We arrived in Nappanee for our factory service on Sunday night after a very long drive from Minneapolis. Normally, the parking lot is jam packed with motorhomes arriving for Monday A.M. service. In the past, we’d even seen heated conversations with people vying for the same spot. We pulled in at 7 P.M. to find the lot virtually empty. We knew that things were tough at Newmar (and the entire motorhome industry) since we were getting in for factory service during the summer- typically only warranty work is done during the summer months. Non-warranty work was relegated to those brave souls willing to come to Indiana from November to March. But, this year, they were taking anyone willing to make the trip with $4.50 diesel prices. The next morning we got the standard 6 A.M. knock on the door and after running through our
list, we were homeless on the streets of Nappanee. There’s nothing quite like facing the prospect of 8 hours with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Before the lovely Chloe entered our life, we’d head to the “County Table” for a leisurely breakfast. There’s nothing like a huge egg, sausage and toast breakfast to get you ready for a day in the “Big Nap” (where, of course, there are no Naps!). This year, it was the McDonald’s drive through for an Egg McMuffin. So, by 7 A.M., we had had our fill of coffee and a full breakfast. Only 7 more hours to go! John reminded me that we constantly talk about how time flies as we get older –except in Nappanee, the only place where the hours seem endless and the days never end. We took a drive north to Elkhart (home of the RV Hall of Fame). Heading north on Highway 19, you pass through Wakarusa. This little town used to have two active motorhome manufacturers – Travel Supreme and one of the Monaco factories. Both have been closed - even the Camping World store had closed. Back in Nappanee, we got a sense of how bad things really are. The production line for Newmar is down to 3 days a week. The maintenance group took a 12% pay cut a few months ago. This month, they took another 10% cut in pay and had their work week cut to 4 days. The guys were talking about the challenges of trying to make it with 40% less in their paychecks.
With the entire region centered on the motorhome industry, not only are the mainline manufacturers hurting- all of the suppliers are facing layoffs and possible closings. After our maintenance work at Newmar, we took the coach to Villa, the supplier of the sofas and chairs. We had a button that had come off of our sofa and they offered to replace it. We drove into a factory the size of a football field and were met by 5 workers. The plant was barely operating. The offices were dark, there were a few Mexican workers assembling furniture. We had two guys working on our sofa for an hour – at no charge.
We did get
a chance to visit our favorite hangout in Nappanee (one of the only places in town), the Hunters Hideaway. We missed our favorite waitress, Miriam, but did get to have one of their amazing “olive burgers”. And, as usual, we drank their entire supply of white wine (a total of 4 airline size bottles of Sutter Home Chardonnay). White wine isn’t the drink of choice for these beer drinking, cigarette smoking factory workers. With another 6 A.M. start in the morning, we headed to bed early on Monday night. At 11:00, we jerked out of bed to the sound of tornado sirens everywhere. We quickly threw on some clothes, grabbed the dog and ran to the front of the motorhome. People around us were running from their coaches to the little visitor lobby next to us. We knew that it wasn’t a tornado shelter – and we didn’t have time to try to find the closest church (the local churches open up their basements as tornado shelters). In John’s FMCA seminar, they said that the best thing to do is to turn your driver and passenger chairs around- away from the huge glass windshield and, as John yelled to me – “Strap yourself in and hold onto the dog”. 
Visions of Dorothy and Toto flashed in my mind – John, Chloe and me in the eye of the tornado whirling around strapped to our motorhome chairs. The fact that we were sitting in the middle of farm fields surrounded by motorhomes (the closest thing to the typical trailer park that tornados seem to seek out)- didn’t provide much comfort. The sky was frightening- pitch black with constant bolts of jagged lightening. The lightening wasn’t just single bolts to the ground, but multiple bolts joining together and lighting the sky like fireworks. With the weather radio blasting tornado warnings for Elkhart county, police cars regularly driving through the parking lot, and the thunder and lightening, we spent a tense hour strapped into our chairs, peering into the skies around us. At last, the warning was over and we headed to bed—only 5 hours till the alarm. The next day, the news reported major tornado touchdowns just northwest of us. (Poster by W.w.Denslow)
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