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December 1, 2002 Keep on Truckin': A Eugene man produces a book that explores the phenomenon of hand-crafted homes on wheels By BOB KEEFER The Register-Guard REMEMBER HOUSE trucks? Those '60s-era, noncorporate RVs, with pot-bellied stoves and all-wood interiors, which once popped up like so many Gypsy vans on blue highways across the country? Now in Eugene - naturally - a house truck owner and builder has come out with a book about them. "Some Turtles Have Nice Shells," a newly self-published picture book by cabinetmaker and longtime house truck owner Roger Beck, explores the entire phenomenon of house trucks and buses, from details of their construction to the joys of ownership.
His most recent house truck, though, is currently parked and used as storage outside his west Eugene cabinet shop. Real life has taken Beck off the road the past few years, and he's clearly itching to get back out. Now he's planning his next road home, which he envisions will start with a 35-foot, stepped-deck, fifth-wheel trailer and grow from there. "When I build my next one, I'm going to build it so ostentatious that when I park at a rest stop and all the RVers come over to gawk, they're going to go home with a copy of my book in their hand," he says. "My next one will pull people to me." Beck admits that middle age has brought an increased need for simple comforts. The truck parked outside his shop looks a little rugged these days. "This is more of a hippie vehicle," he admits. "It doesn't have the amenities that I would prefer now. I want a cross between this and a Marathon Coach." But you can bet that whatever Beck builds next will not look much like a Marathon Coach. The house truck esthetic is still far more rooted in Oregon Country Fair than in corporate CEO. The house truck look combines a dash of art deco and early 20th century craftsman, with its deep emphasis on hand-made everything. Beck insists that a house truck is not a failed house. In other words, don't imagine you can live in a house truck because you can't afford to live in a house. It doesn't work that way.
"I have an issue today with people who live in a very nice bus and then call themselves 'homeless,' " he says. "You do have a home." Beck is hesitant to estimate the cost of building a house truck, since no two house trucks - and no two house truck builders - are quite alike. Everything depends, he says, on the skill of the builder, the ability to scrounge low-cost materials, and the requirements of the design. A fabulous house truck is naturally going to cost more than a modest one. Other than that, he mentions $10,000 to $20,000 as a reasonable total cost, though naturally you can spread that out for as long as you don't mind not finishing the project. And many house trucks take years to complete, if they ever get completed at all. "Some Turtles Have Nice Shells" documents the creation of Beck's most recent house truck, which started with a stripped-down, 1952 Federal truck with an enormous 6-cylinder gasoline engine. The truck began its life hauling water for the Navy. Beck lengthened the truck frame and then made a subfloor wood frame with 4-by-4-inch timbers, which he covered with 2-inch planks. He built the house on that deck using conventional stud wall construction with 2-by-3-inch studs covered with a plywood shell, meaning this house truck looks a lot more like a house under construction than it does an RV. Beck says road vibration doesn't hurt the stick-and-nail construction, and his old house truck, whose map and felt-tip log shows it has covered thousands of miles in the U.S. and Canada, still seems as solid as the day it was built. Life in a house truck offers its own simple pleasures and necessary rules. One important aspect is controlling clutter. Beck works with three firm rules to reduce clutter, both physical and financial: 1. If you don't pay for it, you don't own it. 2. If it won't fit in your house truck or you have no place to put it, you can't have it. 3. If you don't physically use it (such as a tool) or visually enjoy it (such as a picture), you really don't need it. Another longtime house truck owner whose work is in Beck's book is Mr. Sharkey, a 51-year-old, free-lance broadcast engineer in Eugene. Sharkey's house truck began taking shape in 1974, when he needed to move and bought a 1962 Chevy C-40 truck for $1,000 to haul his possessions, rather than rent a moving van. But once he owned it, it occurred to Sharkey that he could just as well live in the truck. That was 28 years ago, and he figures it was the best $1,000 he ever spent. Of course the truck, which is still nearly mobile except that it needs a little engine work, looks quite different on the inside these days. Once you step through the door, cut through the truck's side panel, you enter a warm, cozy, wooden delight, hand crafted with dark panels of wood and elegant antique furniture. Inside, Sharkey works at an oak office desk, on which he keeps his computer. His desk chair has a metal and leather art deco look, in keeping with the home's overall design. And, at the center, a tiny but modern wood stove, complete with catalytic converter, keeps everything toasty in winter. This is not, Sharkey agrees, exactly a recreational vehicle. "It was built as a portable house," he says. "Not an RV. It's kind of unwieldy. It's kind of large and affected by the wind. But you can take it on a trip to Belknap Hot Springs and all you hear out the window is the rush of the waters." Sharkey is so enamored of house trucks that he's building a second, larger version of his home on wheels. This will be, he jokes, his retirement home. The new palace is going onto the frame of a full-size, 1963 Crown school bus he acquired that was once owned by a school district in Southern California, the land of little body rust. Though the diesel engine and transmission are sound, Sharkey says, the body was starting to show stress fatigue, making the bus a perfect candidate for conversion. He removed the old, yellow school bus body from the roof down to the bottoms of the windows and then carefully welded a tubular steel frame in place, which he has covered on the outside with sheet aluminum and insulated on the inside with foam panels to a value of about R-17. In the process, he raised the roof, increasing the ceiling height from about 6 feet, 3 inches to a full 8 feet, the height of a conventional room. "That's important when you live in it full time," he says. "You can get a little claustrophobic." Then he went out and spent $4,000 on a custom wooden door-window unit to create a spectacular entrance on the back of the bus. That was enough of a financial jolt to slow construction for the indefinite future while Sharkey absorbs the cost. Sharkey keeps a couple of calendars from a conventional recreational vehicle manufacturer on the inside wall of his house-in-progress, perhaps as a reminder of what the bus is not going to look like when it's done. "This is to show people how really bad you can make one of these," he says. "I've toured the plant. They are extremely well built. They cut no corners. And they're ugly." When his new home is finished - and Sharkey doesn't know just when that will be - it will have separate bathroom, living room, kitchen and bedroom. Like its middle-class RV cousins, it will have a back-up camera. And it will be constructed with an art deco theme throughout. Like Beck, Sharkey is fascinated by other people's house trucks, and he maintains his own Web site on house truck lore: www.mrsharkey.com. Beck's book on house trucks simply evolved along the way. The 190-page paperback is primarily a picture book, filled with photographs of Beck's house trucks and dozens of others. "I just started taking pictures," Beck says. "It started as a scrapbook. There are several photos in the book given to me by people I've never even met." He finally got going on the book when a friend, Fred May, dropped by to help him with a new computer, and May ended up as designer on the book. "Some Turtles Have Nice Shells" is available for $29.95 at local bookstores or through Beck's Web site, www.housetrucks.com. |
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