Ruth: I’m Ruth Silver and I’m currently 89 years old. I was
truck called a Silverado. I remember that well.
The trailer was a 28-footer fifth wheel. It had a
wonderful back bedroom. It had high windows in
the bedroom, so I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful
if I lined the side walls with these wire bookracks?’
I lined the whole thing with bookracks because we
needed to travel with our books.
Shortly thereafter the transmission went out on
the truck. We had it replaced, thinking, ‘Well, that’s
too bad. It’s the first terrible thing that happened.’
The mechanics put in a rebuilt transmission and
we traveled another 500 miles or so before the same
thing happened again.
The second time, the mechanics said, “The first
mechanics put in a faulty rebuilt transmission. We’ll
put another one in and you’ll be fine.��?
We got to Pensacola, Florida and absolutely
broke down a third time. The new mechanics said,
“What are you pulling?��? It was the first time that
responded, “You need a one-ton truck to pull what
you’re pulling.��?
We thought, ‘Maybe we ought to get rid of some
of the books.’ But then we thought, ‘No. I’d rather get
a different truck than get rid of books. Those books
are very valuable.’ They were very important to us
for our research.
We had a little publication about all the women’s
various communities that were beginning at that
time. We wanted to visit them and see what they
looked like and what they were all about.
We were on our way down to visit some people
we knew in Florida. When we got down there, it
was the first time we had seen an RV community
in operation.
It was couples from all over and I suddenly realized,
‘Now here’s another kind of community that
creates itself.’ These men and women had been coming
for ten to fifteen years. Every single year they’d
come, the same group of people, and they were very
fast friends.
They came from different places in the United
States and at the end of the season they would go
back to their various places. They couldn’t wait until
the next year to come back and be a part of that RV
community again.
That’s when I became much more conscious of the
importance of community and how important people
are in our lives.
Ruth’s original interview was recorded with a poor
quality microphone. Despite professional audio editing,
I was forced to re-record her voice with a new microphone.
We decided she would read the edited transcript at her pace
and with her natural inflections. It is here that Ruth first
introduces the sense of “…community.” A real concern for
Zoe when she began rving in the mid-eighties.
Sally: Pitti, the cat’s nickname, is short for Pitti-sing, whom
hence where she got her name. She’s fifteen or so,
and a snowshoe cat. She’s very shy. There’s Rosie, the
kitten’s name—we call her Rosie for short. Her full
name is Rosalia Yaquicita Guadalupita.
We found Sunny, our dog, after our first time
RVing. We were visiting my parents in Newport,
Washington. At that time, we were living down south
of Tucson, so we just carted her out of the Northwest.
She was a mix of a Chow and something else.
She loved to RV. She had a great time and she was
a wonderful dog. She was a protector. She looked very
ferocious and sounded ferocious, but as far as we
know she never bit anyone. She was my best friend
for pretty near seventeen years.
Jan: We had a checklist that we followed scrupulously
from what we’re doing with the motorhome.
Sally: You know, personally, I’m not worried about it. We
Jan: With a motor home, you’re right in there. You can get
drive off.
Sally: My focus is on being safe as we are, with what we
Jan: Safety-wise, we wouldn’t go into a dark, unlit parking
going to do. Only then do we go ahead and do it. If
we find that conditions aren’t safe, we would just
keep driving.
Sally: This time was a whole different ballgame. Not too
studying Buddhism. It was that journey that I began
then, which is still ongoing, that is driving this experience
right now.
It’s all about, for me, reaching the point of not
being attached. I feel so light I could fly. I am so
glad to be rid of that stuff. It’s a whole different
ballgame. It’s about just living in the moment where
you are, with who you are, and that’s pretty much
what’s making me so excited about RVing.
Jan: If there are any women out there who get to your
to travel, then I think your stories will show them
that they can do anything they want.
