The idea

"Hey, Dad.”
“What?”  It sounds like a growl.
I try to begin most of my conversations this way. I find myself repeating less of what I said. It is not that he is totally deaf, but at least the rocks in the woods can hear a tree fall. Sometimes Dad hears me talking and asks what. He’ll even raise a finger to his ear, tap the hearing aid to verify it is there and tell me he is wearing them.  But I have been talking to the cats. I wonder why I do that. One is just as deaf as Dad and the other, I am afraid, is on the way. Age. At least, they don’t growl, “what?”

I continue the conversation once I have his attention which comes as a stare built partly of annoyance and partly of a preparation to pay attention.

“Dad, bring your passport. We might want to go into Canada.”

In the morning he retrieves it from the home safe kept under his bed.  “Hey this, expires. I didn’t know they expire. I’m still a citizen. 

Yeah it isn’t like a driver’s license which requires a measure of competency that diminishes with age.  If you’re a citizen; you’re a citizen. Unless you declare otherwise or join some radical group in the backwaters of the Middle East.  How many times in a life can you renew the document that says you have a legal right to come and go from the United States? If your 90, it could possibility nine times.  But then Dad became a citizen twice. Once wasn’t enough. He got to travel from France, to Belgium, and on to Germany compliments of Uncle Sam. All without a passport. He supposedly became as a citizen while on maneuvers in South Carolina.  He carried a rifle for the US until the Germans took that away and shipped him off to Stalag 11B.  And while the Army told him he was a citizen and the Germans thought he was when I joined the Army and needed my security clearance, Dad could provide no naturalization number.  So on the 200^th anniversary of the founding of this country, Dad stood on the steps of the capitol of New York State and once again swore his allegiance to the United States of America. 

But he has only had one passport. And now I worried, “when does it expire?”

“2017.”
“You got plenty of time, Dad.” 

I wasn’t going to ask if he would need to renew it. He’ll be 94 by then, but he told me a few weeks ago he would like to get back to Paris.

But this year if there is any international travel, it is going to involve driving over the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the RV.

This was my idea. The SunRader has been sitting under a UV-rotting tarp for the past eight years.  One of our neighbors commented a few years back that we ought to take the cover off so that it could air out. Avoid mildew and rust on the body. Maybe he was politely hinting the rig, as Mom always referred to it, was just now a middle-class retirement dream turned eye-sore as it sat unused ever since I parked it the year my mother passed away. Back then I had a wild idea of traveling the east coast selling my book, The Last Voyage Of The Cosmic Muffin. 

Last year I removed the tarp. I held my breath as I stepped into the RV that once traveled coast to coast, into Canada, up to Alaska and down into the deserts and villages of Mexico, but had become home to small rodents indigenous to cabins and basements in the northeast – field mice, chipmunks and squirrels.  

My parents maintained the vehicle. In its day, it showed little sign of wear and tear.  The carpet looked new, the upholstery well kept, curtains fresh. But after sitting season upon season under the cavernous tarp, I expected the mice to have chewed holes in every soft material, using the cushion stuffing and insulation to build nests, in every nook and cranny.

I couldn’t hold my breath forever. The warmed July air was stale.  It stunk, like a barn, minus the livestock. I stepped into the RV and over a scattering of acorn and hickory nut shells. I found an intact skeleton in the middle of the kitchen floor. Chipmunk I guessed by the size. It looked pre-historic. Menacing with its jaws wide open. It was a keeper to add to my skull collection. The mummified chipmunk I disposed.

Mouse dropping were everywhere. Stories of hanta virus came to mind as I began to pull back the curtains and open all windows and vents.  In the bathroom the ceiling had come unglued from the roof and dangled like an old cobweb over the tub. Underneath the carpeted ceiling the insulating foam material had deteriorated into a sticky yellow mess.  The constant temperature extremes from winter to summer had not been kind to the covered RV. The ceiling fell away in the closet and the floral pink wall paper (hey, it’s from the 80’s) peeled from the walls.   Cleaning and repairing the living quarters would require lots of scrubbing, wiping, vacuuming and sanitizing. Removing the rodents – dead and alive – would require patient trapping. And of course the smell. What to do about the smell?  But before all this was to commence with time and money spent in checking the plumbing, electrical and gas operated appliances the vehicle’s engine had to prove worthy.  Sure less than 80,000 on the engine, but it was 28 years old.  Older than my Jeep!

I asked my Jeep’s mechanic to take a look. Reluctantly he poked around the engine, crawled under the body and declared it in a condition far better than his expectations.   I prepared to drive it the short distance to the garage.  Once the battery was jumped it fired up.  Amazing, as my Jeep sits all winter and never starts in the spring. The mice hadn’t chewed through any critical.  Once the engine, brakes and underbody proved worthy and all belts, hoses and fluids were replaced along with six new tires, I rehabbing the RV.

For the rest of the summer while working security at the Saratoga Race Track from midnight to 8 am, I tackled the project. Until I got the mice and their mess out of the RV I forbade Dad from entering the camper. A case of hanta virus or whatever else mice could carry was something I didn’t want Dad to contact.  Mice infestations were everywhere you would imagine and in the unimaginable. Shortly after I started the engine for the first time it conked out after I revved the engine.   It started again and a mouse nest shot from the tail pipe and tumble across the lawn. I found nests in the glove compartment, drawers in the camper, the hose used to empty the waste tanks and even in the ceiling’s air conditioner. Deep in the RV where I can’t see or reach I imagine there are old nests. But I trapped and trapped mice until I found no more dead mice in my traps. And then I addressed the carpenter ants with one big fumigating bomb.

 Of course there was a conversation about what to do with the RV once it was habitable.
“Hey, Dad”
"What?”
“Have you ever been to Thousand Islands?”
“No.”
“You want to go?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Right. Exactly why we should go. Next summer, let’s go there. They aren’t that far away. And maybe we can visit Mexico (as in Mexico, New York) or Texas (as in Texas, New York).”
With all the enthusiasm he could muster, “I hope we don’t breakdown.”
“Geesh Dad, that why I’m working on it.”