by Mark Llewellyn
4th Annual Vintage Trailer Show
This summer marked the 4th annual Vintage Trailer Show at the Murphy Auto Museum in Oxnard. Over 1300 guests visited the museum’s 1-day event. They witnessed a collection of over 40 vintage travel trailers from the 1920’s to modern-day marvels. As always, there was live music, good food, and lots of vendors selling their goodies. Each year the event grows in scope and attendance. Some people have spent long hours and large amounts of money restoring their trailers to a pristine, like-new condition. Others have found well cared for older trailers that they continue to maintain in their original condition, and use them for their intended purpose. There are also those that have to customize their home-on-wheels, just like a car, making it an individual expression of one’s self. Trailer life has always been a way of life in my own family. The family ‘patriarch of trailering’ has to go to my mother, Betty Carolyn Prescott. Born August 15, 1928, the joy of her birth was short lived when the stock market crashed in October 1929, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930’s. This
found my grandparents struggling to make a living, like many Americans. Airplanes were a novelty in the 1930’s. The public did not enjoy the convenience that the airlines offer today. Charles Lindberg had just made the first solo flight across the Atlantic, so airplanes were the buzz. My grandfather scraped together all he could and purchased a 2-seater bi-plane. He then set off across middle America selling airplane rides, or as it was called then… “Barnstorming.” Here’s where the trailer comes into the story. My grandparents, along with their infant daughter, lived in the back of a travel trailer throughout most of the 1930’s. My grandfather, with the family in tow, would come into a town and immediately find a farm suitable to land an airplane on. He would offer the farmer free airplane rides for him and his family in exchange for the townsfolk being able to come onto his land on the weekend and go for airplane rides. Once the deal was made on the make-shift airport, Grandpa would go into town and drum up conversation and business. Folks would come out and get the experience of flying for a modest cost. Grandpa would have the pilot fly the plane in from the previous town and the www.LeonsTransmission.com