Goines On: Fifth-wheeler

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Goines’ wife cautioned him, “Just think things like asking your primary care physician about cannabis (don’t waste her time). Or just think things like referring to me or someone else as your primary care ‘provider’ (which could be misconstrued). Just think such things, don’t act on them.”
    Goines would have to think long and hard about this, and might conclude he would have to take her advice…and act on it.
​    In a wink, he was right back at it: “Let’s buy an RV and camp out regularly!” There were many more RV sites in the campground than there were cabins. A conversation with the staffer who visited the Goineses’ cabin – to investigate why its dishwasher (which Goines had no intention of using) had an inch of water standing in it – elicited the information that he had retired from a 35-year corporate job to take this much less stressful job, one of whose perks was a free RV spot, on which he and his wife lived in their “fifth-wheeler.” Goines had no idea what a “fifth-wheeler” was, and he was surprised that Mrs. Goines did seem to know. “The front end,” she explained, “juts out over a truck bed.” (Goines guessed that the truck must be the RV’s fifth wheel.)
    Mrs. Goines asked the staffer whether they could come look at his fifth-wheeler, but he said he’d have to check with his wife, who was also a staffer, at the front desk.
    The next day, on a solitary walk along the beach and through the camp, Goines wanted to know about all of the different classifications of RVs, both motorized and pulled by hitch. And, in the same minute, he realized that his proposal that they buy a smaller motorized version was more an idea for a story than a practical suggestion.
    And, anyway, they didn’t need to buy one, they could lease it, as their daughter and son-in-law had done a couple of times. He would ask them about that: how much, and so on. And you don’t need a commercial drivers license, right?

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