Photo by Dave Allen

"Now this is one of our best-made vehicles we got. It's got everything imaginable on it. It's got two air conditioners. It's got the double-door refrigerators. it's got the mix-master over here. It's got an ice maker."

There are times to dance like a duck, there are times to leave your spouse, there are times to quit your job, there are even times, they say, to drop cluster bombs on strangers; but mark well, this is not the time to sell recreational vehicles.

Grant Willard: "The best I've made in RVs is maybe $25-27,000 three or four years ago."

Photo by Dave Allen

RVs range from dinky, midget, 17-foot plastic hutches melded onto Toyota tiny trucks to hand-assembled, parquet-floored, chandeliered, hot-tubbed, half-million-dollar, 40-foot monsters built on top of steel bus frames.

The aforementioned models share at least one thing in common; somebody sold them to somebody else.

Meet RV salesman Grant Willard. Grant works for Viva RV Sales, located on East Main Street, the cowboy side of El Cajon. He's 76 years old, strong, vigorous, first glance you'd figure him 20 years younger. Willard is five feet eight inches tall, barrel chested, solid, comes with abundant snow-white hair, matching 1940s bon vivant snow-white mustache, evenly modulated voice tinged with a salesman's inflection denoting no particular place at all.

"You sell the open road."

Photo by Dave Allen

It was eight a.m., a workday, when I walked onto Viva's lot. The setting is no-slack Southwestern slap-up outdoor sales. Immediately on the right is a small 12'-by-12' manager's office surrounding two desks, a coffee pot, and an ancient bathroom that hasn't seen a woman this month. Attached to it, on the west side, like a desert sun porch, is the salesman's office, half the manager's size, with two desks and two salesmen, Grant and Don. Grant offers coffee, leads the way to a 30-foot, $38,000 Champion motor home. We enter, instantly assaulted by RV industry standard Vegas-style whorehouse purple and plastic furnishings, and sit down in chartreuse WEARDATED, spill-resistant, extra-tough dinette. Grant's sparkling, awake eyes focus, radio announcer's voice begins, "I was born just about a mile outside of O'Fallon, Illinois. My grandpa had over 800 acres. It was a lot of farm then. That was 1914, a long time ago. Ha, ha, ha.

"I left O'Fallon when I was 19, 20 years old. I went to St. Louis, worked for McDonnell aircraft in 1933. They'd just started building aircraft, fighters. I was a tool and die maker. It's like making the doors on cars and stuff like that. You start out with the steel, and you have to make the trim die with trims and material, you have to make the form die with two forms and material, and sometimes if they're small enough you make all the die, trim, and form in the same operation, just making dies.

"The plant wasn't very big then; they only had about 350 people. Mr. McDonnell and I — and I hope to die if I'm lying to you — started working on the bench together on a wind tunnel model. That's where we started. McDonnell came to town from Baltimore, Maryland. I know all about how he came to St. Louis driving an old, beat-up gray four-door Plymouth sedan.

"I was there for ten years, 'up until '42, '43, then I come out here, and I worked for a whole bunch of them. I worked for Consolidated Aircraft, which is now Convair. Then I worked for Convair, worked for Ryan, and I worked for Rohr. I spent 40 years in aircraft tool-and-die and tool design."

"Why San Diego?"

"Well, I just like the climate out here, and I was single then. After near 40 years in aircraft, I decided to get out of it, so I quit in 1971, and there was an ad in the paper from J.R. Shattuck wanting help building a mobile-home park. I answered the ad, and I helped put in them two mobile-home parks out in Mira Mesa. I was laying out the plot plans for the whole park 'cause I knew mobile-home parks and they didn't, but they knew construction and I didn't.

"Right now I'm living in a mobile-home park in Santee, Hawaiian Village. I've only lived in an apartment for six months, and that was enough for me. Tbo much noise, too much arguing, too much fighting and stealing from your car. Now I'm going to say something, and I can prove this: a mobile home is the best way in the world for anybody to live. I don't even care if you're rich, because in a trailer park they take care of each other. You never, ever hear of anybody stealing anything or breaking into your car. Never do you hear that in a mobile-home park. You can ask the police department.

"In a park, people get to know each other. It's friendly living. And if somebody right now went out and was bothering around my mobile home, one of the neighbors would walk over and say, 'He's not in, can I help you?' My two daughters live in a house, and their neighbors couldn't care less whether somebody come in and took all their furniture. That's the truth.

"Anyway, it took about a year and a half to build them new mobile-home parks, and after that I quit. I had a good friend, Burt Epstein, used to own Burt's Mobile Home Sales. He was the biggest around here and a heck of a nice guy. He talked me into going to work for him. I told him, 'I can't sell nothing, Burt,' but he says, 'How do you know? You never tried.' "

"You were 56 years old then. What was it like starting another career?"

