Published: June 08, 2006 10:27 pm         

Caravan stops in city on journey along National Road

They rolled into Terre Haute from the east and another era in America: 26 vintage trailers, campers and recreational vehicles and two fairly new but rare RVs.

Deming Park was their next-to-last stop on a weeklong Tin Can Tourists cruise that began in Cumberland, Md., and will end today in Vandalia, Ill.

The most freshly minted of the vintage vehicles — a Superior 2200 and a Boler 1300 — first hit the road in 1972, the year Don McLean released “Bye Bye, Miss American Pie,” and Elvis was still in the building “Burning Love.”

The oldest motor home or camper was constructed in 1932 and called a “Rear Porch.” Herbert Hoover was in the White House then and Fred Astaire might have crooned “Night and Day” from a portable phonograph on the vehicle’s maiden voyage.

In between were rolling sleepers of diverse style, material, size and luxury with model names such as Teardrop, Covered Wagon, Vagabond, Bambi II and Bowlus.

To the delight of hundreds of local folks who turned out to admire the caravan, many of the rolling mini-motels were pulled by age-appropriate autos or trucks in as pristine and cherry condition as their trailers.

Take Don and Carol Mayton’s stunning combo, for example: a restored 1936 teal blue Buick four-door sedan with a vision from “Flash Gordon” (or maybe architect Frank Gehry) hitched to its rear — a polished aluminum Bowlus that was manufactured the same year as the Buick.

“It’s the car’s original color,” said Carol Mayton, from Zeeland, Mich. “It was called ‘Green Trowville Blue.’”

The Bowlus was named for its designer, Hawley Bowlus, an aeronautical engineer from southern California who created gliders and counted Charles Lindbergh among his clients.

Inside, the trailer resembles the sleeping and galley quarters of a sailboat. Like all the models in the Tin Can Tourists caravan, the Maytons’ decor makes impeccable use of space yet manages to convey a homey and welcoming air.

Founded in 1919 in Tampa, Fla., the Tin Can Tourists promoted “autocamping” and clean, responsible behavior to go with it. At its peak in the late-1930s, the association reportedly boasted nearly 100,000 members.

By the late-1960s, when the Volkswagen Westfalia featured in the current caravan came off the assembly line, the Tin Can club was just about kaput.

But in 1998, another Michigan couple, Forrest and Jeri Bone, resuscitated the autocamping association. In less than a decade, the group has gone from a handful to nearly 600 members in the United States and Canada.

“We’ve handed out five membership applications here so far, so there may be more,” said Forrest Bone, a retired school teacher and athletic coach.

The first of its kind, the caravan also commemorated the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Historic National Road (U.S. 40). A 3-foot-by-5-foot postcard, sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service for the occasion, made the entire trip and garnered signatures in six states.

The Bones own several vintage trailers, but were pulling a 1949 American, painted in cream and blue with burgundy trim, behind their big GMC Yukon truck. Long treks such as this past week’s caravan require a major commitment, in gasoline and patience, if a vintage auto or truck also is involved.

“One of the members described a little stretch we took somewhere along the way as a $23 hill,” Bone said.

Allan Woods, a retired farmer from Ontario, Canada, had prepared his 1948 Pontiac way ahead of time by installing a new radiator coil ($900) and extra-efficient motor fans. Still, hauling his relatively small wooden replica of a 1941 Woody Teardrop, he admitted, “can be nail biting at times.”

Woods’ Pontiac sports a vanity plate that reads, “Ze Car,” while the Teardrop’s plate reads, “Z Home.”

Henry Wallace, a home builder from Prospect, Ky., said he hadn’t experienced a moment’s trouble or doubt on the trip from Maryland. With 160 horsepower and 320 cubic inches of engine, his 1948 Buick Roadmaster convertible had all it needed under the hood to pull a 1937 Covered Wagon motor home.

The trailer was literally a museum piece (in Vermont) before Wallace bought it and took it back out where it was born to roam: the open highway. Seventeen feet long and seven feet wide, almost every inch of the Covered Wagon, inside and out, is original.

Younger than most of the Tin Can Tourists, Wallace has been collecting vintage trailers for only a few years. He started in 2003 with a 1953 Vagabond.

“But I’ve gone off the deep end,” he said with a smile. “I have 30 now.”

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.