An American Dream Fairytale Like The Long Long Trailer

Last updated on May 14th, 2024 at 03:16 pm

Once upon a time, when I was a little kid at home in bed suffering yet again with a bout of chronic, acute bronchitis, I watched, wide-eyed with amazement, this fantastic movie, “The Long Long Trailer.”

In addition to being a faithful follower of “The Ricardos” and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as my favorite dynamic duo, I became Obsessed with the idea of spending a long, long period of time in my life touring and exploring this amazing country of mine in a super cool motor vehicle.

Also, as a child, I lived out an incredibly fun fantasy of riding with my next-door neighbor, Kimmy’s family, in her grandparent’s motor home from Chico, California, to The Cow Palace in San Francisco, and then back.  I remember we four kids, Kimmy, Danny, Shellie, and Debbie, still in our jammies, all loaded up in the big ol’ RV, so comfy and cozy.  About five minutes down the road to the big city, Kimmy’s mom handed out the hot chocolate.

Wow!  It was so awesome.

You could sleep, you could eat, and at a real table.  If you had to go to the toilet, you had a private, clean, and safe place.  All this and more, while somebody was driving the great big beauty.

This was the life!  It was also when I shifted my desire from a trailer pulled by a car to the need for a full-on, self-contained motor home.

I knew this comfort just had to be part of my life experience. I used to close my eyes and daydream about making my future husband a bologna sandwich while he carefully and confidently drove me and our children down Route 66.

Certainly a most defining moment in my life.

Who I was to be as an adult was taking shape in the form of dreams, which, when riddled with as much of an all-encompassing feeling as this movie and then the wonderful northern California ride with Kimmy, were not to be dismissed, never discarded, and only pursued with my whole heart.

This particular dream is one I have held tight to.

As a young woman, whenever I found myself in any really serious relationship with a man, I would always slip this life dream in at some point, with the caveat that this interest of mine was not about any retirement picture; it was about manifest destiny.

I wasn’t interested in traveling around America without my children.  Heck no! I didn’t relish waiting until they were grown up, and I was trying to compensate for an empty nest.  No thanks, and also, retirement from what?

Well, of course, I shared my hopes and dreams of motor home living and country touring with my husband Bryan, and a long, long couple of harvests ago, we rented one when our baby girl was just nine months old.

The three of us lived outside the winery building for over a month during harvest 2001.

I cooked, cleaned, and cared for the baby, and I always had yummy, hot meals ready for Bryan. He would pop up to the RV, tag me, and I would slip on my cellar boots, scribble down to the lab and tank room to mix the yeasts and track fermentations, then switch, shower, give the baby her bath, and tuck us in.

Somewhere between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., my tired, wonderful winemaker would quietly come up to “home”, shower, and rest his head for a few hours before the next early morning grapes were to meet the crush pad.  Then we began again.

I love it these days.

Here we are, the four of us, just days before the grape harvest. This week, I share our “tour” of the beautiful Rouge and Umpqua valleys and up through Pendleton in our beloved Oregon.

As we check on the sugars and stats of the grapes that grow so sweet in the vineyard after glorious vineyard, my Bryan steers me to a dream once again. It is beyond my capabilities as an illustrator of events in my daily life to describe what it was like to see the next chapter of my wonderful life crack wide open in front of God and everybody.

When I met my vintage Airstream on Thursday and stood in my kitchen, caressing the four-burner cooktop and marveling at the built-in knife sharpener, microwave/convection oven, and hickory spice rack, I tell you, right here and now, my knees buckled.

I also admit to quivering and quaking, jumping and shouting, laughing out loud, and smiling until my cheeks ached.

Having a dream is important and wonderful.  Believing that I am worthy of having my dreams come to pass because I am created in the image of God is essential.  Expecting that my dreams, no matter how great or small, are never too difficult or insignificant for my God to bless me with is how I live.

It’s called Faith. Faith in God, in love, in all that is goodness and light. I have shared my basic and beautiful values, which have so brilliantly shined in my life through these stories that I have uploaded to this website, and have made for the fairytale not just existing in my own head but coming true and truer still.

The magic is easily recognized in the miracles of my life, and the miracles are pure magic. It’s all right here every day.  I see these elements in the expressions on my children’s faces.  I am transformed by the acts of devotion to our love and marriage that my husband shares with me, practically hourly, steadily, and consistently.

I joyfully embrace an attitude of gratitude for all that I have and open my arms to receive more of life‘s treasures.  How can I not?

For the great blessings of my family and friends, the great adventures of the days of my life, the experiences that prove time and again to teach me what I am supposed to learn about living in grace and enjoying all that this life can be and then sharing the joys with all who care to follow along with my little stories, I AM GRATEFUL.

My fairytale lives on, an American dream picks up speed, and a family grows in love for all things bright and beautiful, great and small.

Shellie Croft spent a year sharing her American dream stories on 8 Women Dream.  You can now find these stories on her blog, Shellie’s Consumption.