"I found that it wasn't as hard as I thought it was; in fact, it was a lot easier, particularly mobile-home sales. I've spent 9 years in mobile-home sales, and I've been in RVs for 11. Back in those days there was a lot of mobile-home parks and there was a lot of people moving into mobile homes, so they were simple to sell. They more or less sold themselves. RVs, this is a different racket. Here you've got to sell them."

"How do you mean?"

"Because RVs is something you take as a hobby, just for the fun of it. Mobile homes was serious stuff. That was a home. People needed one. They needed some place to live, and mobile homes were going great guns in them days! They were a lot cheaper, and they were in reach of most people's budget. I'll put it this way: you could buy a 24-foot, say a 24-by-60 or 64-foot, the big ones, you could buy them for $13,000 and $14,000 all set up. The only other expense was getting somebody to move it over to the park, and that didn't cost much either. So, in other words, you could buy a double-wide, and you could move it over to the park and set up for $13,500. Seventeen would be a top-line coach in them days. Now, today, you'll pay at least $50,000 for the same thing.

"I really liked mobile-home sales as long as they had a place to put them. But When you had to go into park resale, like they do now, I got out. Park resale means you have to sell the ones that's in the park. People put a For Sale sign up, and you go out and see if you can sell it for them. Mobile homes died because there isn't a space in San Diego, no place in El Cajon, where you can put a mobile home. All the parks are full, jammed full, and they have been for years. Now you've got to buy the old ones that's already in there just to get the space. It killed the business as far as I was concerned."

We sip coffee out of dinged polystyrene cups. "Viva is a small place," I ask. "One manager, two salesmen. How do you figure who works what customer?"

"We take turns, we call them 'ups.' Who's 'up' on the lot. Don [the second salesman] usually comes in a few minutes before me, so he takes the first up and then I follow along. As long as you've got a customer on the lot, you don't get no ups. Your customer has to leave the lot before you get another up. Like, I could be having a customer, and he could be here two hours, and Don may have a dozen ups in the meantime. As long as you have that customer on the lot, you don't take any more ups."

"How do you actually sell this stuff?"

"Well, the first thing you do, every salesman works different, but my way of doing it is to get acquainted with them, ask them what they're looking for. The thing is, people mostly care only about the monthly payment. You don't press them too hard on the down payment and put them in a squeeze. Mainly that's their problem, getting the down payment. But if they got the down payment then, it's the monthly payments that count. They really don't care what it cost total. If they like it they'll make the payments. Typical down payment is 15 percent whether it's new or used, makes no difference.

"With credit, it used to be with some of the banks, if the customer had some marks against their credit — derogs, you know — the banks would check them to find out why. Let's say he was in construction and had a real good credit all of his life. All of a sudden he couldn't make some payments or he was slow. Most of the banks would go along with him realizing it's impossible to make payments if he didn't make the money, knowing it would be temporary. But now if he's got anything at all derogatory, they don't want any part of him."

"How long have you worked here?"

"I've been here for six years, but I've only been with this company for three months. This used to be Courtesy; it's now Viva. But I feel at home on this lot. And this lot does get a lot of traffic, because it's got a good location and it's got plenty of room for people to drive in off the street."

"Let me see if I understand. Say I've got my RV, and I don't want to go through the hassle of selling it. I would give it to you guys, we'd agree on the price, then anything above that you keep. Is that how it works?"

"Exactly how it works. The advantage being we get an inventory without much of an outlay of money. What's happening now is that we've moved four motor homes out of here, told the owners to come pick 'em up, move 'em out, we can't sell 'em. The new manager is doing the right thing. The last manager, that guy got $200 for getting people to leave their RVs here on consignment. And he brought some of them in four and five thousand dollars over price because he was getting the $200. Hey, he's making two hundred bucks, but we can't sell them. Now it seems like the new manager's seen the handwriting on the wall, and he's got rid of those overpriced units, so now we got something we can sell. The other guy was here for a couple years, and he didn't clean nothing out.

"And this guy's cleaned four out in two days. He's been a salesman, and he knows there's a limit to what you can sell and the price you can sell them for."

Grant and I walk back to the sales shack, enter, sit down. I look for the coffee pot. Don is here, leaning forward in his chair, both elbows resting on a steel gray desk. He glances towards Grant, "You're up."

Outside, walking the lot is a woman wearing a pink T-shirt, stonewashed cut-offs, white socks, lavender tennis shoes, accompanied by a man in Ray Ban shades, polo shirt, and jeans, trailed by one ten-year-old, tussle-headed, annoyed kid.

