Sharkey's Book Review of...

Roll Your Own

by Jodi Pallidini
and
Beverly Dubin

Published in 1974 by
Collier Books

While less well known than Rolling Homes, Roll Your Own was published a few years earlier. This book of 192 pages attempts to convey information about 'How-to' convert a school bus, truck or van into a home on wheels. There is much text devoted to construction details, living on the road, and interesting excerpts from those who have done it already. Chapter titles include:

Buying a truck
Keeping it to code
Space Planning
Stoves
Lighting and Windows
The Road is Home: The New Age Gypsies
Supporting Your Trip on the Road
Groovy Extras
...and so on.

The flavor of this book is unmistakably early 1970's, very similar to The Whole Earth Catalog or, better yet, Shelter. Of course, much of the factual construction information seems quite dated, overly simplistic, and in some cases downright dangerous. Who was to know that some of us would spend the next 25 years living in our 'temporary' mobile living accommodations?

With the exception of the cover, photography is black-and-white (monochrome to computer users), and appears to have been collected over a period of time and from a variety of sources. While it is fun to look at the photos, and they do comprise a historical record of those times, very few of the images will prove to be useful in the planning or execution of your own home-built rig. Most, if not all of the vehicles pictured look to be thrown together out of scrap materials, with little thought given to fine craftsmanship, structural soundness, or even a pleasant appearance.

If I had to rate this book, I'd give it an 'I' for 'Interesting', and a 'NANR' for 'Not Absolutely Necessary Reading'. If you see a copy at a flea market for a dollar or two, pick it up. Go home, put your old Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, and Jefferson Airplane albums on, read it and get off on a cheap nostalgia trip, man.

Note: The following text and photos are Copyrighted Material. Please respect the author's rights.

One of the better rigs in the book

Lighting and Windows Installing a skylight, window, bubble dome or double decker is a major project, but the light and/or space will be your reward. Materials suitable for a skylight or window are likely to be found in a junkyard, a stained-glass window from a house being torn down, a porthole from a boat, a glass camper window with a screen found at the flea market.
The top half of a VW bus or bug, sliced off and welded onto the roof of your rig is another popular possibility for added space and light to your living quarters.
Often, privacy rather than light will be your goal. Curtains are your answer here. Heavy material or black crepe will give you day or night privacy.

Aahhh, life's a gas!

Stoves There are different types of stoves for heating and cooking that you will want to investigate. For heat, many will prefer wood-burning stoves or kerosene, or perhaps you will want more sophisticated propane or butane gas stoves. A word of caution: don't try to use gasoline. It explodes.
For simple cooking, you can always count on a Coleman stove and for simple heating, a catalytic heater works fine: they both run on Coleman fuel, which costs about $1.85 a gallon. (not these days!, try $3.99)
Small wood-burning stoves used for heating can be quite efficient and charming at the same time. Wood stoves will heat just as quickly as any other stove. The stove should be in as central a location as possible for the best distribution of the heat.

(Is that a melted plastic wastebasket being used as a wood storage container next to the hot stove? -Sharkey)

"The only thing anybody's hassled us for pretty much is 'Where you going to park all those buses?' So that's what we're out doing. Also, we're learning a whole lot. One thing we learned is that you can drive for five hundred miles at a time in parts of the United Stated and not see anybody else. We've been up in places where there just ain't any people for as far as you can see in any direction, for miles and miles and miles. They talk about it being crowded right around New York and Los Angeles, it's really crowded and not much fun. But you get out in the rest of the country and there's a lot of country left, and it ain't so bad. It's pretty good-looking country." -Stephen
(Stephen Gaskin led a caravan of buses across the country from San Francisco to The Farm, in Summertown, Tennessee, a journey described in his book, The Caravan)

Jodi Pallidini, an exhibited painter, craftswoman, and book illustrator, has traveled in the Southwest and Mexico in her family truck, "The Brown Rose of Tibet."
Beverly Dubin, a published writer, artist, and photographer, has traveled extensively throughout the United States.

Last Update:
Mar 18, 1999