Deb said
send in caravan(trailer ) storys.....this is a brief excerpt from a trailer
story on where I lived and worked in Scotland.....where they call trailers
caravans To enjoy down load and print ..read when you have time. Best Michael
..
Winters tale
The aroma of a peat fire in the caravan is indescibable;The best I can come
to is
 a poetic mixture of  ancient heathers and   mother earth blended with the
summers memory of cutting and stacking the peats.
If smell creates memory, the burning of the peat cojures up bare chested lads
working in long rows of highland terre slicing and stacking peat under the
June midnight sun; with the sea to one side and the snow capped highlands
beyond.
The men are stone masons working bare foot and wearing a rough plaid working
kilt. cutting in a few days time enough peat for their winter fuel.The rest
of the summer they cut and set  new red sandstone which is hard as some
granites.
They are on a 3 year  project building a stone theater in the wilderness of
the Findhorn penisula .Their caravans are in the remote sand dunes of the
North Sea connected by a rabbit warren of walking trails camoflaged in drift
wood and brush... .

 The caravans are heated in winter with peat fires in Jotel stoves.
There is an art to banking  a peat  fire so it will burn all day.The rewards
are all day warmth , no frozen pipes and little start up time to renew it .
 The caravan is warm and earthy with heather.You sleep as a god in its divne
essence...
My caravan has all curved edges like a late 40's airstream
It is a 16 footer with a bed, a comode,    my library and  a small desk, a
tiny  fridge and a even more  tiny  stove.
I have a large window that looks out the sea and the snow capped Highlands
beyond.It is all I need and perhaps it is allI ever needed .
 There is no phone and no TV.
 It is a monks cell for learning.
When the wind howls and the snow is horizontal you feel like you are on
another planet in another time.; and so begins my  story

A Winters tale  .
One night as a winters tempest blew and howled and the snow went horizontal I
made my way over to  Duggin's caravan.
 I  had read in the international Hearld tribune the New York Giants had made
the divisional playoffs in a wild card slot and I was committed   to try  and
pick up the game on my neighbor's  old short wave radio.
 We lived so far up in the North of Scotland we would get  American arm
forces radio on certain nights  beaming  its broadcasts up to radar stations
off the coast of Norway from Berlin I think.
It was a wild night and I was determined to try toget the game.
I did not know how  it would be as the storm was really starting to set in .

Now Duggin was a tall wiry young scot mason who had a penchant for literature
and good whiskey.
 Duggin had been reading the book 'Shogun" which was just out and greeted me
at the door wearing a traditional mens black kimono from a long ago karate
class .
 My guess is he had been really taken by the book as he was into its second
reading
what I didn't know was he now thought of himself as a samurai complete with
the eye make -up  and all the pancake.
. This should have alerted me ; but I had not been in the states in 3 years
and was mesmerised  with  possibility of the   Giants making the play-offs
and getting a chance to hear it .
I was spell bound for his short wave ;storm or no storm; make-up or no
make-up I was going to hear the game if there was a snowball's chance to do
so .

I managed to get the radio off the kitchen  shelf; an old early sixties
Grundig which  crackled and spittzed with  a constant whirr ...but I was
getting the game....in spurts in  live game call from the
meadowlands......... and I was in Giant  heaven.

Not to be up staged Duggin  started staggering  and showing me his new
samurai sword just as I  was fine tuning the beast to a whirring  play by
play . .

.I was so excited to hear the Giants marching up the field I paid little
attention to Dugging slicing carrots in mid air with his sword while making
guttural Jappanese commands after downing  drams of single malt.
.I was oblivious to he and the storm outside because   a young Laurence
Taylor had just broken the back of the offence while recovering a fumble  and
had taken it to the ten.
I was shouting and holding my fists heaveward as if I was in the route 3 end
zone Duggin meanwhile had moved into an  alcoholic charge.
He began to see infidels everywhere and began striking out at enemy targets
with his sword as I did a victory dance in the small kitchen he sliced
magazines and bric-a -brack  in steady outrage.
Before I could make sence of the situation Sims ran the ball himself in for
the TD and I became delirous; so did Duggin.
 His first victum was a small divan which he haked with impunity as the
Giants kicked the extra point ; oblivious we both became horse with yelling .
Duggin however thought I was egging him on; and proceeded to round up
inferior enemies of the emperor with gusto.
Attaking them with outrageous aggression  he laid it on the couch and several
chairs rewarding himself with succesive drams of Glen Morangie in between .
The game and Duggin moved foward with dizzying pace
The Giants by some miracle had recovered their own kick-off and it was bedlam
as I pounded the walls Duggin moved in on the coat rack wasting the wood into
splinters and the coats into shreds and rags
As the wind and the snow howled outside; We howled inside as  Simms scored a
comeback touch down on 4th down   Duggin now lost it and  made for the walls
and I could see this was serious shit... as he rocked the caravan with his
repeated thrusts, driving the sword thru the caravan walls  thus interupting
the broadcast and screaming in nonsencal  Jappanese at his worthless
invisable advesarys.
Enough is enough  Realizing i had been unconscious the whole time I now
feared for my life ...it was time to punt....
.I turned off the bradcast and ..I got Duggin to put down the sword  by
admiring his bravery and skill  ....I reminded him  we had to go to work
tommorow and  I needed him .
Lastly  I implored him it was time to lay off the sauce as we had to have all
our mental falculties to comfront the storm  if all of us should get  snowed
in
as it was starting to  look that way besides his and my   winter coat  lay in
tatters..
.He finally agreed and did the gentlmanly thing  that they  do.in Scotland
.....he  switched to beer.......I got the game back on  and he tried to sew
up the coats while crying in his beer ...the Giants went on in the play-offs
that year but did not make the super bowl...We burned alot of peat that
winter....Best Michael