Grant beams, "How are you folks today?" The foursome establish a temporary defensive circle, swap names.

Inside the shack, Don and I watch two overweight, conservatively dressed Mexican ladies, who look fresh from church, arrive in beaten, peeled, brown mid-70s Pontiac sedan, putt slowly through lot, then drive away.

Grant returns. I ask, "What was happening with those people?"

"They wanted a bunkhouse model, something not over $5000. I couldn't sell them anything we have, but I took their name and phone number in case we get something. I always ask them right off the bat what they want to spend."

Viva mechanic places tanned, wrinkled, oval face inside doorway. Grant probes, "How you coming, Speed?"

"I'm ready."

"You ready? Ready for a walkthrough?"

"Yeah."

"You mean you got the cap on already?"

"Yeah."

"And the door glass in?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, you're getting pretty good."

"They don't call me 'Speed' for nothing."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha."

Mechanic disappears, Grant speaks to ceiling, "Richard [the lot boy] was supposed to wash that thing too, and I'm going to ask why he didn't."

I interrupt, "Is the mechanic here full time?"

"We call the mechanic in to get things ready to go. We got to keep reminding the lot boy. He's a nice kid, but he forgets. I told him three times to wash that trailer, and he didn't do it. He don't work today, but now I'm gonna make him work on his day off because he didn't do it, and he had plenty of time to do it, so he can do it now. Tb me, I don't care if it's the boss, another salesman, or it's a yard boy or the mechanic. That customer is boss. If you don't treat the customers right, it's not long before your business is down the drain and you close the doors. If you treat the customers right, you can keep them open awhile. I've learnt that much in this business in 20 years."

"If you were going to buy yourself a vacation RV, how would you go about it?"

"Well, if I was gonna buy one, being a working man, I would stay down in the class of Fleetwood and the Skyline products because that's good enough for me. If I was gonna buy one and was kind of green at it, I would go to a show and look them over good, find out where the manufacturer was of the ones I liked, and I'd go see how it was put together. I'd go to a factory because the factories will give you a walkthrough. They're glad to have you. Then you'd feel more like you knew what went into it, like you went to one factory, and you saw it was stapled together, went to another, saw that this one was screwed together."

"How would you get the best price? Do all the dealers sell them for the same amount?"

"No, they don't. Some dealers are way higher than other dealers. I'm not mentioning names, but one of the dealers in this city is at least $2000 higher than the other ones, and he still sells them. He advertises."

"What about buying a new one versus a used one?"

"I'd definitely buy a used. There's a whole lot of talk about how all of the new ones are so much lighter than the old ones. That's a bunch of bunk. They've been built the same way as long as I remember. There's no difference in the weight of them. And there's not much difference in design in the last ten years. One guy gets a good floor plan, the other one copies it."

"How about buying it through the paper or through the RV News?"

"Buying it from an individual is not necessarily cheaper than a dealer, because usually the individual don't know what it's worth. They have no idea. Some people underprice them, some overprice them, and some just happen to hit a happy medium.

Most will overprice them, think it's worth more than it is because they don't realize the market. Right now they're not worth near as much as they were a few months ago. There's been a good 25 percent drop, and if the oil and gasoline keeps unsteady, there's gonna be a 50 percent drop."

I reach out for another Yum-Yum donut. "What's the best motor for one of these smaller ones, say, a 24-, 26-footer?"

"Well, everybody got an opinion on that, but personally, if I was buying one, I'd buy a Dodge. Not necessarily in a car, but in a motor home I would. Because they're a better lugging engine than Chevy and Ford. I can prove that. As an example, the older motor homes used to put a 360 Dodge in them. They wouldn't have even thought of putting a 360 Ford or a 350 Chevy in them because they couldn't have pulled them. Dodges are better luggers."

Out the shack window Don paces the lot, looking into RV cabs, studying the sky, coiling, uncoiling his arms, squeezing his fists.

I ask Grant, "Do you have a routine, a way you pump yourself up when you come to work?"

"No. I have seen some salesman — I don't mean this derogatory — I've seen some salesman that come to work, and if they don't make a sale in a couple weeks, they get so disgusted they want to quit. And that's stupid because if you've been selling for any length of time, you'll know you're gonna hit sooner or later, and you might hit a real good one. As an example, we had a guy in here that wasn't selling anything and he was all ready to quit and then all of a sudden he hit, and he made more commission in one day than we made all month. He had what we call a 'lay down.' A couple come in and the price wasn't posted on the coach and he quoted it $3000 higher than what we were wanting, and the lady says, 'I'll take it.'

