Working RV travelers play a valuable role in tourism economy

| Sunday, September 03, 2006

Previous Page

Share

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• NewsVine
• Fark

Print

Email

“Welcome to the 1880 Town,” Jake White says with a grandfatherly grin and soft Mississippi drawl as he greets tourists walking in the front door of the ancient round barn, the entrance to the tourist attraction along Interstate 90 east of Belvidere.

Dressed in dark trousers, a black vest over a white shirt, and a black string tie, the silver-haired White looks like he could have stepped behind the ticket counter from another century.

With practiced ease, White introduces a family to the sights waiting for them on the tour. He advises children not to miss the miniature horses and donkeys.

Across the barn’s foyer, Dottie White, Jake’s wife, rings up purchases in the gift shop at South Dakota’s Original 1880 Town.

This is the Whites’ third summer at the 1880 Town. They arrived in mid-May and plan to leave by mid-September. Their next destination is the West Coast, where they’ll spend a few months seeing the sights.

Eventually, they may check back in with their five children in Mississippi. The kids keep asking when mom and dad are coming home, Dottie said.

“Maw Maw’s done flew the coop,” Dottie says with a mischievous smile. “It’s our turn.”

Jake retired after 35 years as a carpenter. Dottie managed a water system for 22 years.

Now, they travel in their RV and work at tourist attractions.

The Whites are among the hundreds of thousands of people known in the tourism industry as “workampers” who live in their recreational vehicles and support their lifestyles with seasonal jobs.

Workampers contribute significantly to the South Dakota tourism industry’s summer work force, according to Bill Honerkamp, president of the Black Hills Badlands & Lakes Association.

“Seasonal employment in the Black Hills has become a challenge in the industry,” Honerkamp said. “That’s why you’re seeing the workampers and international workers.”

It has become harder and harder to hire local workers, Honerkamp said.

“I don’t believe it’s just a function of the wage scale, because some of them do pay pretty well,” he said.

For the past 18 months, home for the Whites has been a fifth-wheel trailer pulled by a pickup truck. A son lives in their Mississippi home.

An advertisement in a travel magazine led to their first job at the 1880 Town.

“On our way home, we decided we’d had so much fun we wanted to come back,” Dottie said. The Whites have discovered a lifestyle that suits them well.

“We should have done it years ago,” Jake said.

Almost two years ago, a Kampgrounds of America survey estimated that 750,000 Americans live and work from their recreational vehicles, according to Steve Anderson, editor of Workamper News, an online and print resource with 71,000 subscribers that links people and jobs.

“We’re just barely touching the bucket here,” Anderson said.

Anderson registered “workamper” as a word almost 19 years ago when he started the publication. “A workamper is someone who lives in their RV and works,” Anderson said.

He said workamping should not be confused with work camping — volunteers who do not receive compensation for their work.

Anderson says it’s hard to say just how many people call their RV home and make a living while they travel.

The job spectrum ranges from consultants who make healthy wages to workers whose only compensation is a free campsite, Anderson said.

The majority of workampers are in their 50s and 60s. A little more than half of workampers work to supplement a retirement income, and the rest work to support a full-time or almost full-time life in their RV.

The increase in gas prices is tapping the retirement incomes of many full-time travelers, Anderson said. Working allows them to continue a lifestyle they are reluctant to give up, he said.

Cheryl Barnholdt, a workamper at Wall Drug Store for the past seven years, has cooked in a tent restaurant in Death Valley, Calif., and worked in a four-star resort inn. She now runs Wall Drug’s rock shop.

“I kind of like money,” Barnholdt said. Working for parts of the year brings in extra cash that takes care of a few bills and insurance.

“The big things are health insurance and medical expenses,” she said.

“It’s a pretty good life,” Barnholdt said. “Wall Drug is a good place to work. Wages are good, the hours are good and they’re good to you.”

Wall Drug Store has a summer staff of about 215, including 26 workampers. A section of a mobile-home park owned by the drug store is reserved for workampers.

For $70 a month, workampers get their lot, utilities, cable television and phone service. Half of their rent is refunded when they complete the season. They also have access to a swimming pool and exercise room.

Changing work force

Wall Drug Store began hiring workampers 15 years ago, human resources director Karen Poppe said.

The seasonal nature of the tourism industry and workamping makes it practical to rely on workers who are happy to come at the beginning of the tourist season and are content to move on in mid- to late-September when business slows down.

There was a time when people looked forward to retirement as a time to quit work and collect Social Security, Poppe said.

“But in today’s society, people retire younger,” she said. Many retirees have either sold a business or have been forced out of the work place, but they still want to work.

“They don’t feel good about themselves unless they’re doing something at least part of the year, and it fills the bill for them,” Poppe said.

Some are couples with one or both spouses working. There are also single people who workamp.

Seasonal work gives retirees a reason to get up and go to work and a place to be with other people and socialize, Poppe said.

The changing demographics of the available work force have also increased the popularity of using the drop-in help, Poppe said.

In rural areas, as small farms and ranches disappear, there are fewer adults and teens to hire. More college students spend their summers doing internships, or they have better opportunities, Poppe said.

