Part 4: Well, that took an unexpected turn

Last weekend we moved our only child into her college dorm, which, for those who've never done it, is a uniquely stressful experience, big life transitions and all that. Sunday was the day, and in the interest of stress management we'd planned Saturday for low-key hanging out and packing. That was not to be. At 8AM I got a call from our local police department. Remember the first post here, where I talked about our stolen '78 Apache?

Yeah, this one

It was in an impound yard, having been recovered just over eleven months after thieves had cut through a locked cyclone enclosure and a couple of hitch locks to liberate it. When it was stolen, I was fairly certain that within hours it had suffered the fate of most stolen popups- converted via reciprocating saw into a utility trailer, probably with a snazzy coat of flat black rattle can to hide the crime, and filled with various bits of stolen junk heading for the scrap metal buyers. Turns out the truth was much weirder.
 
It was recovered about six blocks from where it was stolen, literally across the street from a friend's house (who may have even been the one to call code enforcement about it), which itself is only five blocks away from our house. I talked to the friend, who was shocked to realize the trailer was mine- he'd remembered it being stolen, but never added it up. In any case, it had been set up for months in the yard of some, umm, questionable neighbors, who themselves had cleared out on short notice, leaving a bunch of debris (including my trailer) in their wake.

With the clock ticking ($$$), I needed to get it out of the impound yard as quickly as possible. I knew it was going to be painful, and yeah, I was right. While it wasn't a flat black utility trailer, the thieves had jammed the top down hard on the bed ends, which hadn't been properly stowed, causing some fairly significant damage, and three of the four bed end caps were heavily cracked, the fourth missing outright. Weirdly, they'd installed the ultra-rare unobtanium factory wheelcovers which had been in one of the storage compartments, something I never did on the road, notorious as they were for going AWOL.

Back with me, nearly a year post-theft

Opening it up, things only got worse. It's beyond filthy, and apparently they'd been unable to figure out how to work the bed end side panels, since they'd all been pulled off the living hinge and piled in a heap. There's miles of random tape covering the interior of the door for no discernible reason, adhesive velcro dots cover the outside of the trailer, one of the bed foams is missing (I'd paid a local seamstress to add zippers to the factory upholstery to allow us to replace the foam while keeping the original fabrics- the tab for foam alone exceeded $800), all of the curtains are long gone, along with the drawers, the door was ripped off the icebox, now stuffed with Christmas lights, someone had stepped on the inside of the kitchen countertop while it was folded, busting that to pieces, and, a coup d'grace, the ceiling and interior bed end paneling had all been painted flat gray. That may not sound like a big deal, but this trailer had all of the original paneling intact and without the water damage than usually leads to paint. The original paneling was off-white with an odd metallic gold splatter, an effect I'd meticulously recreated with a fine brush and gold leaf to cover a small discolored area below one of the windows (after disassembling and resealing the whole thing). One of the propane tanks is missing, there's random bits of rope tied to the undercarriage, cabinet doors ripped off hinges, and it's generally too heartbreaking to even look at, given the years of work I'd put into it.

Completely trashed. A utility trailer might have been a kinder fate. On the plus side, the lift system, normally the first (and expensive) victim of rough treatment, is miraculously intact and working beautifully.

Before

After

For mental health reasons if nothing else, it needs to find a new home quickly, especially since it makes for tight space in the storage unit with the Cardinal.