Sally: I also think that I’m getting the hang of the To Give
exciting and meaningful, not just to them but to other
people too, and could be told. That people like us
is doing, and that those individuals and their stories
could have an impact on many people.
Granted, I moved around a lot. For me, it is not wanting
to be permanent. I mean nothing’s permanent in
life so why should we be permanent? Why should our
location be permanent? There are too many things to
see, too many places to go, too many people to meet,
too many new experiences to have to sit in one place
and be married to our house full of stuff.
Jan: We kept the things that were important to us. Some
computers.
Sally: I’d have to say the best part is the wonderful people
the context of experience, it has to be my experience
at Guadalupe, Arizona and that’s sort of at the end
of our time here.
I worked as a counselor with the Yaqui Nation
for two years in Guadalupe. It was mind-boggling
and it was probably—it’s hard to say—the richest
experience I’ve had maybe in my whole life.
It’s hard to put into words. It’s about being a
minority in a culture you know nothing about.
I was the minority in that culture; learning how
to appreciate and respect a culture that I might
one day, many years ago, have felt superior to. It’s
humbling and it’s wonderful at the same time. It’s
getting to know how a whole different culture of
people survives in this society. It’s an amazing thing.
I loved it.
Jan: I joined the Heard Museum after I was a bus driver
quite a bit of training. The Heard Museum is one of
the most famous institutions for Native Americans,
and it promotes the understanding and appreciation
for Native American culture and artwork. I did that
for five years, and that experience was very enriching
for me too. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Sally: We’re still trying to weed out all the books that I
haven’t yet read them. I want to read them. Besides
that, for me, the only other thing I kept is a glass
depiction of a Zen Bodhisatva, Kwan Yin. That’s pretty
Jan: And the cats. We just had to have the cats with us.
Notice with this episode and the next that my voice has
been edited out completely.
Sally: I was pulling out of the library, and believe it or not,
conversion. Anyway, it came driving up behind me
and I got so excited. I said, “Oh my gosh! We gotta
do this!��? So here we are.
Jan: We thought about the fifth wheel and we went out
had a Dodge Dually that could pull anything with
a Cummins engine. We thought, ‘Do we really want
to go that route?’
Sally: You know, I think it’s a bunch of things, but primarily
loved the pick-up, but you have to do a lot more stuff.
You have to hook it up, un-hook it, and level it, and
those are things that motorhomes do for themselves.
You push a button, it gets level. It’s self-contained and
is easy to drive for Jan, who’s a bus driver. We like it.
It’s easier to park.
Marion: Let’s go back to the push buttons. That was absolutely
Marion: And they’re ten to fifteen years older than we are. What is
are the three things we should know about, that makes it
easier to RV.��?
Sally: I was going to pick the levelers. They’re the only ones
Jan: It’s hydraulics as I understand it. It somehow slows
go down a hill, you use your brakes and the retarder.
It helps hold you back. The third thing I think is probably
the mirror adjusters.
Sally: I don’t know what they thought. They just cheered
good, bad, or indifferent about it. I remember my
mother was sad when we pulled out but that’s beause
we hadn’t been home in awhile.
Marion: One of the things that intrigues me about RVing is the
Jan: For me it was. I moved with my family twelve times
the Marine Corps and moved more after college.
Sally: I think it’s just the adventure of it—the getting away.
the breaking of old patterns.
Notice the improved sound quality as the remaining
interviews were recorded in the Phoenix area with
a computer connected microphone.
Marion: Women RVers are unique because of what it requires in
through this process again in the last few years.
What happened when the two of you decided you had
to get back on the road again?
Lovern: A friend e-mailed us that she was getting a new RV.
Then we were with a friend and talking about RVing.
She said, “What did you like about it when you were
doing it?��?
We started talking. We really liked RVing. Why
did we quit? We started talking about maybe doing it
again and we said, “We’re a lot older now.��? She said,
“Well, if not now, when?��?