"I would never have quoted $3000 higher than what we wanted, but he did. He wasn't sure what it was worth so he just guessed at it. And when he come into the office to see what the price was, he says, 'Jesus, I just made $3000.' "

"How many RVs do you need to sell a month in order to make your nut?"

'"To make a decent living — and I don't mean a good living, a decent living — 25 grand a year is more than most of them make, and don't let 'em kid you either. They'll lie to you, but I know better than that. If you make 25 grand a year, you've had a good year; you've sold eight or ten a month. Last month I sold three and then I split one with Don."

"Can you live on that?"

"Well, I can because I got Social Security coming in too. But no, you couldn't live on it and raise a family or nothing. Not now, none of them can. They'll tell you they're making it, but they're lying to you. I don't think there's anybody in the business making over twelve, $1300 a month."

"How good has it been?"

"Well, the best I ever made was $44,000, but that was a long time ago and that was mobile homes. The best I've made in RVs is maybe $25, 27,000 three or four years ago. Now the reason why we are missing a lot of sales is that we've had them in here at too high a price. That's why they've been pulling out some of these units, too high a price."

"Where do you make the money, selling the small guys or the big guys?"

"Well, you won't make as much money sometimes on a big one as you make on one of these little trailers. As an example, I sold a $275,000 motor home. You know how much commission I made? $650."

"What would you make on one of the small trailers?"

"Probably about three, maybe three and a half. You get 20 percent of the net profit."

"What would be a successful RV salesman today? What do these guys at La Mesa Rec, advertised as the county's largest RV dealership, make?"

"They do make better money, yeah, and they are very pushy. They have to be pushy. If they're not pushy, management kicks them out. They make them guys practically hold your arm, won't let a customer out the gate until somebody else talks to you. They'll be four or five people talk to you at La Mesa Rec before you leave. They call it a 'turnover house.' You greet the customer and you turn him over to somebody else who's supposed to be a better salesman, then he turns him over to somebody else who's a better salesman, or so they think, then he turns him over to the manager, and before you leave you've wasted a whole day and you're mad."

It's noon, hot sun works on RV chassis, eyes sting without sunglasses. Feels empty, like being lonely for a long time, like no money, no place to sleep. Walk around, walk around, stand next to Grant. "Is this a regular day? So far there's been just four or five people wandering through. Seems pretty slim."

"Yeah, it's been awful slow. Sometimes we don't have this many browsers. We've had days when we've only had two or three people the whole day."

"What do you do to pass the time?"

"We usually try to look through the inventory, something like that. A lot of it's wasted time, that's all. Last month I think we sold about six or seven units. That's awful slow, awful slow. This is the slowest this industry's ever been, and guys that have been in it even longer than me, some of them 30, 35 years, will admit this is the slowest it's ever been. There's some dealers that are gonna have to close up. See, they got big flooring. By flooring I mean, like, here we don't own them coaches; they're new, but we don't own them. Most RV dealers pay the bank flooring on them. Daily flooring. The bank owns them. The dealer's paying interest on them. They call it flooring. Just like when you buy a car, you're paying interest on it every day."

"Does the dealer go to the bank and get a loan to buy these things? Is that how it is?"

"Yeah."

"So a dealer borrows, say, a hundred and fifty grand, buys two new RVs, and he's paying interest on that while he's waiting to sell them and that's called flooring?"

"Yeah, and that flooring will eat you up. Those coaches there [Viva's two new coaches] they would be glad to sell at invoice because they've been paying flooring on them, and if they sell them at invoice, they're in the hole, but they're better off getting rid of them and taking a loss now. Some of these guys got 15, 20 units they're paying flooring on. As slow as it is now..." Grant momentarily reveals a grimace, "motor homes can break you in a hurry. You start paying interest on each one of them...."

"What do you think is going to happen?"

"I don't know. The gasoline had nothing to do with it, because it slowed down long before the Iraq situation. It's just that the economy slowed down so much that people have become scared. They're scared to spend any money."

"Are you going to stick with it?"

"I'll probably stay with it for another year until I retire. I won't let it discourage me because I know it will come back. This has happened before, several times, just not quite this bad. It happened during the gasoline crunch of '72, '73. A lot of it is the newspapers. All they put out is bad news. They don't put out good news, and that don't help the situation either. I think they ought to shut their mouth for a while and not keep people so scared."

"Who sells RVs?"

"There's a lot of ex-policeman. They retire from the police department and want something to do. Usually they don't have any trade, not like a carpenter or mechanic, so they get into this kind of business. In fact Gary [the new manager] is an ex-policeman."

