Anne’s Airstream Adventure… arizona to Montana

I wanted to hire another guy to clean the floors of my store again. I met Michael working in the thrift store for head injured down the block. The men from the thrift store had been mopping my floors for me. I needed hands. Michael had a limousine business that he was forced to close due to the governor not honoring Martin Luther King day. The majority of his clients were black. So, Michael and his buddy drove to Alaska and were hired on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea. He was hit in the head by a metal pan of fish on deck, and was helicoptered to a hospital due to a serious head injury. Deep sea fishing pays serious money, but it is the most dangerous work on earth. I hired Michael. I owned Domestic Placement Services too, working out of my Phoenix historic Palm Street home. I was making good money, but was bored at home, and opened my store, Anne’s Design and Consign. To date I own the trademark, Design and Consign. I can open my store again whenever I feel like it. Michael from the down the street store, was in my store within an hour after we first met. Sitting in the yard next to the store in Phoenix I was renting sat a 31 foot 1970 Airstream International in mint condition. I offered my senior landlords $2,600. for it and they were happy to give it away. Then I put my Interior Design skills to work. My Airstream adventure was going to be done in style, my style. I went down to the Design Center in Phoenix and ordered fabric and stopped in a neighborhood fabric shop too. I ordered new navy blue and white striped awnings. My sunflowers against blue fabric was delivered for the upholstery. The living room of the Airstream had a double bed pull out and twin beds in the middle with the bathroom and shower in the back. I even took a hands on upholstery class at Glendale Community College where the instructor stood talking to another colleague for 45 minutes instead of teaching. I’d taught at three colleges in the area myself after the Law Firm of Evans Kitchel and Jenckes I worked at closed down. I was opening my own businesses. I needed the income so I taught school part time. The upholstery teacher was a joke. Learning how to upholster is a hands on experience where you need an instructor showing you. I ended up having an upholstery company do my Airstream professionally. I bought a home that had two guest houses and a large ranch style home with a pool for $185,000. cash. There was a huge yard and a place to park the Airstream. After about a year, I decided to rent out the big house and put everything in the big warehouse on the Arizona property with the apartment and second floor coach house behind it. I had the apartment ready to live whenever I left and had a place to come home to. I was a very active Jehovah’s Witnesses too. I had a new 1994 Buick Roadmaster. I’d been all over the northwest from Arizona to Alaska when I fell in love with Montana. When I finished touring Yellowstone, I went north to Livingston Montana where I saw cattle ranching cowboys on horses in the hills when sitting looking at the views, the cowboys went by in front of me. I was sold on at that point on Montana, sitting in Paradise Valley in summer…where you can buy 40 acres for cheap, but then I heard it snows heaps. I headed west toward Bozeman then headed back to Arizona. Then another time, I took a trip to Montana with Lily after I had read an entire book or two about Montana. The Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula is said to be the banana belt of Montana; and has little snow. I drove all over the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula and decided this is where we’ll settle this summer in the Airstream out of the Arizona heat. We began to pack our Airstream and Michael towed it behind our 1969 fully restored Suburban. I drove my favorite new Buick Roadmaster with Lily in her car seat in back from Arizona, headed to Hamilton, Montana. We stayed at the Bitteroot campground RV park in our newly interior designed 1970 31′ Airstream International. I became an active member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Montana too. I finally found what I was looking for after researching real estate always; I found 17 acres with a 2,600 square foot warehouse with a huge lien-to and hay barn and coral plus a chicken coop. It was in a prairie on Gold Creek Loop, an oiled road, six miles south of the Kingdom Hall at the edge of Hamilton. I paid $85,000 for all that; then I moved a 14 x 70 park model to the 17 acres. The views were spectacular in between the Sapphire Mountains and the Bitterroot Mountains, and close to town. The property was in between Arabic and Paints horse ranches with galloping horse views and herds of elk and deer prancing across the property often. Close to the 93 highway made it a nice trip to town or when traveling back to Arizona on the 93 all the way. Views like paradise with streams everywhere, lakes and the Bitterroot River and mountain views in every direction. I would travel to Arizona to rent out the houses when someone moved out. Then, I found a 24′ white box truck with a lift gate, and came up with the name Handymen & Movers and took the truck back to Arizona to work it. I own the trademark and corporation to date. All of this adventure after buying an Airstream.