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Remember the camper?

Probably not. We aren't going to be allowed to forget it, though. Tom bought it from a homeless, slightly crazy woman who had posted a sign in the window that said: "$300 by 3 pm." She was taking off for Alaska and needed to sell her domicile before she left.

Tom's heart, always very soft towards homeless people, led him to not only purchase the camper and transfer the title, but to take the woman to an ATM, get her cash so she could make her plane to Alaska, and put her on a bus to get her there in time. Then he prepared to salvage the 60's era camper.

When you opened the door and put your full weight on the driver's seat, the camper would tilt dangerously. Starting it was a smoke-filled adventure, and driving it...well, Tom only ever drove it distances measured in yards, mostly to avoid having it towed before he could sell it.

Actually, I take that back. He did take it on one road trip...to the dump. He backed in and just started shoveling out the interior. After a few minutes, though, he noticed mementoes and documents surfacing--school and family pictures, things written by children, birth certificates. So he slowed down and saved out what he thought might be important.

Later I spent an entire morning boxing the stuff up and shipping it off to Alaska.

I thought we would never get rid of the truck, but we did. Sort of. Tom sold it to a homeless man, who was SO happy to have it! Tom filed the bill of sale, and we thought that was that.

Not so fast. First of all the boxes came back from Alaska. We had to send them again. Then, we started getting parking ticket fines in the mail. We called the city and explained that we didn't own the truck anymore.

Then there was a brief respite. Just yesterday, the ghost of the truck came back in the form of a nasty letter from a collection agency. "Our" unpaid traffic tickets are past due. We must immediately remit $67 a piece or risk permanaent damage to our credit report and time in debtors prison.

I started calling people this morning. Turns out that, unbeknownst to us, the state DOL declared our report of sale invalid because we failed to report the address of the buyer. This meant the city kicked the fines back into the collections process (without telling us, of course).

I called the DOL to explain that we couldn't report the address of the buyer because he was homeless. There was a long pause. "I don't think you need to talk to me, honey," the employee said. "I don't know who you need to talk to." Then she put me on hold, where I was finally told by a mechanical voice that "call volume is unexpectedly high right now. Please call back later." Click.

Think how much we could have saved--time, money, psychic energy--if Tom had just GIVEN the lady $300 without taking the camper. Sigh. But then she wouldn't have her children's birth certificates and baby pictures, and a homeless man wouldn't have a place to call his own. I remember Tom saying (when attempting to justify the whole experience) that when he saw the lady with her camper he felt like he was the one--one of the few people who might have come along who had the cash, the skill to get the title transferred quickly, and the streak of insanity necessary to help--really help--a complete stranger.

For his birthday, his partners and paralegals gave him a picture of the truck sitting in a parking lot with its "$300 by 3 pm" sign visible in the window. There was lots of laughing over the gift, but I wonder if they knew how truly that camper represents him.