My old friend Sammy had a tough time of it with them for a few years. His first was an old homebrew monster, easily 60 pounds of welding rod in her. Lights required constant re-taping of the wires, too. We went to an Eastern, can't remember which one, in the late 80's. He had some trouble with a broken weld on the way down, so a trip was made into town for fixin, costing a few more dollars out of the beer money. At the end of the event, we all left at different times of the day, heading back North up 15 (seems like all of the easterns required us to drive through Steam Valley). My family and I took a long time to pack our camp, so we got off to a later start than Sam and some of the others. Somehere North of Williamsport, I happened to notice a familiar looking pile of rubble on the side of the road, including what was once a camp chair or two, a shattered cooler, and a twisted chunk of metal. Might have been a trailer once, or so it seemed. Later on, I got the tale from the guy folowing Sam. Apparently the weld broke again, and as they were going down the road at 70, the whole thing "just started spinning! There was stuff flyin' everywhere, just like somebody took the top offn' a blender!"
Sam brought her in for a landing, they recovered what was left, pulled the license plate off, put a roundball through her to put it out of it's misery, and bid the thing farewell. Sammy then bought a nice little store-bought 5x8 fancy enclosed rig, and ripped the screw jack right off the frame coming out of a gas station on his way back from another Eastern, you guessed it, on 15 again. He sold the trailer, and now if it doesn't fit in the back of the pickup it don't go!
I finally bought an enclosed trailer, but for years used an 1963 Davis open topped 4x8 that I bought at a yard sale for $75, and rebuilt her every few years. Now it goes to the dump and hauls leaves and the lawnmower, but I can't bear to part with it cause I'm not sure the new CarMate will last 40 years, and as I tell the wife, ya gotta have a spare just in case!
