30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Two: The Swap Meet

When you own a moving van, you're suddenly everyone's friend. I got plenty of "offers" to help friends and neighbors move, which kind of led into a part-time self-employment. Every time someone would move, they would have things that they wanted to get rid of. I was also called upon to clean out garages and basements of superfluous belongings and appliances, for which I would charge a small fee. Some of this stuff went to the dump, but a lot of it was still useable, and I began making a weekly routine of selling at the Long Beach Swap Meet, held at the Long Beach Drive-In Theatre. Every Saturday and Sunday, I'd arrive at 4:30AM so that I could be one of the first sellers into the lot. Arriving later meant that I would have much more difficulty getting the huge truck into the two parking stalls that served as my "shop" space.

As soon as the rear doors of the truck were opened (it was still a stock moving van at that point), a crowd of buyers would assemble to be the first to buy my wares. Most of these were other sellers who came to recognize that I usually had a truck full of resellable merchandise and that I was most interested in getting rid of it all by the end of the day, no matter how cheaply. Most of them would take their purchases back to their own stalls, mark it up, and sell it later in the day when the public was admitted. If I went to the back of the truck holding a box, a dozen hands would reach up for it and once they got ahold of it, I'd better let go or get pulled off the truck. Buyers would be tossing me money as fast as I could collect it. Clothing for $0.25 a garment, a box of dishes for $1, shelving units for $4, etc. No reasonable offer refused, the idea was to get as much sold before setting up for the day as possible. Anything that I thought would fetch a good price from the paying public was always kept in the front of the truck box, and brought out after the frenzy subsided.

The rest of the day would be spent selling off the remainder of the contents of the truck and cruising the swap meet isles looking for parts and materials for the housetruck conversion. My RV refrigerator ($125), gas cook stove ($25), saddle fuel tanks ($40), propane cylinders ($10 ea), and a variety of other fixtures and fittings were either obtained at the swap meet or procured through my garage cleaning activities.

Here's an old photo, taken with TMAX's camera, and just recently unearthed from it's hiding place after all these years.

We see Crazy Robert, the skinny arms in the black shirt sitting with the back of his head to the camera, and Fat Frank in a blue shirt and in need of a haircut keeping an eye on a lone shopper going through the goods. They were probably both totally stoned on pot, usually were all the time.

The Housetruck is still in moving van mode, and it looks like I had made a lot of progress in sanding and priming the body for paint. The right rear door is open and folded back against the body.

When things got slow, Crazy Robert would go out into the isle and pull people in either verbally or physically and get them to buy something. This actually worked! He would lay guilt trips on them "Hey, even you people on welfare can afford a quarter for clothes." Many times I actually saw people arguing over who saw a moth-eaten sweater first or bidding against each other for who got to purchase a broken record player.

Being the first one in meant being the last one out, as I had to wait until the public had gone home and enough of the other vehicles had moved to allow me room to turn the truck around and head towards an exit. We always drove right past the security guards who were standing at the exit gates to collect the California state sales tax that each buyer was supposed to assess and remit on the day's sales.

The tide of people moving along the isle all day while I sat in the stall watching had a mesermizing effect, not unlike watching a train at a crossing. Hours after leaving, I would still have a sense of motion, even when sitting still in my living room at home.

In all, I was pulling in about $300 a week doing the swap meet, which was fat city compared with $60 a week take-home I was making at the TV shop before I quit. Unemployment kicked in another $45/week (paid in cash!), so I had plenty of time and enough money to follow through on building the truck.