Commodities

Rainstorm in Fargo: Part 1

Listen Later
Rainstorm in Fargo: Part 1
Pete was retired and seeing the US. Then Tracey came along.

Based on a post by ronde,

in 2 parts. Listen to
the ►
Podcast at Connected.

The ‘workaholic’ retires.

It's amazing how much time you have once you retire. You

have nowhere to be at any certain time and no people you just have to be there
to meet. You have no deadlines and no tasks that absolutely have to be done
before the corporate visit on Tuesday. It's like a curtain between you and your
life has been lifted and you can see yourself doing what you always wanted to
do.

That's what I thought I was going to see when I cleaned out

my desk and went to the retirement party at my office. It was exciting to know
that no longer would my life be dictated by some corporate edict or some
problem that had to be solved right now if the entire business wasn't going to
immediately collapse.

It was just that way for about a month. I could stay up late

or go to bed early depending upon how I felt. I could watch movies on cable any
time I wanted instead of falling asleep in the middle when watching at night. I
could do anything I wanted to do; except after a month I didn't know what that
was because I'd already done everything I could think of doing. There was a
reason for that, and the reason started bothering me because of George Mills.

I was one of those guys who worked twelve hours a day at my

office and then worked another couple hours at home. George was one of those
guys too. George lasted six months after he retired before keeling over in his
neighbor's back yard and croaking. It was at his funeral I realized George had
never said anything about any hobbies or anything except work. He even had a
complete set of work files in his home office that he kept updated to the
current information so he could work at home. His wife said George had a heart
attack, but I figured George had just given up because without his job, he had
no reason to keep living.

I didn't want to go down that same road, but it looked like

that was where I was headed. After a month, it was hard to get out of bed, shower
and shave, and then get dressed. Other than a weekly trip to the grocery store
for some frozen dinners and some beer, I just sat in my house. It was still
winter, and when spring finally made the grass grow, I'd have to mow about once
a week, but that was all I had to look forward to.

When I got home from George's funeral, I sat down and took

stock of where I was in life. My list was both encouraging and a little
dissappointing.

Youthful Infatuation Goes Bad.

The worst mistake I'd made was marrying Marsha when I was

twenty and still in college. It was a time we were both studying hard during
the week and playing hard on the weekends. When we graduated, me with a degree
in engineering and Marsha with a degree in finance, it was still good for the
first couple of years. After that, the marriage went downhill pretty fast.

It wasn't a money problem because we were both making good

salaries. The problem was me. I know that. I couldn't stop working, even on the
weekends, but Marsha wanted to go out and have fun on those weekends. She
finally started going out by herself and in the process, met a guy who didn't
work all day, every day, and then come home and work at night too. After the
second year, we had a serious talk and decided to split and go our separate
ways. Marsha didn't want anything from me, so other than spending about two
months salary on a lawyer in case she changed her mind, it didn't cost me
anything except my time and a lot of soul searching.

That soul searching led me to realize I probably wasn't

going to change relative to my work habits, so another woman probably was going
to work out the same way. I dated a little at first, but it never worked out
because there was always some important project I had to finish. After I
canceled a date or two, she'd tell me she had already made other plans. I
finally stopped trying.

The Bachelor Life.

All that work did get me a rapid rise in my company, then a

higher paying job at another, and then another until by the age of sixty, I
wasn't a millionaire, but I had enough in the bank I didn't have to work to live
comfortably. I'd bought and paid for a pretty nice house, drove a new car every
couple of years, and in general was pretty happy with my life.

I retired that year thinking I was young enough I'd still

have time to catch up with everything I'd missed. What I ended up being was
lost with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I needed some way to occupy my time
or I was going to end up like George.

One afternoon, I was sitting on my couch and watching a

travel show about national parks when I thought maybe I had an answer to my
problem.

After a lot of thought, I'd figured out that work had given

me three things I needed to be happy - something to plan for, something to do
to follow that plan, and a way to keep learning. I'd looked at a bunch of
hobbies other people enjoy, but none of them really interested me. They either
required a lot of equipment and space or took a long time to learn. Watching
about national parks was a different story. All I needed to go to a national
park was me and I didn't need to learn anything first. I'd learn just by going
there.