An older couple drives into Viva's compound. I later learned that they had bought a trailer here last year. The duo arrives in a muddy Blazer and dismounts, purposely, like farmers. The man nods, says to Grant, "How you doing, young fella?"

Grant, a little bewildered, just partially recognizing the pair, picks up the beat, "Where you been?"

"All over."

"Well, good for you."

The woman says, "We were working when we bought the trailer from you. They gave us the gate after that. We wanted to get out anyway."

Grant, figuring it out, "You on the road steady now?"

The couple is here to reclaim their daughter's motor home. It's one that's being removed for being overpriced. Man climbs into the RV cab, engine won't turn over, battery cart is brought out. Much clucking about. I retreat to sales shack, sit in tipsy chair, pick up tabloid titled RV News. Grant arrives within two beats. I ask about the newspaper.

"Basically, we look through it, try and find somebody who's wanting to sell his, and get it in here on consignment. That's mainly what we do."

"Do you just cold call people out of the paper and ask?"

"That's it. Then you talk to people that come in here too. If they already have something, you ask them if they want to consign it. I had a guy today that's thinking about consigning one. He can't make up his mind if he wants to or not. Our old consigning system was no good. It was getting Phil $200 for everything he brought in, and boy, he was bringing them in hand over fist. And we kept telling him, 'Hey, Phil, they're not clean enough. We can't sell them.' 'Hey, Phil, you're bringing them in way too high.' And he'd say, 'Well, I got it back of the book.' Well, back of the book don't mean a thing. The book is just a guess anyway. The banks have to go by the book, but you have to have a clean one to get book on them. When you get one that's real dirty, and say you got it $1000 behind book, well, maybe you should have brought it in $5000 behind book."

"Here's an idea. Why don't you sell me one of your units?”

"All right, see that motor home sitting up there?"

"That older one?"

"Yeah."

"All right, let's go take a look."

We walk over, open the door of a pin-striped, 38-foot Southwind, step into the kitchen. Grant sweeps his right hand. "It's loaded, got everything in it, a good engine. It's just your year model difference — this is a '79 but one third the cost of an '89.' I can take this motor home and drive it from now on as long as I live and keep a-drivin' and never spend as much for gas as what I pay for the difference.

"This here is the best buy on the lot, bar none. There ain't a thing on the lot that's as good a buy as this. It looks like new in here. This is what they call a party model. It's got four sinks. Sink in the bedroom, sink in the bathroom, sink in the wet bar, and a sink in the kitchen. Got an ice maker in it. Two air conditioners, air-conditioned cab, two roof airs, power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, cruise control, got everything you want. Horns on it, rack and ladder, generator. 'Bout the only thing that it doesn't have is a TV, and it's all set up for TV.”

"Sounds pretty impressive. How 'bout this one over here?" I glance at a smaller Jamboree, two RVs away.

Grant and I step over to the 32-footer. Grant appraises each unit as if meeting his eldest child for the first time. "Now this is one of our best-made vehicles we got. It's got everything imaginable on it. It's got two air conditioners. It's got the double-door refrigerators — some of them only have a single — it's got the mix-master over here, for mixing vegetables and stuff. It's got a microwave in it. It's got an ice maker, power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, cruise control, and the leveling jacks, where you can sit here, push a button, and it will level itself up when you park. Got a CB, air horns, stereo. Couch folds into a bed. Your TV hookups are in the bedroom and in front."

"How much you want for this?"

"Forty-four."

"How 'bout this one," pointing out the window to a 20-foot cab over.

"Well, you're coming down now, but that is one of the best of the Class Cs. Now here you're talking about $11,000. That is a Monaco, one of the better ones. You can tell by the hardware and the fancy stuff on the doors and the way the ceiling is built."

"Jesus, Grant, how do you deal with making two or three sales every couple months? Isn't it depressing?"

"There's a lot of dealers who got guys like me on Social Security. Some ex-policeman sell, but for a man that's trying to make a living for his family, this is no place to be.

"What are the benefits?"

"There are no benefits. Nobody gets any medical, dental, they don't get anything at all, just your commissions. No commission, no money. You don't sell one, you don't make a dime. Now Don here hadn't made a thing this month - no, just a second, he did, he made a half of the one I sold. You can take a draw, but they don't like it. They'll give you a draw, but they don't like it at all."

One o'clock. In the last five hours, maybe four people have walked in from the sidewalk, nosed around. Maybe two automobiles have stopped, actually disgorged human beings who then spent a few moments roving Viva RV.

Grant: "We've had more people by this time of day than we usually do on a Saturday. Don's had three of them this morning, and I've had one so far. That's better than average."

"What was your finest day as RV salesman?"

