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By JUDY STARK
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2000
Instantly recognizable by its sleek, aerodynamic shape, the Airstream trailer has been a cult item virtually since its beginning.
It was in 1934 that Wally Byam designed the Airstream, sketching it out and explaining how to build your own travel trailer in Popular Mechanics magazine. Three years later, his company, Airstream Inc., began production, so named, he said, because the trailer rode along the highway "like a stream of air."
The rest is history -- not only the history of a new way to see the world, but the history of a significant step in midcentury modern industrial design. Form absolutely follows function in the Airstreams, which were designed at the same time that other design giants were creating the items that are household icons today: the ballpoint pen, the original Bell telephone, the Kodak Brownie camera, the chaise longue, even the electric guitar.
Authors Bryan Burkhart and David Hunt tell the Wally Byam story in words and pictures in Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht (Chronicle Books, $19.95). Byam not only designed the Airstream, but he was also a tireless promoter of trailer travel. Through the '50s, '60s and '70s, he led caravans of hundreds of Airstreams on months-long tours all over the world, posing for pictures in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Eiffel Tower, meeting with Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, crossing the desert, massing in huge formations at campgrounds.
The silver homes on wheels are still popular today, among travelers and collectors as well as Hollywood stars. And the mobile home/manufactured housing industry is still striving to accomplish what Byam vowed: "We are determined to improve our "public image' . . . so that people change their absurd notion that we are homeless gypsies."
The publisher also offers Look! It's an Airstream, a box of 40 collectible picture postcards taken from the book, for $15.95. Take them along on your next vacation.
-- JUDY STARK