story a little shorter, Jerry and Pat ultimately met with the circus owners and came to an agreement on how their job responsibilities would look.

The circus (based in Oklahoma) covers the whole country in 2 years. They travel ideally no more than 100 miles each day and cover the eastern half of the country one year and the western half the following year.

The 100 mile limit gives them just enough time to tear down the circus tents and pack up all the animals and props, move to the next town, unload and set up the tents, bring out the animals and props and put on the next show. And then do it all over again the next day!

And sometimes I dare to think that WE have a hectic travel schedule? HAH!

All we have to do is pull in the slides, turn the key, and roll on down the road .. ok so there’s a little more to it than that, but not much. After hearing Jerry’s description of how the circus has to prepare to travel each day, I’ll never complain again!

Our host’s job was to serve as the advance team traveling the planned route about 3 months ahead of the circus’ planned cities and villages.

They would solicit local civic organizations and service organizations and sign up one of them to act as sponsor of the upcoming circus. Profits from the circus would benefit the local community organization and of course the circus would get their share as well.

The local organization .. be it the local Lions Club, YMCA, library, or volunteer firefighters .. although excellent at what they do and worthy of the community support that would be realized by the circus coming to town .. are typically terrible marketers.

This is where Jerry and Pat come in. They help guide the sponsor organization as to where and when to advertise and share the circus’ expertise on how to enlist the aid of others in the community to make sure they get the biggest crowd possible.

This all happens 3 months in advance of the event. Then at the one month mark, Jerry and Pat came back to town as “Professor Carson and Barnsey the Clown”. (The circus company is Carson and Barnes).

Because they were both retired educators, they keenly understood that they would not be allowed to interrupt learning to “hype” the circus in the schools.

They developed the “Magic of Math” routine which accomplished both the goal of marketing the upcoming circus to the students and teaching the kids at the same time. It was a win-win for the local organization, the kids participating in the “Magic of Math” show, and the circus!

Jerry and Pat “worked” for the circus for years traveling in their RV and moving from town to town sometimes having 3 or 4 shows scheduled in one day! A crazy schedule that they eventually retired from and only RV “locally” now visiting family and close friends in and around Missouri.

Jerry encouraged us to visit Hugo, (OK) someday to see the home of many circus companies including Carson and Barnes. He promises us it would be an interesting visit where the circus folks would welcome us as they encourage visitors to stop on by.

He told us that when we go to Hugo, we should be sure to visit Travelers Cemetary. Jerry went on to explain that “the old man” (I’m not sure if that was Old Man Carson or Old Man Barnes) saw the need for a final resting place for the nomadic circus employee. And since the circus is really a family, why not offer a place they can all call their “final show”.

To that end, The Old Man bought some acreage and started the TRAVELERS CEMETARY. Jerry tells us the fence posts around the cemetary are topped with ornamental circus animals. Tombstone monuments are decorated with images representative of that persons position/job in the circus be it a juggler, animal trainer, trapeze artist, or other position.

We’re gonna put Hugo, Oklahoma on our bucket list!

And Jerry and Pat’s driveway on our “return visit” list!

So after a peaceful nights stay with Butch and Fonda, it was another 4 or 5 hour drive south west out of Indiana and into Illinois where we spent a noisy night behind a Cracker Barrel just east of St. Louis, MO.

I write this as Kathy is up and in the shower, (I have of course been up for over 90 minutes!).

We said last night that she’d not bother preparing the coffee as the restaurant opens at 7am and I would just walk over and buy a couple large ones in the morning.

I forgot about the time change though .. when my body said it was 6:30 and time to get up, it was really only .. you guessed it – 5:30 and Cracker Barrel doesn’t open until 7am!

So now it’s 8 o’clock my time, the restaurant just opened, I can smell the bacon wafting out the kitchen ventilation system, and I’M HUNGRY!!

Just heard the shower door close, so we’re getting closer.

There’s a Super 8 next door and so our nights rest was often interrupted by truckers and others pulling in for their nights rest.

But we had the windows cracked and the ceiling exhaust fan on bringing in the cool night air through the windows, and we were tired enough that eventually we fell asleep.

Weve finished our breakfast and now to move on.

Now we’re moving on to Springfield, MO where we’ll visit the huge BASS PRO SHOPS Museum. More to come on that later

And what time zone are we in?

Our first night after leaving Michigan and all our new friends at PMO was a very enjoyable stay with Butch and Fonda at 12 Mile, Indiana.

What a great experience it was! Butch and Fonda own and operate a machine shop in what used to be a Chevrolet dealership.

I’m guessing the buildings were probably built in the 30’s or 40’s, that’s one of the hundreds of questions I wanted to ask this fascinating couple but our conversations were moving from subject to subject so fast, I forgot to ask.

Although they have a retired New Jersey Turnpike transit bus (converted to their home on wheels), and even though they’ve sold the machine shop business and “retired” they aren’t able to get away as much as they’d like because former customers keep coming and coaxing and cajoling them into making parts for them.

And what kind of parts do they make you ask? They make parts for collectors and rebuilders of cars. And what kind of cars you ask? Post-war Crosley automobiles.

