DRIVER’S ED. : Collector Hits the Road on Behalf of Antique Recreational Vehicles

Take a look at this year’s Winnebago Ultimate Advantage with its hydraulic leveling jacks and video monitor for backing up, and you might think it’s light-years from the motor homes and camping trailers that first rumbled down America’s wooded byways and desert roads.

But David Woodworth doesn’t think there’s much difference. And he should know.

The 59-year-old Baptist pastor-turned-historian is arguably the country’s foremost expert on the genesis and trajectory of recreational vehicles. And he loves the look on people’s faces when he tells them the first camping trailer was built not long after the Model T. Or that the first mass-produced motor homes, known then as house cars, date to 1916.

“People just aren’t aware that camping went back that far,” said Woodworth, who shares an oak-shaded 26 acres in the high desert hamlet of Tehachapi with his wife, Sheran, and 30 museum-piece RVs. “I surprise people all the time.”

These days RV enthusiasts marvel at such state-of-the-art motor home wonders as the slide-out--an accordion-like feature popularized a few years ago that allows camper living rooms to expand up to 3 feet in width with the touch of a button. But, Woodworth notes, the folding out and contracting in of mobile living spaces has been around since Woodrow Wilson was president.

“There really isn’t that much difference between a motor home today and a 1921 Lampsteed,” he says with a minister’s faith that his listener is as well-versed in his references as he is. “The only difference between those two units is the technology we have developed.”

For the curious, a 1921 Lampsteed Kampkar is a motor home built by Anheuser-Busch during Prohibition that allows users to tip out one whole wall to create an additional 3 feet of living space. And, not surprisingly, Woodworth has one. Not to mention a 1936 Bowles travel trailer, forerunner to the silver, egg-shaped trailers many people picture when they think of old RVs.

“I look for anything that people would have had for camping on the road in the ‘teens, ‘20s and ‘30s,” said Woodworth, who hopes one day to enshrine his collection, which also includes period camping equipment, in a museum. “No one else has quite caught the bug as much as I have.”

Woodworth has already donated some of his vintage auto camping equipment to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington.

“There’s no one quite like David out there,” said Roger White, museum specialist for road transportation at the Smithsonian. “There are museums that have pieces, but not as many as he does. . . . He’s almost taken on this mythological Paul Bunyan identity, this man and his motor homes. He really is a piece of Americana.”

What started as a hobby restoring an old Model A Ford has become a full-time calling for Woodworth, who every year is sponsored by state fairs, RV shows and the industry’s leading trade association to tour the country and espouse his particular brand of history. He takes one to three pieces on his travels, sometimes using a modern RV to haul an antique to juxtapose the old with the new and better punctuate his narratives.

*

And it seems Americans are primed for his message.

As baby boomers march further into middle age and the U.S. economy continues to generate greater pools of discretionary income, RV ownership has skyrocketed, especially among 35- to 55-year-olds. The Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn. reports that manufacturer deliveries to RV dealerships have jumped 70% this decade, from 173,000 units in 1990 to close to 300,000 last year.

At the same time, membership in the nation’s largest RV-owner benefits group, the Good Sam Club, has risen steadily to nearly 1 million, and the RVIA’s California RV Show each year sets records for attendance. Last year, 50,000 turned out for the 10-day exhibition at the Fairplex in Pomona. (See accompanying box.)

Good Sam Executive Director Sue Bray said one reason for the growing interest is that RVs symbolize freedom for many who rarely escape the confines of their hectic, workaday lives. RVs, she said, allow people to go pretty much where they want to, when they want to, with no boss or schedule telling them what to do. It’s the same quintessentially American yearning that gave rise to the car culture, Bray said, only now road-trippers are able to take their houses along with them.

But in their rush to cut loose, said California RV Show Director Marsha Mc Innis, new RVers should not forget that they and their rigs are just the latest leg of a journey stretching back more than 80 years.

“The heritage of the lifestyle, it’s important to preserve that for future generations,” said Mc Innis, who has overseen the show--considered the country’s largest--for 13 years.

Woodworth couldn’t agree more: “It’s important to appreciate how far we’ve advanced and what we have in common with the past. That’s what makes what I’m doing really exciting, to be able to show people where it all came from.”