"That was when we had Road Rangers in here. I've sold as many as three in one day. But that's over a year ago since anything like that has happened. There was pretty good money a year ago, right in this lot. Yeah, but it sure ain't good no more."

"Do you talk to the other salesman in the neighborhood?"

"Oh yeah, I got friends in pretty near all of the lots. Some of them will lie to you about how good they're doing. They don't kid me. I tell them, 'Quit lying.' Ha, ha, ha, ha.

"Right now, all these dealers are losing money. There isn't a dealer in the whole bunch who's coming out on top right now. The flooring is eating most of them up. The flooring don't eat this company up because they only got two units on flooring. There's a lot of these dealers with 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 new ones that the flooring is going to break them. They have help they got to pay — not salespeople, all salespeople are on commission — but they have rents, utilities, they have the service man, and the lot boy that's got to be paid.

"If I could sell three or four motor homes a month, I could make it real good, but I ain't gonna do that. We're lucky to sell a motor home every two months. San Diego has a lot more retired people here, and they're a little more tight with their money. Most of them coming in here want something cheap. It’s very seldom they come in here wanting to buy new, because it's too high priced.

"Most people won't take an RV that's too junky. Some of them are rotted out where they've leaked because people didn't take care of the caps properly. If they've got wood rot, you can't sell it to anybody at any price. We had a guy, took one out yesterday, told him we couldn't sell it, told him the price was too high, told him to come get it.

" 'Ah, the price ain't too high,' he says. I says, 'The price is too high for the condition of it. It's got wood rot in it.' 'Oh, it ain't got wood rot.' And I went right over to the comer, took my hand, and just pushed it back and forth, and I says, 'What do you call that? If that ain't wood rot, I never saw it. And if you reach up under there, you'll get a handful of splinters.' He says, 'Well, I didn't know it had that.' 'You didn't know it, but we ain't gonna sell^it without telling it's there.' " Grant reveals a smile's trace, just one flicker of triumph.

"So, Grant, what do you think? I'll come back in a year and you'll have sold four motor homes?"

"I don't let it get me down because the situation changes so often. Six months it could be good. Just a second."

Now comes a middle-aged couple — she with the fat butt, tight lavender shorts; he with black biker T-shirt, plastic orange shades.

"How you doing, folks." Grant shakes hands, takes names. "That one is thirty-nine fifty, best buy I think, it's a Firewheel. Now, over here, these are new. They look real nice. Let me show you an old one, getting old, a 72, but it looks as good as one of these."

Grant escorts pair down the line of dusted RVs.

Five minutes later, Grant returns to sales office, sits behind his bare, steel gray surplus desk. A single lined tablet is withdrawn from the center drawer.

I ask, "What's that?"

"This is the list we keep. Who you talk to and their phone number and the salesman's name and what they were looking for."

I resolve to tour his desk, point to 8-by-11-inch form, "What's this?"

"That's a checklist for when you bring them motor homes fn, a record of what they got on them."

"What's this?"

"That's the contract."

"Just one page?"

"Yeah." '

Mechanic hovers in the doorway. Grant looks up, "Can't get a washing in now. Everybody wants a washing. Richard [lot boy] piddled around on that. Should have been washed a long time ago. Just a second." Grant hikes out onto the apron to meet mid-'30s, slender male in jeans, cowboy hat. "How you doing, sir? Can we help you a little bit?"

"Yeah, I'm looking for something about 34 foot with a flip out."

"Well, I'll go get the keys, although it's supposed to be unlocked. Ever had one of these before?"

"I have an '87 Mallard right now, bunk model, but my wife is tired of it. We have some property up in Jamul that we're building on. She wants a little bit more closet space, more space in general. It's a beautiful trailer though."

Grant fumbles with keys. "You want a trailer and not a fifth wheeler, right?"

"Well, it can be a fifth wheel. The thing is, we bought the '87 brand new. I want to stay away from brand new because I may not have it more than a year and a half."

"I'll tell you something. Now this is an awful nice trailer here. It's a 1988 34-foot. We've got a 40-foot down there with a tip out, an '80 model. It's a Country Air made in Indiana, which is a very good coach too. A lot cheaper than this. This thing here we have to get about 19 thousand for. The Country Air, let's see....''

"Nineteen is brand new."

"Not with all the equipment on it. But look at the big white one right over there, that's thirteen-five."

Three of us enter a NewMar Industries, Inc., 40-footer. Grant: "Now, the women come into these units and say, 'You don't have enough counter space.' Well, they can't say that on this one, ha, ha, ha, ha."

Inside hollow, empty, dank trailer are several layers of 15-foot, bare counter tops laid out with the aesthetics of a pipe-yard tool room.

