Living in a recreational vehicle full-time isn’t for wimps. All my years in submarines and ships taught me to live in extremely small places. This may be the largest stateroom I’ve ever had, but it is still only a 40-foot-long motor home. I’ve named it “Billy Bob,” and it tows my Jeep, “Betty Boop.”

I recently took out a useless swivel-rocker chair and a magazine rack, too. I replaced the little magazine rack with a desk affair that has two large file cabinets. I now have a place for the large computer, and the television sits on one of the files until I can get a mount to hang it from the cabinets above.

I don’t miss the chair. Both front seats can be turned around for guest seating. I wouldn’t recommend a large number of guests inside, but with my awning extended, outside mat in place, camp chairs and table, festive lights hanging from the awning and the gas grill fired up, there is a chance I can entertain quite a few folks.

I’ve got satellite television and radio that is also in the bedroom. The basset hound, Mr. Renly, is able to sleep through any of my program or musical selections. So all is well.

Well, except now that the file cabinets are installed, I have a mountain of filing to accomplish. The files I had accumulated in a non-moving home seem strange now. I’m sorting what I really need to keep and what needs to be shredded and trashed.

I’ve found a copy of the registration for a small camping trailer I had at one time. It would easily fit inside this bus, with room to spare. Also found a copy of the registration for a 1954 Ford pickup I once owned.

So all of this stuff has to be filed or trashed. What to do, what to do?

I think I can recommend to the IRS a computer that has a great hard drive. In the midst of all this filing, I got the old machine running. All of my old electronic files were there, including some emails I thought I had lost or deleted. The IRS might really want to look at a 12-year-old personal computer that has retained all of that information for the last four years I’ve not even turned it on.

I guess I’ll be audited next year. My bad.

When I left the Navy, one of the steps I had to go through was making sure my electronic files were clean – but I was told that anytime they wanted, the Navy could retrieve any and all of my old files and emails from the first time I had a Navy computer account. I think that first account started about 1986. I’ll bet it is still there on some huge server someplace.

So now we have the people who will charge you lots of interest on money owed Uncle Sam because you can’t find the receipt for some deductible item on your income tax forms. Can’t find that $5 you claimed as a deduction, and soon you’ll be in a cell answering to someone like Ms. Lerner who “took the Fifth” rather than tell Congress what she thinks the truth is concerning IRS actions.

With this billboard fight in our little section of the SCV, all we all really want is for those we elected to have the rectitude of their intentions. As used in the Declaration of Independence, that little item of “rectitude” is knowing that the Supreme Judge will guide us with His divine hand.

That brings to mind another question: Why hasn’t the ACLU sought to ban the Declaration, since it has obvious reference to God?

That is what we need to work out, and on, as we cuss and discuss or government. We must, each and every one of us, ask if our representatives at all levels are serving with the rectitude of their intentions under the Supreme Power of the Universe.

Just an idea, but maybe those new electronic billboards could show the Constitution and the Declaration when they are first turned on. At least that way, just about everyone can see those documents, and with the proper traffic jam, they might even read them. What a concept.

I can just hear the great Mr. Sims of Hart High alma mater fame trying to teach us our civics lessons. You know … civics. Our responsibilities as citizens.

I’ll tell you one thing: The electronic pages of Facebook are not the place to learn those lessons. You can learn so many things wrong there that I hesitate even to start that discussion.

You can learn the civil discourse between two sides of an issue. By the way, I am against anyone that wants to – I forget now.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].