Dear Holly,
I got your letter today. I’m glad the mail was fast, because we could be leaving in a few days.
It was good to hear that you and Sam are both enjoying wheelchair basketball. It sounds like you both are getting very good at making baskets.
I was just remembering that I had to explain to Pauly that when you make a basket in basketball, it isn’t the kind of basket you can carry things in. I told him that it’s when the ball goes through the hoop with a net attached and comes out the bottom. That’s how you get points.
The man who fixes cars here found the part he needs. He had it shipped here. Now he has to find a human person who can do something called welding. The Writer explained to us that the person uses some special equipment to melt metal to join one piece of metal to another, sort of like glue. When he finds someone to do it, it will only take a couple of hours to fix the car. We have already been here two weeks.
I know you enjoy watching movies with Sam. Sometimes The Writer lets us sit with them and watch movies on the TV, and there are some we can watch on the tablet. There isn’t much to do here, other than read and walk around the campground, so we enjoy watching a movie when it's cold and windy.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen "The Sound of Music." It sounds like an interesting movie. Thank you for telling me about it. I really enjoy music, now that I have my special glasses that let me hear sounds.
I know you were trying to cheer me up by bringing up that song about remembering your favorite things when you’re sad. We really aren’t sad, though. We’re really enjoying pretending to be real boys, so it’s hard to pretend to be sad at the same time.
It’s interesting to walk around the campground and look at all the trailers.
It’s warm enough inside our trailer, but it’s winter, so it’s very cold here outdoors. We found out there’s a swimming pool here, but there’s no water in it yet.
It will open on May 15th, and it will have warm water to swim in. We will be home by then, though…I hope. Right now, it's empty.
Some people live here all the time. We’ve seen some kids walking to the road. The Writer says the school bus picks them up and takes them to school. They had backpacks like ours, and I found out that they bring books home so they can do their homework, just the way we do. That made Billy and me really feel like real boys. We enjoyed watching them.
While we were watching them, and Billy was taking photos, the big trash truck came to empty the dumpsters. Dumpsters are very big trash cans. The truck driver operates the lifting arms to pick up the dumpster from the front instead of the side. We remember that our trash cans are picked up on the side of the truck. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same.
Billy took some photos of the trash truck in action. It's very different from the trash trucks in our neighborhood. It will be fun to share them with everyone when we get online again.
We wondered what it would be like to live in an RV campground all the time. The Writer and her husband have had a hard time keeping the water hoses from freezing and keeping the trailer warm enough to be comfortable for real people. It was good that they brought along a little electric heater. We have electricity from the campground.
Each campsite has a faucet for the trailer to connect to. They use a hose to connect to the faucet outdoors to get water. When it's really cold, they leave the doors open on the cabinets. That lets the heat from the living area into the cabinets. The pipes that carry water are in there, either in the back of the cabinet or under the floor, so leaving the doors open helps keep the water in the pipes from freezing.
When it's really cold, they have to let the faucets drip water. We hate to waste water, but when the water freezes, it turns into ice, and ice takes up more space than water does. It can break a pipe, and then the pipe would leak. If that happens, it would waste a lot more water and be expensive to fix.
Sometimes the water still freezes anyway in the hose outside that brings water from the campground faucet into the trailer, so they have to change it for a hose that has been indoors in the tub, where it's too warm to freeze. Then the ice inside that hose can warm up and turn back into water, and that hose will be ready to use again. It's a good thing they have two!
Billy and I wondered how people who live here all the time manage, with being cold and having the faucets stop working, because real people need to eat and drink and wash. Real people feel the cold, and they don't like it. The Writer pointed out how some of the trailers have some kind of siding around the space where the wheels are. That’s to keep the cold air and wind from moving under the trailer. It keeps the trailer warmer.
The people who live here in the winter also have big tanks for fuel to heat their trailers. They use a gas called propane (PRO-pain).
We have propane tanks, too, but just two little ones, because we only need to use it for a short time and we have to take them on the road with us. We use the propane for the stove for cooking, for the hot-water heater so we can have hot water, and for the refrigerator when we’re traveling and don't have electricity except for what's in the batteries.
Today the heater started blowing cold air. The Writer turned it off and then checked the stove. She found out there was no propane coming to it.
Her husband went out to the propane tanks and switched the connection from one tank to the other. Then they turned the heater back on, and it started blowing out warm air again. He took out the empty tank and bought more propane from the campground. They filled it, and then he put it back in.
He got our propane tank filled right in front of the office, where there is a very big tank.
This is a campground with something called full hookups, so the refrigerator runs on electricity from the campground, and we can use the microwave, which also takes electricity.
Each campsite has a place for you to plug your trailer's power cord.
We have batteries for lights and the water pumps when we aren’t in a campground with electricity. We have to be careful not to use those things too much, though, because all the electricity is stored in the batteries, and it can be used up.
It's fun running around the campground. We found a model of an old general store and jail like in western movies. We pretended to be bad guys going to jail and got The Writer to take our picture in front of it. We look almost as big as real boys in front of the buildings.
We have internet here. It works pretty well, which is good, because sometimes we need to look something up.
We called home to let everyone know how we were doing. I told Veronika about that song, where you remember your favorite things when you’re sad, and it cheers you up. Mariah said she thought that was almost as good as a disappointment party, and a lot easier to do.
The Writer found the movie you watched with Sam and downloaded it, so we could watch it, too. We really enjoyed it, and I loved hearing the song about remembering your favorite things. The other songs were very good, too.
We will not be going to Arizona, so don’t use the address there if you write again while we’re traveling. I found out where we plan to stay when we leave here, and when we get the truck back, we will be there for a few days. I wrote it down at the bottom of this letter.
Tell Sam and the rest of the family hi from me. I hope your basketball team wins the tournament, but if you don’t, just think about your favorite things and remember there’s always next year.
Your pal,
Emil
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
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