And we said, “Yes, if not now, when?��? So then
we went and started looking at the different RVs. We
found that since we were older, we couldn’t do a lot of
the physical stuff we used to do. We also discovered
that RVs were so much more convenient. It’s all push
buttons for everything now. So we thought, ‘Well, we
can do this, and this is what we want to do.’
Marion: And then you went on the road again. How old were you
There were at least three women over 80 years old
who were traveling by themselves in big rigs and
thinking of getting a new one. So we thought, ‘We’re
not so smart after all.’
Marion: What’s the impact on you after all these years as you look
themselves and become what they wanted to be.
Just like a woman I taught with when I was a
teacher’s aid. She said “Why don’t you go back to
school and get your teaching degree?��? I said, “Well,
I thought about it for a long time, but I’d be 40 years
old when I’m done.��?
She said, “So what? You can teach for another 25
years, and that’s enough time for anybody.��? I’ve been
very happy that I took her advice and I did it.
Zoe and I realized that even though we had a
wonderful home, we missed full-time RVing. So
we sold this home and everything in it and bought
another RV.
We had stopped RVing only because we had
started the parks, and now we were back on the road
again. We were older, but thankfully there have been
major improvements since 1986 and everything on
the new rig was much easier with push buttons for
everything.
Marion: I was always intrigued with the comment that once you two,
in it in the driveway.
Lovern: I got the bug from driving back from Iowa that I
sleep out there.��?
Marion: But it wasn’t just going to be an overnight stay in your
Lovern: No, I was ready to move on to someplace. Zoe said
a house. That was fine with me. We would go with
what we had in the RV. We had two weekends of
garage sales and sold everything. That process was
very freeing, too; getting rid of so many things that
you’ve collected in your life.
Marion: In our consumer-oriented culture, the ultimate is to have
the underlying tenets of this full-time RVing is to let go of
all that.
Lovern: Having a big house and collecting stuff is our downfall,
that stuff. We don’t need all that room. When you
travel all over the world, you see how little space
most people in the world live in.
Marion: Well, you’re quite the world traveler. If I remember correctly,
Marion: I’d like to shift the focus and start zeroing in on the RVing
is: What did your family think?
Lovern: They were used to me taking off. It didn’t seem to
my family.
Marion: The other thing is your friends’ reactions. You mentioned
Lovern: We did because we’d been very active in the women’s
there.
Marion: They were used to both of you traveling, but RVing is a
people see as the norm.
Lovern: They just thought we were crazy to sell everything
people think ….
Marion: I would like to start with the compulsion we’ve all heard
from Zoe’s perspective than from yours. You were on sabbatical
in France. What was it you thought when she first
said, “Here’s what I’ve done: I bought that Born Free?��?
Lovern: I was over there because I had been teaching for over
I had done my dissertation on Multicultural
Education in U.S. higher education. I was interested
in how Europe had approached this topic. They
approached it differently. Their workers that came
in from other countries were assumed to be going
back to their country eventually.
So they taught foreign workers their own languages
and all their cultural aspects. In our schools
at that time, we were trying to make foreign workers
become little Americans. I was curious about
the Europeans’ system.
house in this little tiny French village. Zoe and I
were writing back and forth all the time, and sometimes
calling.
She wrote me that she’d gone to this RV show
and felt compelled to do so. She fell in love with the
Born Free and ordered it. It called to her, Zoe, and
she wanted it. That kind of surprised me because she
always said she didn’t like to pack and unpack. But
obviously that’s what she wanted to do now.
Marion: You get back from France, and now you have to go to pick
Lovern: I just didn’t know what to expect really. I thought,
State.’ Once we got there we went through the factory.
I saw that the Born Free was a very nice unit.
It was only 23-feet long, so it was small enough
that we could stop just about anywhere. I enjoyed
the drive back. It was very freeing. By the time we
got back, I was enjoying the RV.
Lovern: Freeing in that you’re just taking off and going wherever
do, and go where you want to go.
