This is a weird story making the rounds of Oregon television outlets, but it's also a sad story: Police in Eugene say they stopped the driver of a sedan who was trying to tow an old Bayliner boat.
The boat looks to be in the 24- to 27-foot range on a tandem-axle trailer, meaning the typical tow vehicle of choice would be a pickup, most appropriately a heavy-duty one.
It's hard to tell exactly how the boat owner/driver has the trailer "hitched" on the inside of the trunk. But it's easy to see that the tongue weight alone is more than the car, which appears to be an old Hyundai Sonata, can handle. It's hard to believe this arrangement ever moved. Anywhere. At all.
Police issued the driver a warning. This all happened around 11 a.m. Tuesday.
That's the weird part. The sad part is, the driver told officers that the boat was his or her home. And the photo conveys a sense of the desperation in that situation. Homeless advocates report that the number of people living in vehicles of one kind or another has seen a sharp increase, due to a shortage of affordable housing in locations nationwide.
Now here's the sadder part.
Eugene station KVAL-TV reports that a photographer today checked the area around where police encountered this rig, and found the boat had somehow come off the trailer and was on the hard (below). Nearby was a discarded couch, some trash, and incongruously, a lawnmower. The car and trailer were gone. And the driver is now clearly adrift from what meager home they had.