I Have A Big Banana

The Big Banana

Dear Friend,

Life is good when you have a big banana.

I didn’t expect to acquire a big banana.  I never had one before.  Except the kind you eat.

So what’s the deal with the bananas already?

Well, back in Texas we discovered (to our horror) that the laws of thoughtless engineering prevented us from towing our old Ford F-150 pickup truck behind the Warrior as a tow vehicle (or “dinghy” as RVers call these auxiliary vehicles, a term borrowed from the yachting world).  At least we couldn’t tow it without a flatbed trailer.  And there’s no way that I was going to drag a trailer around North America.  Where would I put it when I’m not using it?

This meant that my wife had to drive the Ford truck from Texas back to Virginia while I drove the Warrior.  Not fun.

But why worry?  Our other vehicle was a Jeep Commander.  And everybody knows that Jeeps are famous as great dinghies for motorhomes.  Right?

Well, sort of.

It seems that there is one kind of Jeep Commander that you just can’t tow with all four wheels on the pavement, like we need to.  And guess what.  That’s the kind that we owned.

Well, there’s always the “Spaceship”, the name that our old Argentinian nanny gave to the conversion van that we bought a few years back.  Oops, that won’t work either.  And who wants to drag a battleship behind your motorhome, anyway.

The reality of the situation was obvious. Not one of our current automobiles could be towed behind the Warrior without expensive modification, or a lot of hassle.  If we wanted a dinghy (and we really did) we would have to buy one. Uggg.

So my wife and I waded into the used car market.

We didn’t need anything special, of course.  Just something that we could take to the market or to visit the sights near the campgrounds we visited.  And something designed from the get-go to be pulled behind a motorhome.

There were a bunch of options, actually.  But not many of them would carry around a family of six.  At least not comfortably.

And there was another fact.  You see, ever since I sold my classic 1982 Jeep CJ-7 a few years back, I had been hankering for a new Jeep.  You know, driving with the wind blowing through my thinning hairline … ahhh.  Now that’s living.

So we went out looking for one of those 4-door Jeep models.

What’s that you say?  Those Jeeps only fit five persons max?  And that with a lot of cramping in the back seat?

No worries, mate!  You see, there’s this little company that I found out in California.  They call themselves “Little Passenger Seats.”  These guys specialize in building small, kid-sized automobile seats to act as a third row in your SUV.  Their website says that they give growing families with smaller SUVs the seating capacity of a minivan, and they say that their seats meet Federal Motor Vehicle safety standards!

So, confident that we could squeeze our midgets into dad’s mid-life-crisis-mobile, we visited a local dealer or two who had Jeeps on their lot.

And then we tripped over the Big Yellow Banana.

You couldn’t miss it, of course.  I think everyone within a three-county radius had noticed it on the hill as they rolled by that dealership on the main highway.

I guess they were wondering what fool was going to take away that landmark some day.

But the price the dealer was asking for the Big Banana was pretty good!  At least as bananas go.  And my wife actually liked the way it drove!  And they offered a nice trade-in on our Jeep Commander!  (Maybe they just wanted to get rid of it?)

Well, anyway, you know the rest.

Now we just need to sell our conversion van to help pay for the difference in value between the Jeep and the Big Banana.  Plus the two new custom seats from our new friends in California.  Plus a fancy towing rig with all the wires and pipes and what-not that have to be grafted onto the Warrior so that we can tow our new baby banana.

My only real concern now?  Will customs seize the Banana at the border, like they seem to do with all of our other fruit?

Talk to you soon,

Hugh