How to travel was the next question. Though my job had

required flying a lot, I never liked it. I always felt like I was trapped in an
aluminum tube and couldn't do anything to help myself is something happened.
Driving wasn't that way. If I wanted to stop to look at something, I could
stop. If I was hungry, I could get something to eat. If I was tired, no matter
what time of day, I could just pull into a hotel and get a room.

Hitting the Road.

After a little figuring of costs, it looked like traveling

around to parks might be fun, but it would be pretty expensive what with the
cost of hotel rooms and eating out all the time. There was also the problem of
my house. I couldn't just leave it empty for a month at a time, and a month is
about what it would take to get to and back from some of the parks I found that
interested me. I was driving back from grocery shopping one afternoon when the
answer pulled up beside me.

The motorhome looked huge, but the driver wasn't having any

trouble negotiating the traffic. It just took longer to change lanes and a lot
longer to accelerate. All I knew about motorhomes was that you could live in
them, so I started doing some investigating on the internet. What I found
convinced me this was the answer to most of my problems.

I looked at several types, and decided the type they call

"Class A" was what I wanted. I didn't need to be able to sleep six
people, but they were big enough they wouldn't feel like living in a closet and
they were really nice inside. They all had heaters for winter and air
conditioning for summer, and even though most campsites had receptacles for
electricity, the big motorhomes had on-board generators for power. I could park
it anywhere and still have all the comforts of home.

There were a lot of them for sale within a hundred miles of

me, so I took several trips to look at different makes and models. I knew I
wanted one less than forty feet long, because my research found out that some
states and some campsites have a length limit of forty feet.

After looking at a lot and driving a few, I decided a Thor

Challenger was what I wanted. It had everything I could ever want plus some.
The driver's seat and passenger's seat were more like living room chairs than
car seats. It had a little kitchen with a microwave, a two burner propane
stove, and a sink. I only needed one bathroom, but it came with two and they
weren't really much smaller than the bathroom in most apartments. One had a
shower, and one had a tub with shower.

It was roomy on the inside too, thanks to three sections

that extended a few feet once it was parked and leveled. Those extensions made
it possible to have a king-size bed in the main bedroom and a double bed in the
living area that folded up into a couch for the wide-screen television set on
the opposite wall. It had a surprising amount of closet space too, and the
kitchen had room to store pots and pans and a small pantry.

One thing I really liked was the full size refrigerator. A

lot of the smaller RV's had tiny little refrigerators. I didn't want to be
grocery shopping every day. The damned thing also had three television sets all
cable ready - one in the master bedroom, one across from the couch, and one on
the outside under the electrically extended patio awning.

It had power everything, including a system that

self-leveled it when parked. I didn't realize I needed that until the salesman
explained that most campsites aren't level, so without it, I'd be jacking it up
level by hand.

The price he quoted me was just shy of two-hundred thousand,

but I'd expected that and I had a plan. If I was driving all over the US, I
wouldn't need my house, and my house would more than pay for the Thor and still
leave quite a bit to add to my travel cash. A month later, I sold my house and
everything the Thor already had that I didn't need two of. After I picked up
the Thor and temporarily parked it at a local campsite, I was ready to start
except for my car.

I'd seen a lot of cars towed behind motorhomes, but I really

didn't see the need. Most grocery stores have huge parking lots, so I could
just drive the Thor to a Walmart and get my groceries before I parked for the
night. It took another week to sell my car.

The day after the check for my car cleared, I emptied the

black water tanks, filled the clean water tank, and then drove to a gas
station. Seeing the dollars add up when I filled the eighty gallon fuel tank
was a bit of a shock, but I'd figured the fuel cost into my travel budget. The
Thor was supposed to average about seven miles to the gallon, so fuel would
still be cheaper than driving my car, eating every meal in a restaurant, and
paying for hotel rooms.

It was June by then and the days were warming up in the

northern states, so my plan was to head North from Nashville and drive across
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington and then
turn South. Depending upon how long that took, I'd go South for the winter
through California, then turn East and drive to Florida. That plan was pretty
flexible. I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere.

