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Home is where you park your house

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published February 10, 2007

"We'll drive. Keep driving. Head out to the middle of nowhere, take that road as far as it takes us. You've never been west of Philly, have ya? This is a beautiful country, Monty, it's beautiful out there, like a different world."

James Brogan to his son Monty in Spike Lee's 25th Hour

BROOKSVILLE - Bill and Phyllis Carter and their shaggy Yorkie named Booger are here this week and live the way they live all year long in part because of a 14-foot travel trailer, the Pennsylvania Dutch Country and a kidney transplant.

The Carters originally are from Cincinnati, and up until about a year ago they lived in New Port Richey, but now they live ... here. Here being wherever they are. Wherever they are, at least at this very moment, being the Hernando County Airport at the Family Motor Coach Association's annual Southeast Area rally, which started on Wednesday and runs till Sunday.

"Full-timers" are people who sell their stuck-to-the-ground, stick-built homes and go all motor coach, all the time. They do it because of camaraderie and to stay active and to visit far-flung family and friends and to see on the surface the vast, varied beauty of this big, open country.

The Carters' reason?

"The biggest problem I see is people who don't follow their dreams," Phyllis said Thursday afternoon at the airport. "They live a humdrum life. There's so many places to go in this country."

All of this started with that old travel trailer.

The Carters took the white 14-foot Luxor and strapped it to the back of their '59 Mercury sedan. This was the '60s, their boys slept on hammocks hanging over the bed, and there was a 25-pound block of ice in a box to keep food cool.

Then came a 19-foot Holiday Rambler.

Then came ... life. The boys got bigger, grew up, moved out, and she was in real estate, and he was in the restaurant business and then worked at Publix. And this is what happens: You work, you retire, you live in the sun, you go on vacations and you pay someone to watch your house and mow your lawn and trim your trees, and one day you stop and wonder.

What's this for?

Is this really it?

The Carters bought a used motor home in '99.

They traded that one in and bought another used model a year after that.

And four years ago next month, Bill got his new kidneys, and he had some infections in his legs, and it took a while to heal, and when he finally did ...

"If you don't do it now," Phyllis said at the airport, "you might not wake up tomorrow."

So they made the decision. They went full time.

They live in a 2005 40-foot, 30,000-pound, $320,000 Fleetwood American Tradition. It has a queen-sized bed and two comfy couches and a refrigerator with an automatic icemaker and a flat-screen TV. The sign on the front of the dash looking out at the road says what the Carters clearly feel: "Life doesn't get much better than this."

He is 71 and looks happy and tan. She is 72 and could pass for not much more than 50. They've been married almost 52 years.

Their favorite place to visit is Amish territory in rural Pennsylvania.

"It's clean," Bill said, "and the people are different up there."

"They're friendly," Phyllis said.

But they've been across the country on Interstate 40 and Interstate 10. They've been to Key West and Georgia and South Carolina, and Tennessee and Kentucky and Ohio, and Indiana and Virginia and Maryland, and Delaware and Texas and Missouri. They've been to Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park and the Black Hills National Forest.

"We got the ocean, we got the desert, we got the mountains," Phyllis said. "What haven't we got?"

And this, she said, is the way to see it all.

In a plane, she said, you're too high, and things look small. In a car, she said, everything is a little close and a bit too quick. But in their home on wheels ...

"You can see more," he said.

"You can see for miles," she said.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

IF YOU GO

Life on the road

The Southeast Area rally of the Family Motor Coach Association continues through Sunday at the Hernando County Airport, off U.S. 41 south of Brooksville. The rally is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Public admission is $5. For information, call 796-0154.

[Last modified February 10, 2007, 00:58:21]