"It's got the air condition, the TV antenna, stereo. The tip-out alone cost about 3000 bucks. There's a lot of wardrobe space in this and a slide-out pantry. Automatic defrost refridge, got the washer/dryer in it. Them things now will run you about eight, nine hundred dollars, washer/dryer alone. Then you have all these wardrobes in here, big bathroom. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten drawers right in the kitchen. The executive sink, the microwave, full-sized tub."

Man looks around, likes. "Think I'll go get my wife. She's sitting out in the truck with the kids. Had to buy them Slurpees."

"Ha, ha, ha, ha. That takes a little time.”

On the way out the door man pauses, "This one starts at 13?"

"Yeah."

"Can you deliver this?"

"Yeah. Where do you want to take it to?"

"Jamul. Have some property up there we're waiting to build on. The trailer we have now we would be considering trading if we can work a deal."

"The only bad thing about it, we can't take a trade-in on these consignments. Everything on our lot is a consignment with the exception of two new ones. All we can do is try to sell yours for you like everybody else. The people that own this wouldn't want to trade, you know."

"How does the consignment work? If we bought this one then we would consign the one we have for you to sell?"

"What we do, when we get together on a price, some of the dealers charge a percentage, whatever they sell them for, and you pay them a percentage. We don't do that. We give you just exactly what you'll get for it. Put that in writing to you. We try to make a little money above it. There's something to a percentage deal, but in a percentage deal you don't know exactly what you're going to get. If they drop the price $1000, you've lost 10 percent. They usually work on a 10 or 15 percent basis. We don't. We want you to know just exactly when it's sold what you'll get. And if it isn't paid for, you get that minus the payoff. 'Course you know what the payoff is. You know what you're supposed to get."

"Yeah, and I know what the high and low is on it, and we owe less than that."

"What kind did you say you have?"

"An '87 Mallard, bunk-type model, 34-foot. It's a nice trailer, but it just doesn't have the space my wife wanted. Well, let me go get her."

Man leaves. I ask Grant, "Interesting to see how quickly you directed him away from the $19,000 unit into the $13,000. How did you spot that so fast?"

"Because I knew that he wasn't wanting to go into that category. He's having to go into more money than he's got right now."

"How could you tell?"

"He said he had a Mallard. And I don't care if he has a 50-foot Mallard, it isn't worth half as much as that trailer over there. Gonna have to bring him up seven or eight thousand dollars, and I knew that wasn't what he was looking for."

"If you had to guess how would you rate him as a possible buyer?"

"I'd rate him a possible buyer good if it wasn't for his trade-in. Hurts the business not being able to take trade-ins. When you take his trailer in, you're automatically putting him in the bind with the bank because he's going to have to have flooring on that. He's gonna have to carry two trailers for a while. He don't have the cash to pay for it."

Man returns with wife, both like the unit, but no cash and no way to arrange a trade-in.

Takes ten minutes to complete farewells. On the way back to salesman's shack I examine Grant's open inventory book, notice they have a 1980 40-foot Comfort with a pop-out, consigned for $12,200.

Viva's asking 13. Very slim, very squeaky nut indeed.

Sunlight thickens, turns splendid, it's end of day. Grant, Don, and I slink into sales office. Grant ruminates about new manager, "He'll get all this shit [RV prices] down to where it belongs."

Don: "Have you got some Scotch tape?"

"There's one on that table right there."

"What you mean — right here?" Don points over to sad, brown, chipped stand.

Grant to ceiling: "He was told to wash it Friday. He was told to wash it Friday night. He said he would. Then he said he was going to wash it this morning and he didn't. Been told three times. Better not say nothing about it either. I've told him three times to wash that truck. He's got no complaint coming. I don't like to tell somebody three times, by God. Once is enough."

Don: "Back in the last place I worked, we used to move them [RVs]. They'd move 'em around the lot to fool people into thinking the inventory's been changed."

I ask Grant, "How would you rate today? You had one guy who wanted to buy, but there was a problem with his trade-in and a couple other people that were here less than five minutes."

"This is definitely a better day, one of the better days we've had.

On Saturday we ready didn't have half the people we've had today. I've talked to about four or five, and Don's had six or seven."

"And how many people out of those four or five did you think you had a real shot at?"

"Basically only one. That's this guy with the trade problem. But that was no good. It would have been good if it wouldn't have been for his having to trade. He really wanted the unit. This has been better than a normal day by far for Saturday. Hey, Don, I've told him this is a better Saturday than we've had in a long time as far as the customers are concerned."

"Yeah, I'd say that. I had this guy visiting his dad who's in a hospital down here. He don't want a fucking thing. 'You interested in buying anything?' 'Well, no actually, I'm from out of town because my dad's in the hospital.' " Sigh. "Just fucking great."

