11/12/2022 0 Comments Amazon forceIn Utah they worked as campground hosts-welcoming visitors, cleaning toilets, shoveling out fire pits, running an office-but the job didn’t pay it just gave them a free spot to park TC, with hookups for water, electricity, and sewage. The Stouts named their rig “TC.” On a good day, TC stood for “Totally Comfortable.” On a bad day-when the furnace failed in freezing weather or the turn signals died-it meant “Tin Can.” AMAZON FORCE WINDOWSWhenever it rained, water began leaking into their RV from all sides the rubber seals surrounding the windows and the bathroom skylight were shot. By the time they settled in for the summer at Palisade State Park in central Utah, the adventure was already wearing them down. Then to Memphis, Tennessee, then on to South Dakota and Mount Rushmore. Next they moved into a New Orleans trailer court wedged between a rail yard and a highway. First they drove south to Pensacola, Florida, where they stayed for a month in a downscale RV park. She decided to call their next move “Barb and Chuck’s Great Adventure.” Perhaps, Barb reflected, this was destiny-the universe pushing them toward the lifestyle they’d wanted all along. Their current situation didn’t quite align with that dream, but they embraced it anyway. Back when the Stouts had money, they’d idly fantasized about becoming carefree vagabonds in a nice RV. The rig had dry-rotted tires, a dead generator, and a leak in the gas line. Whatever survived the purge had to fit in their new dwelling: a 29-foot 1996 National RV Sea Breeze motor home, which Barb’s brother sold to them for $500. Objects they couldn’t bear to part with-including Chuck’s letter from Ray Kroc, framed and hanging on the wall-went to one of Barb’s daughters for safekeeping. Barb let go of her record collection and two pianos. What didn’t sell on Craigslist went to an auctioneer. They sold most of their possessions, including all of their appliances and furniture. They shuttered Carolina Adventure Tours and handed their 2009 Chrysler Town & Country over to the bank. For the effort, Chuck was rewarded with a handsome bonus and a personal letter from founder Ray Kroc, whose wisdom Chuck was fond of quoting from memory.Īfter filing their papers, Chuck and Barb began liquidating their lives. The next year, he was on the team that brought ice cream sundaes to the chain’s menu. By 1976, Chuck was serving as a director of product development for the entire corporation. He became a manager, then a supervisor, then a field consultant, then a professor at Hamburger University, where McDonald’s trains new franchise owners and managers. He went from garbage boy to french fry maker to burger cook to cashier. Not only did Chuck love his job, the job loved him. “My mom drank so much,” he says, “she didn’t know what I was doing.” It was an escape-somewhere to go that wasn’t the Weiler Homes public housing complex, where he lived with his mother and sister. For 85 cents an hour, he swept and mopped the floors, kept the drive-in lot tidy, filled the shake machine, and washed dishes. In the spring of 1960, just after he turned 16, Chuck Stout went to work as a “garbage boy” at a McDonald’s in Toledo, Ohio. This story is adapted from Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, by Jessica Bruder.
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