It is at least thirteen years since I made what has to have been the most foolish decision of my life. To this day I can't explain why I even went to look at the Cortez motor home. My wife went with me to look at it. We already had a motor home. This one was the same make as our original motor home except it was larger. It was completely empty and, being in the business I was in I could furnish it as I wanted. I suppose there was a challenge. That's the closest I can come to an explanation.

My wife said no, but that was her immediate answer to most of my ideas.

Anyway, unfortunately, we had just been paid for a job so I had the cash to give the man a certified check when he demanded it. When I told Ethel that I had bought the vehicle she told me, "Herb, I'm leaving you".

The die was already cast, I had paid in full and now owned this empty Cortez motor home. I picked it up in Burien a south suburb of Seattle.

I was driving it home on first Avenue South over the First Avenue South bridge. Just after I got off the bridge and, where First Avenue intersects Marginal Way South the beast died. This was 6 o'clock Friday rush hour on an intersection of two main arterials. I'm sure I was the recipient of many curses. There was a Chevron station so I went in and called for a tow truck. Even though I told the dispatcher it was a motor home the tow truck he sent was too small to do the job. Fortunately he was able to at least pull me into an adjacent parking lot.

Eventually an adequate truck came and pulled me to my shop. I had an employee who was quite good at motor work and he corrected whatever was wrong with the engine.

I started on the project of reworking the interior. First, there was a small door on the left rear that had to be removed. When I removed it I found rust under it. That piece of the body had to be removed and replaced. When I removed the next piece there was more rust. Someone had covered a whole rusty body with sheet metal.

We wound up having to replace all the body metal below the windows. There is a product called Ospho which reverses the action of rust. We wound up painting every surface of the frames with Ospho.

Since at some time the frames had been bent we had a terrible time recovering it. Eventually we were able to get the body work done.

I went to work on the interior. I don't think there's ever been an interior like it. I used a lot of oak, some expensive nylon fabric and a lot of genuine leather on the upholstery.

Finally, we had a saleable motor home so I put it out in front of our shop up on the curb with a For Sale sign. Such was the luck of our vehicle that a lady jumped the curb in order to hit it damaging the passenger side. This was just at the time we were moving to Longview so I brought it to a Longview company to have the damage repaired.

After trying for some time to sell it myself I gave up and took it to Seattle to the company that had been the factory representative for the Cortez vehicles.

I was happy to let if go for $9500. I'm sure my wife was a little gleeful as she told me she had kept a record of every expense. That figure was a little over $21,000. This was over and above all the labor I'd put in.

As I said, I haven't any idea why I bought the vehicle. The only possible explanation is that you "get so quick old and so late schmart".