In Denver, we first lived in a small dodge neon, it was red, with butterflies on the back. I called it “Flutterby”. That car was in my life for five years. It was my first car I bought after the horrible incident with Allan’s death. It saw me through the last of my nursing career and left with me to go to Texas. It was there when Kat and I first became an item. It was the car both of our babies rode home from the hospital in. We made trips to the park, to the doctors office. Spent many nights back-road driving, music listening, car packed full of kids, or besties. It was the roof over our head when we first were facing homelessness. It too, had been a piece of our lives, the transportation to hundreds of memories.
In Austin, in 2013, we were forced to make a decision in order to keep Flutterby running. The clutch had went out, first time in 3 years of having the car that I had ever had an issue other than the regular maintenance and flat tires. We limped the car to a mechanic shop. Put the car in for the repair, and waited for the estimate. Later that day, we found out it would be over $900, and in addition to a clutch, it also needed a shifter cable. We had two options at that point. The first was to allow the shop to put a governor with gps tracking in the car ensuring we wouldn’t leave the state, and pay monthly installments to the shop. The second option was a title loan, that didn’t require a gps tracking device, and did require monthly payments. We surrendered the title, made the repairs, and went on with our lives. Not knowing the trouble awaiting us just weeks down the road. That was in July of 2013. In the early part of August, I was rear-ended. I was taken to the hospital, the car was still drivable so we skipped the repair, but took out a lawsuit against the driver. I recovered as best as I could from this accident. Toward the end of September, we found out we were expecting Joshua. The defining factor resulting in our move to Mississippi, is when I had the second car accident, while five months pregnant, someone side swiped me on the driver’s side. The doctor ordered bed-rest which forced our income to be severely lacking. Flutterby’s repair bill had to wait... Fast-forward to Denver, at the end of the year of 2015, I was expecting the settlement from the car accident from August of 2013. It really couldn’t have come at a better time. It was perfectly timed right after the falling out with the folks we had lived with for six weeks. We used it to travel around Colorado in search of a used RV or camper van. Knowing our time was running short with Flutterby. I hadn’t been able to make payments on the title loan and they were done working with us to extend the time frame. I hadn’t been able to secure more than a few families worth of housekeeping work and part time work driving cars for the auctions. We were scraping by on public resources, and what I could manage to get working. After months of cleaning, weeks of working outside in the snow, and months of sleeping in an upright position, my body wasn’t handling the stress of living in a car very well. I knew we had to have something bigger. With the kids growing and our family needing more stability, we had to find something quick. We made the trek from Denver to Pueblo, then across to Grand Junction, north to Fort Collins, Silverthorne, and Central City. The money ran out before we found the right fit for our family. We headed to Boulder, which was one of our safest and favorite spots to camp. We decided to stay there until we could get our tax returns back from the previous year. Which was only six weeks away. A few months earlier in the same camping area, we met a couple named Fork & Spoon. They had a minivan and saw our tiny car, us, our kids, and all our belongings crammed in there. They told us that day, we should buy a very big van and we could make it through this fine. They said that we shouldn’t be scared, that thousands of folks choose to live this way and if they could make it, so could we. We drove down to Manitou Springs, a town adjacent to Colorado Springs. We had seen two different ads for camper vans, we wanted to look at them to make our final decision. With the tax deposit day approaching, we wanted to be sure we had a selection made to get something as soon as possible. We test drove both, but ultimately decided on the newer one that had been converted to an actual camper on the inside. We were over-joyed to finally have the right one picked out. Now, we just had to wait on the taxes. The night before we were to get the money and meet the owner to buy the camper, we had a blow out on the car. We put the spare on, and two miles down the road, it was flat also. With no money at that moment to do anything, we were stranded, in Denver, an hour and a half away from our new camper home. We were parked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from downtown. We rang Kat’s father, it was late, but he answered. We asked could he buy us greyhound tickets from Denver to Colorado Springs so we could get our van and just leave Flutterby at the nearby Wal-Mart, that allowed overnight parking. He agreed, and were all set to go down to Colorado Springs in the morning. We had only a few short hours of sleep that night, as having to limp at about ten mph to the Wal-Mart, from the McDonald’s took nearly two hours, and as I said, it was already late when this first happened. We were up at 6am, headed to the bus stop to get to the greyhound station. Joshua was ten months old, and Jayden was four, they were excited for the trip. We made the bus ride down with mountain ranges on all sides. It was a beautiful day and we were so hopeful. After we exited the greyhound, we had to walk several blocks to the city bus line, to make it to Wal-Mart, where we were to meet the owner’s brother to make the exchange. We only had thick, black, leather jackets that were given to us by a friend before we left Mississippi, so I think we were a little off-putting and he came across as being sketchy of us. A family of four homeless folks that rode in on a bus, and we had never met this guy’s brother. It was really a strange situation, we could feel the weirdness. To make it worse, when we got to Wal-Mart, the large amount of money that we were supposed to be getting wasn’t allowed to an out of state ID. We had to explain to this person meeting us with the van, that we had to find another location to pick up the money, could he please drive us there, in the van. Which, he did. While driving over he kept saying little things like “My mom was the type person to teach us to trust people until they give a reason not to”, and “In my family we were raised to be kind, understanding, and to remember the golden rule”. Though I’m sure he also had some thoughts along the lines of what our true intentions were and did we really have the money coming. Thankfully, he did trust us for a few minutes that day we were able to get the tax return from the second location, we paid him the money and drove him home. Then, we were off in our bigger, more comfortable home, headed back to Flutterby, to clean it out and get our belongings situated. After all that, we stayed parked to Flutterby, took a nap in our camper, called the title loan company and surrendered the address to the location of Flutterby. The following day, we awoke, Flutterby was still there, but we had to drive away and leave her there to be retrieved. We transitioned smoothly from Flutterby to our camper. We named it, Our Beast.
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Authors:James and Katherine are a transgender couple raising two kids. They were southerners when coming to understand themselves as trans. Ultimately it lead to a nearly three year road trip to find home. Now they are re-housed and still focused on outreach in the transgender community! Archives
October 2020
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