Grant to desk: "If I was buying off this lot, I would have either taken that Holiday Rambler or the Apollo."

Don: "You know, you know everything."

"I know what engines I'd take. Some people come in here and they wouldn't have a Dodge, I don't care

if you give it to them. Other one wouldn't have a Chevy, another one wouldn't have a Ford. Personally, I would sooner have a Dodge than anything on the market. Ford would be next, and I wouldn't want a Chevrolet in the big engines. Now a 350 Chevrolet is one of the best engines built, and a 450 Ford is one of the worst engines built. I'm talking about having trouble. They are powerful, I got to admit that. I believe the 454 Chevy has got more guts than a 460 Ford. It gets out quicker."

Don: "It's the torque is what you're after. You want it at low RPMs. You don't want it at 75 fucking miles an hour. Anyway, I showed him, and he went down the street bought a fucking Ford. I won the argument, lost the sale."

Grant: "Of the motor homes that I've driven with 454s and 460s, the 454s I drove got more snap to them when you have a heavy motor home than a 460 Ford has."

Don: "Tell them all you know and they walk off."

Grant: "Well, they'll ask you what you know, when you tell them they don't believe you."

Don: "They don't want to believe you. Tell them how smart you are, and then they get pissed." Office phone rings, LOUD. Don catches, "Thanks for calling Viva RV." Wrong number. Don to ceiling, " 'Be dumb as a fox,' it says there in small print. Just enough to catch the fly."

Grant: "Everybody is on their own as far as Ford, Chevy, and Dodge is concerned, that's the way I look at it. I just go buy what I've had the best luck with, and I've had no good luck with Chevys at all. However, I had a 350 Pontiac, which is the same as a 350 Chevy, and boy, that was a really nice automobile. I've had nothing but bad luck with 350 Chevys."

Mid-'70s American sedan enters lot. Three people gaze out assorted windows, car putts up and down RV alley, saunters back to exit, turns left onto Main Street. Don: "Look at the puff of smoke on that thing."

"Do a lot of people do that? Just come in, drive around, turn back?"

Don: "Yeah, it's a fucking Jack In The Box here."

Grant: "I'll bet you he's going down the street to look at mobile homes. I ain't gonna get up till I find out. Why is it that the man always drives up, makes the woman get out and do the dirty work?"

"Are men or women more interested in buying this stuff?"

Grant: "Women. I'd say they are the last decision. Unless they're looking for something that's too much money for the guy and he says, 'Oh no, I ain't goin' that route.'"

Grant watching another car slowly enter the lot, "What the hell is that guy doing, or does he know? Too goddamn lazy to walk, I can see that."

Don: "When you see Bozos like this, you say to them, 'Oh, you want an order of fries and a Coke to go with that.' They look at you like gut-shot deer." Phone rings again, LOUD. "Thanks for calling Viva RV."

Grant: "Them kind of people burn me up. They think they deserve curb service. I had one, she says that old trailer back there, that old wreck in the back lot, she said that's the one. Said she's looking for a mobile home of some kind, but she knows she's not going to buy. Why, I wouldn't pull that thing off the lot because it's falling apart, literally is falling apart.”

Don: "Which one?"

"That big mobile home back there."

"Oh, that's just for storage."

"I don't even know how they ever got it pulled in without having it falling apart."

"It's just storage."

"The walls are just falling loose on 'em. But I say, how did they ever get it in there?"

Don: "I don't know. I know nothing, nothing."

Grant removes ledger/book from center desk drawer. "We've talked to 17 for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. That's three days. We talk to maybe 35, 40, 45 people all week, but we haven't made a sale in two weeks. Lot of times I'll sit back and think about that, the number of people I talk to, figure the sales I've made. Now somewhere there's got to be an average of what you do, you know. I'd say it takes a hundred people before you make a sale.

Other guys will say, 'Oh, I can talk to ten and make five sales,' but they're lying."

Don: "You sell the concept, not some 32-foot piece of bullshit in here. You sell the open road. A guy drives in here with a red VW sport, two-door, cheap, low-ball model, says he wants a 26-footer, but he can't get what he really wants unless it's a 30-footer. If you speak reality to him, you embarrass him, lock him up psychologically, so you can't do that. You got to make them be able to gracefully change.

"There are three things people need in order to buy. They need credit, you gotta have something near what the asshole wants, and they got to have money down. If you don't have every one of those three elements, none of it works."

Three weeks after this conversation, Grant quit Viva, went to work for Stimac Trailer Sales,El Cajon. He reports that "things are pretty much the same."