I should qualify that we had rented a van camper
one Christmas and gone up to Vancouver Island in
it. We had enjoyed that experience even though we
found out later the camper had bald tires. But we had
a grand time in that van.
Note: Lovern’s original interview was delayed due to
back surgery. A recovery challenge given the height
of the steps into her diesel motorhome…
Marion: I want to explore in more depth the strength of these women
an ability to get out of the nest and quit copping out
on habit. Then when you go from a part-time RVer
to a full-time RVer, that takes even more strength. It
takes a very strong person to change the way they
have been brought up, to go against the tide of their
community and their friends, and to get out there
and do it.
That same kind of risk-taking would apply to
full-time RVing because it’s a risk. It’s an emotional
risk. You might not be able to cope with it, with not
having a place to land.
Marion: Not everyone needs to be anchored to a community. Ruth
different communities.
Zoe: You have to define community. Some communities
don’t want those kinds of challenges. So this life is
not for them.
Marion: I’m using multimedia to capture these stories. One of my
want people to remember about this and remember about
your participation in this interview?
Zoe: I think without RVW, Lovern and I might not have
started in the beginning.
life I’ve wanted that kind of community.
If you have the dream, for heaven’s sake do it.
You can always quit. Take the plunge. You have the
support and the rewards are indescribable.
Marion: What did your friends think?
Zoe: That was a definite negative. Our friends knew we
it; they couldn’t relate to us.
Marion: But what was that response about? You traveled a lot.
notion because we didn’t have any roots. We didn’t
even try to convince them otherwise. That’s what
spawned the RV travel club. We needed connections
who didn’t think we were crazy.
I felt, Lovern didn’t care—she was having a good
time—but I felt I needed connections while I was on
the road. I needed to be able to see people and visit
people and have something in common.
We’re all good friends again. I don’t know what
to tell you.
Now this sounds easy. But any time you move
to another community, or move out of a community,
there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on. Some
people give up at that point. They say, “Well, there’s
this little thing to overcome and that little thing to
overcome, and I guess it wasn’t meant to be.��? And
they give it up.
When you set a goal, you can’t let little things
get in the way. You can’t use them as an excuse not
to meet your goal. You just set a goal and you deal
with all the obstacles that get in the way until you
get there. But you don’t say, “Oh well, I guess it
wasn’t meant to be,��? and give it up. You do it. Then
If you look at it like, ‘this is the end, it’s all over, I
can’t change,’ you’re going to believe it’s impossible.
The truth is, you can change anything in the world
you’re doing.
Once you don’t have to work, then this philosophy
can be actualized. When you’re working, things are
different. Or when you’re raising kids, things are different.
You just do what you have to do. Once you’re
free, you haven’t got an excuse.
Zoe: I never thought that I’d be interested in RVing again
to pack or unpack another rig as long as I lived.
But while Lovern was in France on sabbatical, I
had a compulsion to buy an RV. I shopped for weeks
for an RV, not really wanting one—knowing that I
didn’t even like RVing.
So I finally found an RV I didn’t want. I ordered
it custom-made, and I got it as small as I could. I got
a 23-foot Born Free and wrote to Lovern and told
her that I had bought an RV and I had no idea why.
Zoe: We did take one overnight trip, and then after that she
in the driveway.
We kept the house, until Lovern said, “We could
go full-time RVing if you didn’t have to work.��? So
that’s what we did. I sold my business and we began
RVing in the mid-1980s.
I was a psychologist by profession. Somebody
asked me once if I thought certain behavior modification
used with kids could work with dogs. I thought
that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my
life. Then I started looking at it. There was such a
market for it that I started taking care of issues on
the side.
Marion: What did your family think when you made the commitment
Heads up: Notice the sound quality variation from
Zoe’s opening comments and the grainy variation
from then on…a microphone computer connected
quality versus a long distance cel phone connection.
