All Car Central Magazine

The Joy Of The Open Road by Geoff Wheatley



The Joy Of The Open Road by Geoff Wheatley. Photos and Stories.



The Joy Of The Open Road by Geoff Wheatley


The craze in the 1930’s was to own a trailer that could be towed by your car to some exotic location for the weekend or even a holiday. The average trailer in 1936 was about twelve-foot-long with a double bed that tucked away in the outside wall and a small but adequate kitchen stove, usually fueled by kerosene or some similar oil based fuel. Your car needed to have at least three manual gears, four would have been better to help you get up the seriously steep hills and of course to help you descend. The cost new, off the showroom floor was between two hundred dollars to five hundred. In the case of the latter you may well have at least one extra bed and certainly a larger kitchen with ultra-modern equipment like a twelve-volt strip light and even a semi ice box with a built in electric (12 Volt) fan to assist the maintenance of the ice. Also, a radio built into the interior often with a record player

Lad
Clara Cunningham Photo

Clara Cunningham Photo


When it came to the truly essential features, at $200, you went outside to some convenient location; However when you hit the truly luxury features the trailer incorporated a private facility with a holding tank that could be flushed out when required. There were trailer camps all over the country where you could spend the night, or several nights at a more than reasonable cost. A 1930’s information log indicates that a night at a premier camp was one US Dollar, however, stay for a week and you get one night free. These camps had various support features like a mini grocery store, laundry facility and even a beer shop when the state law allowed. Some had Children’s playgrounds and other such facilities like a small swimming pool or even an outdoor type of gym. For an additional twenty-five cents you could sit outside on your portable deck chair and watch a movie on an open size screen. It has been suggested that this was the feature that led to the creation of the Drive IN Movie craze of the post war years.

Lad
Clara Cunningham Photo

Clara Cunningham Photo


One very important facility was water, fresh water of course. You could take your bucket and walk over the communal water tap or for a few cents extra have your trailer parked adjacent to a facility water tap so that it was a simple a case of stepping outside for a refill. Most of these trailers had their problems, like leaking windows or where featured, leaking sunlight’s. They also had a tendency to sink into the ground if left for too long in the same place. The tires were simply truck tires that were never designed to the type of travel a family trailer was expected to endure. In consequence, tire problems were common even on the expensive models. In reality, the more luxury trinkets you had the more likely it was that you would suffer tire fatigue or whatever fancy name you choose to call such breakdowns. Again, not a welcome situation when you remember that the vast majority of the highways were little more than a double track road with very limited space to park off the highway.

When my children were young back in the 1960’s I decided to buy a trailer, and take to the open road for weekend family breaks. The first thing that I noticed was that it was difficult to stop anywhere with half a house fixed to the rear of the car. My solution was simple, find a public parking lot, unhitch the trailer and take off to some convenient dinning spot for a meal etc. This proved to be something of a challenge if on your return, you find three cars parked in front of the trailer with no owner in sight. Reconnecting the trailer, now with a week’s supply of necessary items weighing more than you could ever anticipate, also becomes quite a challenge. That’s of course if you could get your car in the right position for the two to be united once again. There were other delights that I prefer not to remember be it enough to say that my trailer days were short but memorable, in more ways than one. If any reader is thinking of joining the trailer brigade please take my advice and rent one for a couple of weeks to see if you have the “Right Stuff” to participate in this activity. Looking back, I can honestly say that I did not!
GEOFF WHEATLEY

Lad
Likely alternate to a Trailer

Likely alternate to a Trailer


CLICK HERE
CLICK HERE
CLICK HERE




All Cars • • Racing • • VINTAGE • • Shows • • Gallerys • • Contact

Scroll to Top