Harvey and Marion Roehl's motor home and other memories of the Roehls

Harvey Roehl loved a good pun (if there is such a thing!).  His
official name for the motor home in which he and Marion traveled the
continent was the "Roehl Road Car."

The Roehls drove it to Colorado Springs and parked in our driveway when
we did the layout in my office for the books "Piano Servicing, Tuning
and Rebuilding" in 1976, and "Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding" in
1985.  Each time, Marion invited us to a nice dinner in the comfort of
the motor home in our driveway.

In the last Roehl Road Car, Harvey installed an air horn of the type
used on semi-trucks and diesel locomotives, with a shop air compressor
that supplied the air.  He enjoyed driving beside a freight train that
was running next to an Interstate highway, gesturing to get the engineer
to blow the horn, and then watching the surprised look on the engineer's
face when he returned the favor!

Harvey also liked limericks.  Whenever we ate together in a restaurant,
he'd write a few of them pertinent to our get-together on a napkin and
hand it to me afterward.

It was well-known that Marion did a lot of the hard physical work around
the house.  During one visit here, she spent a few days reattaching the
siding to the motor home in our driveway while Harvey and I sat at a
big desk inside cutting and pasting galley proofs for the page layouts.
(On one visit to Vestal, Jeannie and I drove up to the Roehl's to find
Marion standing in a big hole in the yard with a long-handled ax,
chopping out a large tree stump, while Harvey was inside doing office
work.)

Harvey also pointed out that, in a motor home, you can have all the
problems of owning a car and all the problems of owning a house rolled
into one.

Art Reblitz
Colorado Springs, Colorado
http://www.reblitzrestorations.com/