This (Jackson Center, OH; pop: 850) is where all Airstreams are made, and we took the factory tour (no pictures allowed).
A lot of hand labor and attention to quality, the guide explained, so I’m not sure who comes in at night and jams the locks and loosens trim pieces.
We are camping in the factory “terraport”, eight trailers parked like spokes on a wheel, with hook-ups fed from the center (free with work, $10 just to camp; full hookups, WiFi with work). We are here for some minor repairs (refasten a trim board that fell off, correct a dump connection that turns up rather than down - something you definitely don't want) and have the wheel bearings repacked. Others are here for very major stuff – things that just plain don’t work, water leaks, collision damage. At 7-7:30 AM they tow your trailer to the service center, and at 3:30 PM they return it to the terraport (of which there are three), work completed or not. Our neighbor expects it will take three of these cycles to do his work.
We arrived without an appointment so have to wait until Tuesday.
Not much to do during the day, except sit in the air conditioned waiting room (95 degrees outside), and catch up with the blog, knit, read, or drive the five-block-long town. We did it all.
The “Wally & Stella” photo is of Wally Byam’s gold anodized 1950s trailer used on his famous (at least in Airstream circles) 1959 Capetown-to-Cairo caravan (Wally, who founded Airstream and inspired caravaning, died in 1962). The trailer in the other photo, with the evil eyes, dates from about 1936. The final photo is taken from the terraport at sunset.
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