Rita LeBleu

rlebleu@americanpress.com

Down, down, down and away.

Kevin and Pam Mattingly were set to build in Lake Charles. The house pad was complete. The slab would be poured the following week. Yet, the couple began to kick around the idea of country living.

“We rode out here and we liked it,” Pam said about the Lacasinne acreage that has been in her family for over 100 years. My mother and grandmother were born here.”

The Mattinglys scrapped the original house plans. In 2007, they built a small, charming 1,200-square-foot two-story farmhouse painted a cheery yellow with white trim. It has space-saving features such as a Murphy bed and a two-burner stove. (That’s all Pam wanted at the time since she didn’t cook. Ironically, the two met at a cooking show.)

In 2017, Pam wanted to go even smaller. It took her and Kevin about a year and a half to build their second house, doing most of the finish work after it was framed up.

“Three hundred and fifty–five boards,” she exclaimed, “I know because I painted each one. The walls are tongue and groove. No sheet rock was used.”

“She really wanted to build a house on wheels,” Kevin said, “but that was just too small.”

Tiny houses are generally 200 to 300 square feet, according to Pam.

“This house is 416 square feet,” she said.

They both chuckled at the way she said it, using her voice and hands for emphasis as if the difference was enormous.

Pam is comfortable with living small.

“It’s a lifestyle,” she said. “I like the challenge of determining how much I can fit into this little area. It’s the nature of humankind I think, at least here in America, to fill up whatever space we have with stuff. If that’s a 10 foot by 10 foot closet, we fill it up. If the closet is only two-by-two, we fill it up.”

She said she has become a minimalist or has at least moved in that direction since retirement.

“I’ve done a lot of soul searching since we’ve moved out here,” she said. “It’s so peaceful, quiet and just lends itself to that type of reflection.”

When they moved to the country Kevin pursued his dream of having a job that would allow him to get his hands dirty. He raised organic produce, and found it quite the challenge to raise vegetables for market without the use of certain pesticides or fertilizers. The Mattinglys rented out the 1,200- square-foot house as a bed and breakfast.

“We had visitors from all over the world,” Kevin said, “people traveling from New Orleans to California or New York to California or Austin to California. We’re only five miles south of the interstate and it is a nice, quiet retreat.”

Their adventures in camping began with a truck camper, an RV carried in the bed of a pickup truck, often called a slide-in or cab-over. They graduated to a teardrop trailer, a compact and lightweight trailer that’s shaped like a tear. It sleeps two. The “kitchen” is accessed from the outside of the camper.

It was on one of their teardrop camping trips that Pam found a book in the park’s book exchange about full-time RV living.

“She read it cover to cover in a couple of days,” Kevin said.

“Originally I wanted to relocate out of country when I retired,” Pam said.

That desire was also based on a book about how a person could retire for less to certain countries.

“Kevin was still working,” Pam said, “and he wasn’t up for it at that point.”

A few years later, he rewired, according to Pam. But he didn’t want to live out-of-country. They both realized there was plenty of beautiful geography here in the United States, and they were tired of just reading about it. They were ready to see it.

They researched different sized campers, and even bought a ¾ -ton to pull a fifth wheel before settling on their new Coachmen Freelander 22XG.

It’s the smallest of the three RVs at 24 feet. It has its own bathroom. It sleeps six. It’s easy to drive and to set up, but just to be sure they’ve taken a couple of short, close to home trips before venturing out for their first month-long expedition.

“We haven’t decided yet where we’ll go,” Kevin said, “maybe to The West and Yosemite National Park again or up the Eastern Seaboard, maybe a tour up the Mississippi or an I-35 trip from Austin to Canada.”

Wherever they go, they’ll be at home because for them, home is the place “to lay your heart with the ones you love.”

(1)

Kevin and Pam Mattingly and their Coachmen Freelander 22XG

(2) and (3)

Pam Mattingly cooks a bit more now than when she and Kevin met. Her first house had a two burner stove. The 416-square foot house has a four burner and the RV has a three burner.

(4)

Packing cubes containing a week’s wardrobe for Pam.

(5)

The Mattingly’s 416 square foot home built in 2017.