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"My need to flee from the madness of the 20th, required a kind of isolation and
withdrawal that's made me completely forget that there are others out there not
working in middle management. I've built "Know Where To Go" (taken from
'You Never Give Me Your Money', Abbey Road) in almost total seclusion."
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Damien's ambitious project started
with a 1969 Ward LaFrance snorkel fire truck, originally in service to the
Mobile, Alabama fire department. Just getting the snorkel apparatus off of
the chassis must have been a huge job all by itself. |
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"My truck sits right in the heart of an industrial
suburb. I'm surrounded by a huge junk-yard (a sign scrapyard, actually) and am constantly being invaded by 30 foot Paul Hogans
selling beer, or McDonalds arches blown down by the wind ... ad infinitum. I get free rent, free electricity
free water and so-forth ... and complete security. In terms of seclusion, I'm more isolated than if I were parked on the
Tundra. In 13 years, not a single person has entered my compound or surprised
me. All I have to do is jump the back fence and I'm smack into the parking lot of a 7-11. A very strange
case of everything being inverted. People keep offering me lakeside frontage with
fantastic views ... and I just wince at the thought of my own rock-n-roll (as
loud as you want it) junkyard transformed into loons, lapping waters and
noisy neighbors."
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A rigid steel framework was custom welded
to the truck's frame after the fire truck body was removed. This is the
only part of the project that Damien contracted out to someone else.
"The whole thing was designed right down to the quarter inch before I
welded the first piece together."
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"I built a detailed scale model of Know-where-to-go, at about the same
time I put my CAD blueprints together. I didn't actually buy the firetruck until the model was finished, and not
surprisingly, the final finished (?) real-thing is almost identical to the
model, with a few less windows. Even the pillows are pretty much tit for
tat."
"Since I built the thing 80km from where I lived, I did-in-fact live in
it while I was building it. Easy to talk about now, but for the first two years I was sleeping on a 4X8 sheet of
plywood in my sleeping bag in 25 below temperatures, powered by a 50m lawnmower extension
cord ... running my electric blanket at night, power tools during the day."
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| Exterior siding being applied over the
steel framework. Say, isn't that a cute little VW Rabbit I see? Hmmm,
early model, pre-1980. Oh, sorry, yet another hobby of mine, Damien just
hates these little cars, guess I shouldn't have even mentioned it, so
forget that I did... |
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The interior of the truck, looking to the
rear. I must say, even after viewing hundreds of photos of all manner of
house trucks and bus photos, I sort of went into sensory overload when I
opened these images to process them in Photoshop. They're even more
intense in large format!
Damien has put a lot of work into making his weekend
get-away retreat as comfortable as possible. At first I was a little
mystified about the fish tank you seen in the middle of the room, but as
this truck is stationary nearly all of the time, the finned occupants
aren't subjected to any seismic activity caused by the motion of the
truck.
The loft over the bathroom has a generous overhead,
and allows one to move about easily in a semi-crouched stance. |
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Looking forward. The very low driver's
cab makes the loft over the front particularly roomy, Damien has made good
use of the space available, partly because he has left the inside of the
truck mostly open instead of "compartmentalizing" everything
into separate, walled-off rooms. |
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"All of these photos are from around '94 to '97 ... and I've been at-it non-stop since then.
Lots of high-tech stuff ... advanced ventilation and heating systems, plumbing using gravity feed tanks/pumps, rainwater
collection/filtration systems, separate potable water lines/taps, custom alarm/security ... along with
VCR/DVD/Satellite links, and an on-board network linking several laptops to the internet. My last big item is to
install my 2 person shower (7 ft high stall for 2 people +) at one side of
the washroom." |
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"I've given up on people with the 'could have bought a Winnebago with the same
money' attitude." |
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