The workampers are so reliable that Wall Drug has a few who are department heads, because they stay for the entire tourist season, according to Wall Drug president Ted Hustead.

The tourist season is winding down about the time the workampers are ready to hit the road in September or October.

Wall is a pleasant change from the rat race of California’s Orange County, where John Szekley, 65, retired 15 years ago. Since then, a motor home has been his home.

Twelve years ago, Szekley started spending his summers at Wall Drug.

“This fits in good,” Szekley, who works in the camera department, said. “It’s five months out of the year, and I still get seven months off, so I’ve always got something to look forward to.”

The salary he draws at Wall Drug will pay for gas this winter while he travels and checks in with friends and family.

“I’m keeping my fingers out of my investments,” Szekley said. “I haven’t touched that since I left.”

Ed Czarnecki, 65, and his wife Sandy, 63, retired and started traveling six years ago. After 18 months of retirement, they had spent 30 percent more than Ed had budgeted, so they started workamping.

They still travel, doing things they couldn’t do when they were raising a family, only now they spend more time exploring one place. And they’re healthier for it, they said.

“It’s enhanced our lives,” Ed Czarnecki said. “We get to go places we want and work. It’s a wonderful way to live.”

Valuable workers

At Wall Drug, the senior work force fits in well with the college-age students they work with, Poppe said.

They are also a reliable piece of the finely tuned orchestra that is Wall Drug, Hustead said.

“They are so dependable,” Poppe said. “They show up. They have either worked for themselves or somebody else and had a very successful career. It’s amazing. They never get sick.”

Richard Hullinger and his father, Clarence Hullinger, owners of 1880 Town, employ 12 to 14 workampers each year. The Hullingers started using workampers in 1990.

“They’re very valuable workers,” Richard Hullinger said. “They’re responsible people who show up on time and do what they say they are going to do.”

Don Gibson from Parhrump, Nev., is donating his time this summer and filling in where he can.

Gibson, now in his 70s, and his late wife sold their Harrisburg, Pa., home and started traveling when he retired in 1988.

It was fun for a while, Gibson said. “We decided we weren’t making any headway,” Gibson said. “The old brain was getting loose, and the body was going to pot, so we decided to come here.”

That was in 1993. Gibson has continued to return each summer.

“It’s interesting. Lord knows you aren’t going to get rich at it, but you meet people from all over the world,” Gibson said. “And you get to work with people from all over the country.”

The Hullingers provide satellite television, electric, water and sewer hook-ups for their work campers. A building next to the miniature travel park houses a full kitchen, a laundry and lounge where the camping staff gathers frequently for potluck summers or to relax.

Along Snowbird Lane in Wall, many of the Wall Drug workcampers have customized their parking spots with lawns, gardens and trees.

“I really like it that they allow you to take ownership,” Carol Coomer, 69, said. Coomer, a Californian, is back for her third summer as a workamper at Wall Drug.

Coomer became interested in workamping while visiting Wall Drug on vacation in 1995.

Coomer was delighted when Poppe matched her interests in horses, gardening and art by placing her in an area of the store that sells Western art, pottery and ironwork.

“It was perfect, I found my niche,” Coomer said. Greeting thousands of tourists each summer is vastly different from her solitary bookkeeper job, and Coomer has enjoyed the change.

Matching people with jobs is a challenge Hullinger also takes seriously. “I’m getting better at it,” he said.

In a costume shop behind the 1880 Town’s saloon, Kanda Schurr of Temple, Texas, fits visitors in western attire for a stroll through town.

When business is slow, she sits at a sewing machine remaking contemporary discards into period clothing.

Schurr and her husband, Steve, also worked at a marina and as campground hosts to fund the mobile lifestyle they adopted four years ago.

It was a question of “how can you live in your motor home and not go broke?” Schurr said.

Their goal was to see as much as possible of the country and support themselves while doing it.

“I can’t imagine another job that would give me as many opportunities to meet new people,” Schurr said. “You have to be somewhere where it’s touristy, and I love it.”

Tom Key is the handyman at 1880 Town. His wife, Alberta, works as a bookkeeper. This is the Keys’ fifth summer there.

Key has retired twice — from the Navy and as a nuclear engineer. He likes the independence Hullinger gives him to do his job.

Their summer wages typically pay the bills and ease their reliance on retirement income, the Keys said.

“We work about six months out of the year, and the rest of the time we goof off,” Alberta Key said.

Hullinger schedules working couples so that they have the same days off. Creative scheduling allows them to have an afternoon and morning off on each side of their two days off, which gives them plenty of time to take a short trip.

“We get to see what the locals see in the area rather than the passersby,” Tom Key said. “There’s stuff within a 250-mile radius of here that we’ve seen, and we’re going someplace to do something we haven’t done.”

Workampers become familiar with the area they work in, which is another plus for their employers, Poppe said. They are eager to help travelers have a good vacation.

“They’re great ambassadors, not only for Wall Drug Store and other businesses, but the whole state,” Poppe said.

Contact Andrea Cook at 394-8423 or andrea.cook@rapidcityjournal.com