I'd already seen as much of Chicago as I wanted, so I

bypassed it and headed into Wisconsin.

I didn't push my schedule. Driving time was from about nine

in the morning until three in the afternoon. Then I'd start looking for an RV
campsite on the GPS unit. The point was to enjoy the drive and I did. Sitting
up so high, I could see for miles ahead of me, and I could also look down into
the cars that passed me.

Sightseeing in the other lane.

Just watching the country change was worth the drive. It was

relaxing just driving along and watching the fields and forests go by and
watching the other people in their cars. Sometimes, those people weren't really
relaxing. The first day, I realized what I'd read about what truckers saw was
true.

The rear facing camera on the Thor had picked up the black

SUV when it passed the semi behind me except it didn't just pass. It pulled up
to go around the semi, but slowed to the truck's speed for about thirty seconds
before driving on toward me.

When it got closer, in my side mirror I could see a man

driving and a woman in the passenger seat. When it passed me, it did the same
thing as when it passed the truck. When the SUV was even with my side window,
it started pacing me When I looked down into the passenger window, there was a
woman sitting there, only she wasn't just sitting. She was slumped down and her
top was unbuttoned and pulled away from her naked breasts, and those breasts
were pretty impressive.

She looked up a me, grinned, and then lifted her breasts and

sort of wobbled them up and down. Then she licked her lips, took a nipple in
the fingers of each hand and pulled her big breasts into long cones. As the SUV
accelerated, she smiled and waved.

Well, that was pretty weird, I thought, but it was just the start.

I never realized there were so many women who apparently like showing
themselves to complete strangers. There weren't hundreds, but over the next few
weeks if I was driving past a large city on a weekend, I'd see at least one. I
saw more bare breasts than I'd ever seen outside of movies on cable.

There were also a couple who were covered on top but naked

from the waist down and obviously masturbating. One was even completely naked.
As that sedan drove along beside me for almost a minute and the woman worked
her fingers in and out, she looked up at me and pursed her lips in a kiss.
Right before the sedan drove on, the driver reached over and pinched her left
nipple, the woman's mouth opened in a little "O" shape and she arched
up as far as the seat belt would let her and her thighs started to quiver.

Well, I might have been sixty, but I wasn't immune to what a

naked woman can do to a man. Some of those women were young, but most seemed to
be more mature, mature enough I'd have loved meeting them and wouldn't have
felt like I was screwing some college girl. Most were with a man so I figured
he was into showing off his wife or girlfriend and might not mind sharing her.
There were a couple where the driver was a woman too, and I wondered if they
were both into the exhibitionist thing and if they both might like a little
sack time with an agreeable guy.

Nights in the RV.

I would have been more than agreeable to both those little

fantasies. It had been a long time since I'd slept with a woman, but I hadn't
lost the urge. It was my damned job that stopped me from trying. I never met
any women except the women at work and they were all married or too young. Oh,
there were the checkout girls at the grocery store. Most of them weren't
married, but they were even younger than the women at my job. Most looked young
enough they were probably still in high school.

The first night I pulled into a camping spot was also

interesting and made me think I'd chosen the right way to spend my time. I'd
leveled the Thor and was hooking up my electric, black water and clean water
connections when a guy walked up with two beers, handed me one, and said
"Hi. Haven't seen you before. Where you from?"

That night, I found out a lot of the people at RV

campgrounds know each other. I thought my idea of living in an RV all the time
was probably unique, but a lot of people were doing the same thing. They'd hook
up at an RV camp from time to time and share stories of what they'd seen and
done. It was almost like there was an extended family of RV campers out there.
By the time we all went back to our RV's for bed, it was almost midnight and
I'd made a bunch of new friends. Well, truth be told, they were the first
actual friends I'd had in a long time. I'd worked with a lot of people but was
too busy to make friends with any of them.

Most were about my age and were making the best of their

retirement by seeing the US. While some still had permanent homes somewhere,
for many their motor home was the only home they had. They'd plan their trip to
be at a daughter or son's home for the holidays, but other than that, they
lived, as one woman told me, "Free as when we were twenty and just married
with no kids."

