Readers and writers blog

EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is an abridged version of Chapter 21 of “Adrift in America: Diary of a Minimalist Mariner,” a work found in the nonfiction section:

Old Orchard Beach, Maine. June 1988.

So just what is this National Sanitation Services? In a word, camouflage.

Although tiny by motor-home standards, a 1985 Sunrader Monterey as it comes out of the factory still looks like something people take vacations in. In many places I want to visit, the authorities are wary of such vehicles, fearing that they will, without warning, disgorge a couple of adults, at least as many children, a family dog or two, and that this crowd, already half mad from the joy of vacationing, will quickly strip the local vegetation of twigs and branches, build a bonfire, break out the styrofoam and cellophane junk food, crack open the beer and soda and then, just as quickly as the horde descended, leave the area in a smouldering, littered ruin, punctuated by piles of turds flapping toilet paper streamers. That’s an extreme case, but such things do seem to happen now and then. More common but equally squalid, litter will show up as a piece or two at first, then in an increasing flow as succeeding groups of litterers see that their predecessors didn’t care. Sometimes the damage begins innocently – a bag of food waste left in a roadside container is an invitation to animals to strew the trash around – and then the other stuff follows. Besides this legitimate concern about litter and damage, the authorities in many places I want to visit also seem to believe that tourists should be kept out of the way of all local folks except those who plan to milk them in rows of restaurants, motels, gift shops, bars and other points of interest where people can be lined up and squeezed. Also a legitimate goal, I suppose, but it doesn’t fit into my budget.

So I plan to travel quietly and cleanly.

That’s why National Sanitation Services seems like such a natural idea. Nobody objects to sanitation – we claim to put it next to godliness – but nobody is likely to be attracted to a sanitation truck, either. A perfect cover, dead neutral.

National Sanitation Services. It sounds official enough to discourage all but serious inquiry, yet it’s vague enough to be construed as anything from a government sewer agency to a private diaper service. To add one more small touch of meaninglessness, I will call the truck a “field survey unit,” a perfect excuse for being anywhere. Even the words “national,” “sanitation” and “services” are about the same length, making it easy to bank them over one another in a block on the front door panels.

To choose a color for the lettering, I take a paint-store color chart to the Biddeford Post Office parking lot and match the blue of the lettering on postal trucks. I do my own lettering – before I got into the newspaper business, I once apprenticed as a sign painter – and this probably saves me a few hundred bucks in professional fees, even though some of the lettering is a little shaky if you look at it up close. Besides the door panels, I letter the front across the prow of the loft and the back above and below the rear window. The letters are simple, straightforward, understated. But I can’t resist making up a logotype – an oval with the mythical company name around the rim, surrounding an outline of the United States with a glitter burst over the state of Maine – that I center in white areas on either side of the exterior cabin walls just forward of the side windows.

A few weeks before I leave Maine, I am parked outside a convenience store near the campground one night when a car full of young men pulls up. They seem to have been celebrating and run short of supplies.

“Well, well, sanitation services,” one of the young men says as he walks toward the truck on his way to the store. “What do you have in the truck, sanitation man, a lotta garbage?”

No, I say, just a little toxic waste, not too radioactive.

He looks at me, not sure if I am joking. He takes a wide path around the truck.

– Sid Leavitt