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Terry Montgomery (right) with Ron and Brenda Glowatcky. (Photos/Kathy Widenhouse)
chance, you decide to sell your home-onwheels. In fact, in a testament to the brand’s longevity, about 70% of all Airstreams made over the course of the last nine decades are still in use. Owners are rarely interested in divesting of their Silver Bullets, whether it’s a baseline Basecamp pull-behind travel trailer model (which starts at $39,100 and sleeps 4) or the much larger touring coach version (which lists for a base price of $196,000 for the Interstate 24GL that sleeps 9). Instead, Airstreamers embrace a lifestyle, hitting the road with other owners as weekend warriors, regular travelers, or full-timers. Which is what brought Silver in the City streamers to York.
First Downtown Rally in the Southeast
Before Terry Montgomery retired in 2019 as the city of York’s public works director, he and his buddy, furniture maker and fellow York resident John Leake, organized the first Silver in the City Airstream rally in the county seat. A rally is an organized gathering of Airstreams at a specific location, typically lasting for a few days to a week. Rallies allow streamers to camp together with other owners in one place, giving them the chance to check out each other’s rigs while building camaraderie. There’s an Airstream rally somewhere in
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the U.S. every weekend, says John. The majority are held at campgrounds, parks, or fairgrounds. But he and Terry envisioned something different in York. Silver in the City is a downtown rally, the first of its kind in the southeast. The York event typically begins on Thursday at York Place, where rigs gather after arriving from across the country. On Friday morning, the city closes off key roads in downtown. Then Airstreams parade down York’s main drag and park at curbside, where they remain until Sunday. For the rest of the weekend, owners enjoy all that historic York has to offer. Among them this year were Ron and Brenda Glowatcky, who heard about the Silver in the City rally on the online Airstream forums. They live in Haubstadt, Indiana, but pulled their Flying Cloud 27FB Airstream for 500 miles to join other Airstreamers in York. Don and Vickie Lee, on the other hand, drove just seven miles from their home in Sharon, S.C., to park their Airstream with other campers along Congress Street. “We didn’t get to travel much with our Airstream at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Vickie. “But now, we’d like to make up for that.” Participants understand that Silver in the City is a boondocking event, meaning that water and electric hookups are not available
www.LakeWylieToday.com | Summer 2021
Airstreamers gather for Silver in the City.
to participants. Instead, owners fill their camper water tanks and charge generators ahead of time.
Wake up on Main Street in America
The weekend proceeds like a down-home America festival directly out of a storybook. Airstream owners rediscover life on a small-town main street — in this case, Congress Street, which runs straight through the city’s historic area — by enjoying the town’s history, merchants, and eateries. The historic location is a draw. “We like to think our little hometown is peaceful and quaint,” says Terry Montgomery. Historic York’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places boasts 180 contributing properties from private homes to commercial properties including the McNeel Hotel (1837), First Presbyterian Church of York (1859-1861), and the York County Courthouse (1914). Architectural styles range from Greek revival to gothic revival, Italianate, classical revival, and Victorian. The Sylvia Theatre (early 1900s) is typical of York’s historic buildings that have been restored and adapted for new uses, having operated as a hotel, department store, dry goods company, hardware store, teacher’s supply warehouse, and now an entertainment facility during its century-long storied history.