Back in the boom times after World War I, Woodworth said, the new pastime of “motor camping” captured the popular imagination for much the same reason it does today. Newly minted tent trailers and camper cars allowed people to escape the inflexibility of train schedules and rail lines. Indeed, an ad for the Lampsteed Kampkar found in Woodworth’s archives exhorts readers of Field & Stream in 1923: “Go anywhere you wish--on your own schedule, over your own railroad system in your own private car, stopping at your own hotel, eating your own cooking at your own table--all in great comfort and at a price you can easily afford.”

Folks apparently took those words to heart. By the mid-1920s, Woodworth said, tens of thousands of people owned some kind of motor camper, and campgrounds specifically for vehicles dotted the country, with one of the most famous taking up a corner of the quiet country burg of Alhambra.

Many enthusiasts even subscribed to a monthly magazine called Motor Camper and Tourist, which chronicled life on the road, printed recipes for cookouts and offered tips on everything from newfangled equipment to out-of-the-way camping spots.

Already this year, Woodworth has made a 12-week loop of the country as part of the RVIA-sponsored “National History Tour,” stopping at RV events in more than two dozen cities. After recent stints at the Washington and Oklahoma state fairs, he’s heading off to Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park in Tennessee.

*

With a preacher’s gift for oratory and a historian’s love for detail, Woodworth wows listeners with narrative re-creations of what it was like to go camping in the old days.

For effect, he shows gear from the same year as the vehicle on display. Among his more interesting artifacts are a windup razor that shaves with vibration not unlike today’s electric variety, a cooler that refrigerates contents with evaporation rather than ice, and a collapsible canvas water bucket that folds to the size of a brick. Woodworth has done the Oklahoma State Fair the last six years, and the event’s assistant general manager, Corle Pierce, said the display is consistently voted among the fair’s most popular attractions.

“People just love to look at that stuff,” Pierce said. “And second to David’s collection is his ability to talk 14 hours a day. He actually lives and breathes this stuff, and it shows.”

It should. Woodworth is probably the perfect poster boy for antique RVs because he spent much of his childhood in the ‘40s and ‘50s touring the country in a 32-foot travel trailer while his father looked for carpentry work. He spent time in Maine, Massachusetts, Florida, Texas and Arizona before settling in Morro Bay, Calif., for junior high and high school.

After four years in the Coast Guard and four more at a Texas Bible college, Woodworth returned to California and eventually settled in Agoura Hills as the minister of a Baptist congregation. In the mid-1970s, the devout tinkerer picked up a dilapidated 1927 Model A Ford and set out to refurbish every inch.

He remembered seeing old camping equipment at the swap meets he frequented and decided to start collecting items to match the antiquity of his car. Eventually, he stumbled upon a rundown 1931 camper trailer, which he bought for $200. His collection was born.

Twenty-nine pieces later, Woodworth believes the assemblage has outgrown even the grassy expanse of his mountain ranch. He has had preliminary discussions with municipalities and organizations on the idea of a museum and hopes to get a green light on one within a year.

He points to the growing interest generated by the Recreational Vehicle and Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame Museum in Elkhart, Ind., as a bellwether for the potential popularity of his own. With 24 pieces mostly from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, the museum has seen its attendance rise steadily in the last few years. It attracted 6,000 visitors in 1998, museum officials said, and this year it’s expecting 10,000.

Woodworth thinks his holdings would complement, not compete with, the Indiana collection. He sees his museum as a fitting next step for his campaign to tout an otherwise obscure piece of Americana.

“I’ll feel like I’ve done something worthwhile if I can save this part of history,” he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pomona RV Show

Readers interested in checking out recreational vehicles of more contemporary vintage can view more than 1,500 towable and motorized examples at the 47th annual California RV Show on Oct. 15-24 at Fairplex in Pomona.

The show, produced by the Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn., will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets, at the gate, are $6 for adults, $5 for senior citizens. Information: (714) 532-4985; https://www.carvshow.com.

*

Stephen Gregory is a frequent contributor to The Times’ Business section. He can be reached at highway1@latimes.com.