Heres a link to the Crosley Auto Club if you want to learn more about this 40’s / 50’s vintage automobile. If you’re my age or older, you might remember Crosley radios, TV’s, and appliances.

Crosley also designed and built the 500,000 watt transmitters for the Voice of America war-time propaganda station near Cincinnati, that I toured and wrote about while we attended the Dayton Hamvention back in May.

To refresh your memory, here’s a shot of a well used Crosley back behind the shop.

Cute little thing, eh?

Besides keeping busy manufacturing and supplying parts, their other interests include; rocks (acquiring, cutting/slicing, shaping, and polishing) and then either selling those “cabs” or more often making them into all sorts of jewelry that they then sell at shops and festivals.

Fonda gave Kathy a gift of a sample of the type of work she does. These are zipper pulls.

They’re also both Extra Class License ham radio operators, so we talked a bit about that hobby too!

Butch is a self-described “tinkerer” and because they have so much room in this old Chevy dealership, they’ve filled it with their interests.

He rebuilds engines, he does a little auto repair work – mostly that which no other mechanic can or wants to do, but because Butch has the talent and the patience, he helps out friends in need.

He’s a shooter .. and what shooter doesn’t want to cast his own bullets and load his own shells?

And the list goes on, there was so much to see in this shop, it was a little overwhelming .. and fun.

We had a wonderful visit with Butch and Fonda, along with Rascal, Gizmo, and Daffy.

We’re so glad that Butch and Fonda signed on as hosts at BoondockersWelcome.com and we look forward to seeing them again out in Quartzite, AZ this winter when we attend Quartzfest ’19 and the Big Tent RV Show.

In the meantime, we’ll stay in touch via RVillage.com .. 73’s & 88’s to them both.

We’re closing in on 2 full years traveling and living in our “classic” 2002 Airstream diesel pusher motorhome .. and we love it.

We bought her as a pre-owned motorhome from an older couple in W. Virginia who had posted the ad on Craigslist.  We’ve driven her from what was our home base in Ohio out to San Diego to visit Kathy’s cousin and then back to Ohio, then to Vermont for an RV rally and back to Ohio, then to Arizona to Workamp for 6 months and back to Ohio, then to Michigan to Workamp for 4 months, and back down to Ohio (through Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana) and after Ohio visiting the kids on down to Texas to Workamp for 3 months, then to Florida (for a vacation!), then back to Texas for a couple weeks volunteering and on up to Ohio to visit friends and family, and now we’re back up in Michigan Workamping again for the summer of ’18 .

And yes – we’ve had our troubles .. mostly during the first trip out west and I’ve chronicled those debacles in earlier posts.  We’ve had problems with; tires, water pump, tow bar, water on the floor, water through the roof … and lots more.

We’ve also done some remodeling inside and new awnings and roof a/c covers outside – not because we NEEDED to but because we wanted to.  We’ve installed a new solar controller and (4) new deep cycle batteries.  We’ve installed a TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) and a new living room slide topper along with new suspension components — all of which are talked about elsewhere in this blog.

This coach has FOUR different colors in the paint scheme; 3 shades of green and a thin gold stripe.  This meant buying (4) 1/2 pint cans of custom mix Sherwin-Williams Auto Color touch-up paint.  There’s always a new small chip SOMEWHERE after a trip of a few hundred miles!

Even with all these “issues” (and I really don’t see them as “problems”) there is ONE THING THAT REALLY BUGS ME … THIS !!!

Look closely and you’ll see what looks like dirt on the front of the coach, specifically on the generator drawer and the side-view mirrors.

The maker of our coach (Airstream) just as so many other manufacturers of Class A motorhomes, installed a special plastic paint protection film .. a sort of heavy plastic whose job it is to protect the paint from getting chips from attacking road debris / stones / bugs / birds, etc.

Problem is that this film, after a number of years (somewhere ‘tween 5 and 10) starts to degrade and get very fine cracks that let dirt and water in and mold begins to form.  That’s the dark brown “cracks” you see in the photo to the right.

From what I’ve gathered, there are two popular brands of film that were (and very likely still are) used on these motorhomes.  One is a product called Diamond Shield and the other is a 3M film.  I’m not sure, but I believe our coach has the 3M product installed.

I’ve read RV blogs and user forum posts about the inherent problems with these films and how to remove this ugly “shield” from our home on wheels.

I’ve learned that Diamond Shield requires a liquid solvent and a plastic scraper, while the 3M product requires a heat gun and plastic scraper.  Either way, it’s a tiring and tedious task.  It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience as you’ll see in the video below.  I actually found that the my film (I think it’s the 3M product) comes off easiest when it’s warm outside (70 – 90 degrees) but without using the heat gun.

But the video shows what I learned and ultimately what products I used and how I got my film off.  Even though I’ve only started the task by removing the film off the two mirrors, I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the film off the generator door.  Good thing I’m retired and have the time to do this … if I was still working I know I wouldn’t have the patience for this job!

Here are the links for the products I used in this project.  You can purchase these items using these links:

Plastic Razor Blade(s) and Scraper

3M Adhesive Remover

Plastic Chisel Scrapers

Electric Heat Gun