Vintage Trailers

An ideal trailer for my needs and aesthetics.

 One of my goals while living in the lush land of the Pacific Northwest is to acquire a vintage travel trailer. I would actually like to get my hands on two of them, but I digress- the reason for that statement will be made clear further down the post. I promise that this will not be another post about Roslyn but attending the 1st Annual Vintage Trailer Rally of Roslyn really fueled my desire to own one of these sweet, sweet contraptions. I have had a love of trailers since I saw The Long, Long Trailer as a child. It seems to have made an indelible mark upon my psyche that causes me to gawk at them in people's yards or swerve towards them on the highway. Both occupations are dangerous while driving, insists my long-suffering mate. I agree with him but sometimes there is a force working that's beyond my control.

It helps to have the car to go with it.

Much like Lucy and Desi's characters in the movie, we both have the desire to strike out across the country pulling our fashionable home behind us. It goes with out saying that I would like to avoid the comic disasters that befell the movie couple at all costs. I will not be trying to cook dinner in a frilly apron while the trailer is being pulled at top speed down Route 66 (highly illegal, anyways) nor will I allow my rock collection to stampede back and forth across the pristine linoleum of my fabulous trailer.

The history of travel trailers is as interesting and as varied as the trailers themselves. Houses on wheels came about with the culture and domestic needs of European Gypsies (or Romani people). I have always greatly admired the beauty of Gypsy carts and hope one day to own one or at least take a little vacation in one.

A canned ham!

The birth of the modern "leisure" trailer was in 1880 when the 18 foot long "Wanderer" was built by the Bristol Carriage Company.  America did not get it's first manufactured trailer until the early 1920's and the folks that enjoyed them were dubbed "tin can tourists." Continuing with the tin theme, vintage trailer buffs today affectionately refer to their trailers as "canned hams."  Here is a good photo archive  by Life Magazine that is dedicated to The Golden Age of Caravanning.

The beautiful birch wood interior of the Spartanette.

   So now we come to the fantasy acquisition of trailer number two: a 1952  Royal Spartanette. At an overall length of 35 feet, this is no caravanning trailer. This is a "living in for some time trailer."  This is 7,000 pounds of trailer that you carefully haul to some lovely location and leave it there for a long, long time. I keep having a vision of this trailer on some property with a big deck built all around it. This baby is really big enough to live in for a whole summer with its full- sized bathroom with a tub and a regular-sized refrigerator! I would love to spend months at a time surrounded in the warm gleam of curved and polished birch wood.

The interior glory of the Spartanette.

The Spartan Aircraft Company started manufacturing these wonderful trailers in 1946. The Imperial Spartan was almost 40 feet long and because all of their trailers were made out of lightweight airplane aluminum it weighed a mere 7830 pounds! That is actually too much trailer for even me...plus the Royal Spartanette has exquisite curvy lines.

So I dream on, occasionally haunting Craigslist for the perfect trailer, and wait for the day that I look in my rear view mirror and see our own "canned ham" bobbing cheerily along behind us.