LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMPTalk: Gone with the Winds |
by Bill Sievert |
A most curious thing happened to me mid-way through this past summer. It was sometime during July, while John and I were trying to survive bouts of claustrophobia, attacks by skunks and a mountain of mildew in the tiny 1950's travel trailer we had rented for the season. The exact timing is vague in my memory but it seems as if we were whisked away into another dimension, reminiscent of the land of "Oz." Much like Dorothy and Toto were carried afar by a twister, we were funneled off to a place very distant from good old Rehoboth Beach. There, instead of being a temporary resident of a rundown mobile home with plastic flamingoes on the lawn, I found myself actually employed by a trailer courtone scarred by a terrific tornado at that. Well, sort of employed by a trailer court. More precisely, my work is to publicize a gender-bending camp comedy called Trailer Trash Tabloid! which is taking the gay cabaret circuit by storm. I mentioned the play in these pages once before, last spring at the time we first occupied our trailer and entered "the life." It was just the experience I needed to qualify me for my new professional assignment. The play tells the tales of ten women and men (all played by the same two actors) who reside in the New Drawl City Mobile Home Village and Putt-Putt Golf in Southern Georgia. The little town-on-wheels was reduced to its slabs by an F-5 twister back in 1964. At the dawn of a new Millennium, the survivors are still trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. These folks are mighty excited that a big-time tabloid TV-magazine has come to memorialize their heroic stories, but they suspect the true motive of the nosy host is to delve into the unsolved murder of Velveeta magnate Frank Forkenberg at the exact moment of the big storm. Forkenberg's widow, Delilah, was saved from the storm by singing spirituals while taking refuge in the community's barbecue smoker. She is not in the least bit amused by the behavior of many of her neighborsthe likes of inferior decorator Maimie-Sue Breedlove, renowned for her brilliant aluminum-foil wallpaper design. Then there's Norma Jean Schuster, whose plastic pink-flamingo depiction of the Nativity has brought the wrath of Maimie-Sue's husband, the Rev. Harold Breedlove. The Rev. warns that tornadoes attack trailer parks so frequently as God's way of getting revenge on people who plant too many lawn ornaments. I have become so infatuated and involved with the charmingly over-the-top citizens of New Drawl, created by Arkansas-born playwright Lewis Routh, that I am having some difficulty differentiating their stories from John's and my fast-changing reality in recent months. Our big changes began shortly after we moved into that itty-bitty trailer, covered with so much mold that our health insurance company has banned our sinuses as uninsurable (I'm serious, but that's a story for another day). The summer of 2000, so hard on our nasal passages and so soft for our business, saw us close the last of our retail shops at almost the precise moment of our 20th anniversary in business. The closing created quite a whirlwind itself. We figured it would take at least six weeks to empty the store, especially after our big anniversary sale had produced so little income. We planned to be open at least through Labor Day. But within hours of our posting the "closing forever" signs on our windows, a cyclone of half-crazed bargain hunters charged the doorsshooting their charge-card debt loads into the stratosphere. Almost as fast as a tornado passes, so did the two-decade old store called Splash. At just about that moment, as John and I were setting off on a retreat to begin planning our futures, an email arrived from Lew Routh, the aforementioned playwright and producer of Trailer Trash Tabloid! Via the magic of the Internet, he had stumbled upon my article on "the life" in Letters and wanted to excerpt it on his wonderfully wacky web-site. We began chatting on line. One minute I was trying to explain to him that Rehoboth is not in Baltimore. The next thing I knew I was preparing press packets to send to California for his show and soon was named its national media and marketing director. As I write this column, our trailer trauma (the stage version) is taking San Francisco by storm (okay, enough of the tornado metaphors). Fall dates are in place all over the South, and we're adding a second cast so we can keep the show on the road. We're working on an East Coast tour for springincluding, I hope, dates in Rehoboth. In fact, while I haven't set foot in our little Rehoboth trailer since late July, we may end up renewing the lease for another year because it is ever so perfect for our cast reception. (Feel free to drop in on our zany new friends and check out their touring schedule at www.trailertrashtabloid.com) Meanwhile, some of you may still be waiting for an answer to the question, "Why did Splash close?" I could babble about our need for new adventures or the difficulties so many small businesses have surviving (despite surface appearances to the contrary). I could certainly complain once again about Rehoboth's user-unfriendly parking. Instead, I'll share with you the official Top Ten List of Reasons for our Closing, as posted in the shop for customers to read during those final days: 10. We're running out of quarters for the meters. 9. Too much stress for too little financial reward. We can make almost as much money as "greeters" at WalMartand get health insurance there, too (with another exclusion on our sinuses). 8. Increased competition from 613 (more or less) men's clothing stores in the outletsall selling similar cargo shorts, floral shirts, "wife-beater" tank tops, etc. 7. Fashion is a young man's game. After two decades, we're getting too old to care about the latest trends in youth oriented style. So is much of our traditional Rehoboth customer base. 6. Almost nobody wants (or can fit into) clingy spandex swim wear anymore. Choosing swim wear causes usand youtoo much grief. 5. We simply don't know what to tell you when you ask us where you should eat. 4. We're weary of the question, "Where do you get all this stuff?" and our stock answer, "UPS." 3. We just can't believe "The Strand" has closedand have too many similar senior moments. 2. The return of polyester. 1. We finally want to be able to respond truthfully to that one question so many of you asked (over and over), "How's biz? People also are asking us whether we'll open another store in Rehoboth or elsewhere. Not likely. It was a great run, but even Cats finally closed. I've also been asked whether I'll keep writing a column for Letters. As long as Steve would like to have my contributions, they'll keep coming. I'm actually hoping to "grow" this column into the kind of feature that could appear regularly in numerous gay/lesbian publications. Finally, we have been asked if we will leave Rehoboth entirely. It's sort of like the lyrics to that old Eagles song, "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." No one who has been a part of the community as long as we have can sever ties entirely. (Just ask former Blue Moon co-owner Victor Pisapia who now resides in Sydney and still manages to keep in touch.) What we will ultimately end up doing and where that may take us will depend on the way those proverbial winds blow. But you can certainly expect to find us breezing through town from time to time to see old friends and to clean up that moldy little trailer. After all, it is the perfect place for a party. Bill Sievert's CAMPtalk is a regular feature of Letters. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 13, Sept. 22, 2000. |