One RV Park Made the Difference

After building a driftwood fort near the south jetty of the Umpqua River, I repaired to the glorious Tide's Inn in Reedsport, a truly great dive bar.

I walked in and surveyed the joint. I ordered a hippie IPA from a female bartender and took up residence at my favorite table and began writing in my journal. I noticed the bartender eating what appeared to be a salmon dinner. Of course! Some regular had landed a Chinook in the Umpqua and shared it with the regulars.

The bartender interrupted my writing and asked what I was doing in the Tide's Inn. I told her of my love for this joint and frequent visits during various coastal travels. I asked her how she came to tend bar in here. She told me the story. Being the way things are these days in my writing life, her story involved homelessness, or in her case, almost homelessness.

It went like this:

She had lost her rental home in a fire in Albany. She and her two toddlers were unharmed but had nowhere to live. With an insurance settlement, she was able to purchase a 1987 RV. That was all she could afford. For weeks she drove around the Willamette Valley from Salem to Eugene searching for an RV park that allowed older model RVs. She didn't find one. She was almost ready to give up and go live in the woods. Then she discovered a disheveled RV park near Scottsburg on Highway 38 with a view of the Umpqua River. The owner allowed older RVs and cultivated a senior, poorer set of tenants that had nowhere else to go because of their similarly older rigs. She lived in the park, somehow found child care, scored a bar tending job with Tide's Inn, saved some money, then moved to town and into a rental home with two other people, including a new boyfriend. Her rent in Reedsport was $1100 a month. She was never leaving Reedsport. People in the area had treated her so well. If they hadn't, she would have been homeless and probably lost her kids to the state.

A disheveled RV park made the difference.