As I motored through Wisconsin and then into North Dakota, I

kept seeing a few of the same people, and I met a lot more when I parked for
the night. It was always the same. I'd pull into my spot and hook up. While I
was doing that, somebody would walk over to say hello and invite me to spend
some time with them.

Most of the RV parks also had tent camping sites, but those

were usually used by younger couples, often with kids along once the schools
let out. I like kids, but I also like quiet, so I usually asked for a site some
distance away from the tent spots.

Weather Hits Without Warning.

One afternoon when I was rolling through Fargo, North Dakota

it was raining like hell, and I mean raining so hard my windshield wipers were
barely keeping up. I'd seen the weather forecast and knew that was probably
going to happen, so I'd called ahead for a reservation and booked it with my
credit card. It was a good thing I had, because when I pulled into the
campground, there was only one spot left and that spot was next to the tent
sites.

After pulling onto the pad, I leveled the Thor and ran out

the extensions but didn't go out to hook anything up. My holding tanks were far
from full and I had most of the 150 gallons of fresh water left in the water
tank. The generator came to life when I started it so I had electricity for
everything.

The rain let up about half an hour later while I was

deciding what I was going to have for dinner. It was then, a Jeep Wrangler
drove into the tent site beside me. A woman got out, opened the back, and
pulled out a bag. In the bag was a tent, and she started setting it up. It
wasn't a big tent like the families I'd seen using, but it was big enough it
was taking her a while.

She had the back poles in place and was working on the poles

at the entrance when it started raining again. In less than a minute, I figured
she was soaked through to the skin and she still didn't have the tent so it
would stand up by itself. She wasn't going to get it to stand up either. The
wind that blew in the rain wasn't especially strong, but the tent was acting
like the sail on a sailboat and it was obvious she wasn't strong enough to
control it.

I opened the side door on the Thor and yelled, "Hey,

there. You're not getting anywhere. Come inside until this rain blows
over".

She looked up, gave me a funny look, but then ran over to

the door and stepped inside. She said, "Thanks. I thought I could get my
tent up before it started raining again, but I was getting drenched out
there", then chuckled.

"I think I better just stand here until it quits or

I'll drip all over your floor."

I didn't quite know what to say because she was the first

woman I'd met in anything resembling a social environment in years. All I could
do for a few seconds was look at her.

She wasn't the young girl I'd expected to see. She looked

about my age or maybe a little younger but I could see a few strands of sliver
in her wet brunette hair. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that were both
soaked through, and that wet T-shirt was sort of stuck to the bra holding her
big breasts. When she smiled at me, I snapped out of my trance.

"No, the floor is vinyl and it'll mop up just fine.

Come on inside and dry off".

She frowned at me.

"No, thank you, unless your wife has a robe or

something I can wear."

I figured when I said I wasn't married, she'd think the

worst and leave. I didn't want her to do that.

"Ma'am, I'm not married, but I might be able to find

something you could wear. I think you have a bigger problem than that though.
You didn't get your tent set up so it'll be as wet on the inside as on the
outside. You don't have anyplace to sleep even if it does stop raining."

She frowned at me again.

"I can sleep in my Jeep, thank you. I've done it before

and it didn't kill me."

"What about eating? I don't think you're going to be

able to start a fire or light a stove in the rain."

She cocked her head.

"Are you asking me to spend the night with you?"

"No, I'm just offering you a dry place to sleep, right

here on my couch by yourself, and something hot to eat. Oh; and something to
wear until your clothes dry out or you can get some dry ones."

She was still looking at me with her head cocked to one

side, so I tried to explain myself.

"Ma'am, I've only been doing this for a few weeks, but

one thing I've learned is most of the campers are friendly people who help each
other out. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to suggest anything
else."

She looked at me for what had to be a minute, but then she

smiled.

"I guess it would be a lot nicer here than outside in

my Jeep. Thank you for making the offer. I don't know what you'd have that I
could wear though. Maybe a shirt would work, but you're a lot taller than me
and my; well, I'm bigger in other places than you are, so your clothes aren't
gonna fit me at all."

I smiled, both because I'd evidently convinced her I wasn't

a serial killer and because for some reason I was happy she was going to stay.

"I think I might have

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store
CommoditiesBy [email protected]