Cruisin Venice:

You guys are too funny.

Hey, from a native here, you need to use the term “SoCal” if you want to be credible in SoCal… . We love our state, our weather, our fruits and nuts and love all things auto. If ya gotta be homeless SoCal is the place to be as our weather is conducive to minimal living conditions.

This was a funny break from the “Death of US Auto Giants” theme. I think I’ve seen one of those vehicles when I worked in Santa Monica parked near Cha Cha Chicken. If ever in town go there or Chez J for good eats!

In 1970 I owned a motor home very much like the on in this photo. I took it with my brother and two friends to the tip of Baja Mexico which back then was very much an adventure. There was virtually no road back then, no phones and no electricity south of Ensenada and finding anyone who spoke English was almost impossible but luckily for us one of my friends spoke fluent Spanish.

What was interesting to me back then was the differences in our lifestyles and culture. (For the most part none of this holds true today.) Back then most of the people we met along the way had never seen an air-conditioned motor home with electricity let alone lights and refrigerators. Many nights we were invited into the pueblos of people we met only that day and often their children would spend the night sleeping in my motor home.

Not for second did we ever worry about anything being stolen or broken. By the time we reached the tip of Baja which took some 3 weeks, the motor home was so filthy dirty it seemed like camouflaging for Iraq. Equally as filthy and suffering from a large hole in the transom was my fiberglass boat we were towing. One afternoon when we returned from a day of marlin fishing we couldn’t believe our eyes… Not only had they washed the motor home and boat (they have no running water) but they had used whisk brooms to clean the carpet inside AND had began repairing the hole in my boat. This is just the way they were. They asked for nothing and expected nothing in exchange. During the week we stayed there all the children in the village slept in my motor home and I wager the smiles lasted them at least a couple years. I know it did for us.