When I say to my friends, “Man, I have been through some weird shit” not a single one of them disagrees. In a way, I feel kind of bad because “he”, my 2008 Chevy Express cargo van, (who I always thought of as male) took up with me. Particularly how it all ended.
Two events really. The first, I was in Chicago, attending Pokémon Go Fest. Parked in an area I have stayed before, but one street over. Just the far side of the Fulton Market District. It has always seemed a pretty safe neighborhood. But, paying to park had spread into the area I really like. Gentrification and big new buildings. Being homeless is one thing, paying to be homeless is a step too far. So I was pushed over a few blocks. At six am the morning I had tickets to attend the fest, I was awakened by the sound of breaking glass.
This is a situation I have spent countless hours thinking about and planning. Usually those hours while I am trying to sleep. Thinking about all the wise things I would do. On the panel beside my bed I had two, red, covered toggle switches. Just like you could imagine firing a ballistic missile. One switch turned on an incredibly loud siren mounted under the van. The other, some blindingly bright red and blue police lights mounted on the dash pointing backward. But then when the moment actually arrived, did I trip any’a that shit? No, of course not.
So here’s what happened. I was low key awakened by hearing the noise of something touching the van. I think the criminals pulled on the back door latch. Living this life you stay always kind of tuned into this sort of stuff. But after a while, you don’t stop to listen and plan every time an acorn hits the van. You become used to some incidental noise. That back door was always a weak point. My design, built more around keeping warm, didn’t allow for any security fix I could see. They broke the latch, but inexplicably the door didn’t open.
They broke the drivers side window and simultaneously attempted break in of the cargo side door. That’s when I became totally awake. The side door was totally Fort Knox with metal screens over the windows and a big sliding latch. Again, they broke the door handle and even got the door to unlatch but it wouldn’t open. Typically, the house is protected from the cab by the bulkhead door. Here’s where we stumble headlong into complacently.
On the bulkhead door I have a deadbolt that drops into the 3/4” hardwood floor. With that in place there is no way that door is opening. Fort Knox. I lock that deadbolt religiously. But this night I was laying in bed when I thought of it. It had been a great day! “Oh!” I thought to myself, “I forgot to close the deadbolt”. I was cozy, and happy, and tired. Getting out of bed, leaning over the toilet in its deployed position in front of the door, seemed far too much effort and in almost ten years I had never had an issue. So I just curled up and went to sleep.
I have a son who is a pilot. It gets drilled into the brain of every pilot trainee that it is never a single isolated mistake that causes a crash, it is a chain. Never just one thing goes wrong.
The glass broke. The driver’s door opened. Nearly immediately the bulkhead door began to open. And then jammed. I was saved by a toilet. The door wouldn’t open. I yelled “Hey get outta here!” with more fierceness than what I, in my planning, was worried I would lack. I knew I was a weak link in that particular chain. But I pulled it off. I leaped outta bed to barricade the door if I needed to. I didn’t. They were bugging out. They called me a pussy as the four of them were climbing into their getaway vehicle. The event was over.
Broken glass everywhere in the cab. Cleanup. I found a Mexican auto glass shop and an hour later I had a new window. Then at ten I was standing in Grant Park looking at me phone as my game filled with suddenly visible gyms and Pokestops. Just like I’d planned it.
Now you gotta say …that’s some crazy shit right? Well that’s the mundane half of the story.
During the summer I live in a bigger camper in the north woods. Quiet and peaceful. The total opposite of how I live the other six months of the year. This spring I bought a new van with the thought of building it out in the early summer. The kink in the plan was having trouble hooking up with my hardwood connection. He is Amish. Un-callable. I can send him a postcard saying what day I am coming to visit, but even with this he will still either be there or not. I had stopped at his sawmill three times and each time he had not. The project was stalled. I parked my van in front of a friend’s house in the city. I got a text from my friend who returned home on a Sunday night, the van was gone.
Well cities, you know. Places turn no parking. Streets are cleaned. Maybe the neighbors complained. The van had been towed before. Monday morning I called the city impound lot. They didn’t have it. Ok, now we’ve got a different deal. I called the police and reported it stolen.
Thursday the impound lot called me. “My van had been recovered. Here is a phone number to call and get more information.” I was a little confused. I wasn’t really sure what additional information I needed. But when I called the number and it was for the city of XXXXX police homicide division. Oh my. 😳
They told me yes, they had my van. It was on an evidence hold. No they couldn’t tell me anything about it. Yes, they would call me when they were done. That’s where it sat. For months. Then the leaves started changing. I started to feel some pressure. In a short time I needed to be on the road and living in the new van. But that project had stalled now for new reason. Originally I had planned on selling the old van intact. Even though it was. 2008 with 328,000 miles, it had value as a stealth camper. With the uncertainty of its condition, it might be a salvage operation.
Pestering the cops, getting transferred to captains who never answered their phones. I started leaving messages on voice mails. Eventually someone replied. My van had been involved in a “shots fired incident”. The officer didn’t know the condition. He said he would try to get it pushed through the crime lab and get it released. Two days later it was.
I went and took a look. It was a salvage. One tire, the rear driver’s, was flat and the rim bent. Body damage on the opposite rear corner. My guess is it was pitt maneuvered by a police car during a chase and hit a curb. There were eight bullet holes that I could find. All the holes were entries. I was impressed; The bullets that came through the windshield were stopped by the Weather Guard bulkhead divider! There’s an advertisement for them! Importantly there was no blood. No brain matter. Whatever went down, and if someone did die, they departed the van un-punctured.
I salvaged a lot of van building parts. Of course all the stuff I really cared about was stolen. My favorite electric guitar. The one I rebuilt and repainted myself. A ruby ring I had inherited from my uncle and had promised to pass on to my youngest son. Some original paperwork proving something I own. No value now but odds are high someday that will change and now I can prove nothing. A Waterford crystal shotglass. Sentimental items. Half my life really. It was a rough time for me.
Other odd things were left. The guitar, as valuable as it was to me, might be worth $300. But the composting toilet they left is worth thousand. I removed my nice kitchen countertop. Three of the four under-bed storage drawers. I found a bullet! The new LiFePO4 batteries were still there. That was another thousand dollars. All my artwork and magnets from my travels were pulled down from the walls but then I found many of them in a bag in the back.
They didn’t allow me to salvage the roof rack and solar panels. I was super bummed about that. It was too late to have a new frame built for me. I am living on the road now with no solar. It sucks. The van had a new dealer sticker on the back door. In the span of four or five days it was stolen, valuables removed, title forged and then sold to a dealer then to someone else who likely couldn’t figure out why the cops were chasing him in the new van he bought. I wish the van could talk, we could share our wild life stories.
In the end I stood at the front with my hand on the hood. I said my goodbyes to BV 1.0. I said I was sure sorry how things had turned out. I expressed confidence life wasn’t over. I bet the impound lot auction won’t be the end. I hope I remembered to say thank you for the good times we had together.
