Texas Boomers Organization & History

Organization The Texas Boomers RV Club The club was established in 2000 as a regional affiliate of the internet site www.irv2.com. To navigate to the Texas Boomers Section of irv2.com, click on the following link Texas Boomers IRV2 Forum . Information about joining and navigating the irv2.com web site is available on the site. The club is open to any and all rv'ers across the state of Texas and we'd love to have you join us at any of the many rallies we host throughout the year. We invite you to scroll through the website and read about the history of the group. We also have established and maintain a Texas Boomers Interactive Forum that we invite all to visit. Registration information can be found on the forum home page. Becoming A Texas Boomers Member Many RV Clubs require a membership fee and some groups require a certain type of rig, but The Texas Boomers RV Club does not. We have everything from pop-ups to motor coaches and the only membership requirement is ...... come to a Rally! We promise you'll come in as a stranger - leave as a friend looking forward to the next rally. No one has a better time and more fun than the Texas Boomers whether we're decorating our RV's for Christmas, hanging rutabagas from a tree as a prank, sitting around a warming campfire or practicing our routines for a water ballet! You'll just have to come and hear all about our variety and modes of entertainment!!!! Members Code of Conduct The club is a very informal organization and has no by-laws, membership guides, dress codes, etc. but we do ask that our members act responsibly at all times. Every individual action, good or bad, of the membership at our rallies reflects upon the entire club as a group. There is no restriction on alcohol consumption, but please do not drink to an excess that may result in unruly behavior. We must maintain a good rapport with all the parks we use for our rallies, in order to insure we will be invited to return. We, therefore, ask that each member act with the utmost civility when dealing with park personnel. Please deal with other members of the club with the same respect you would expect from them. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Should a pattern of misconduct, by any member, develop in any of these areas, we will have no other option but to ask that person not to return to future rallies. Leadership State WagonMaster's Don and Pat Allen - Killeen, Texas Assistant WagonMaster's Jodi Neal - Missouri City, Texas Scott & Sherry Smith - Brenham, Texas Darrell Reeves - Kountze, Texas History IRV2, an Internet website for RVers, was the instigating force behind the organization of The Texas Boomers. The format encourages participants to share their favorite RVing stories, ask questions and obtain answers to common problems with their various RV's and it is a great way to get people together online who enjoy the same thing. Since it's formation, the website has become one of the foremost RVing internet websites and "boomers" from many states have formed individual RVing groups. Cathie Jo, of Beaumont, logged onto the website and became immersed in meeting new people all across Texas. She organized The Texas Boomers RV Club and planned their first rally in the summer of 2000. Four couples gathered at Sea Rim State Park for a weekend of fun and fellowship. Following that rally, she organized another rally in Kerrville for October of 2000. Unfortunately she wasn't able to attend and her return to a writing career and other family matters prevented her from being as active in the group as she had hoped to be. At the October 2000 rally in Kerrville, four other couples gathered for the first time. They immediately became good friends and quickly decided that Cathie Jo's goal of building an IRV2 Texas Boomer Club would not be forgotten. Sandy and Rusty Creekmore took on the challenge of organizing the Texas Boomers and immediately began planning future rallies. In 2001, the group held six rallies and grew from four rigs to eight rigs. By the end of 2002, the Texas Boomers RV Club has grown to 32 members (couples and singles) who attend rallies whenever they can! 19 rigs pulled into our 2nd Anniversary Rally at Kerrville in October of 2002! The club celebrated it's 20th anniversary at Old River Road RV Resort in Kerrville in Oct of 2020. There wer over 40 rigs in attendance. In 2019, Sandy lost her beloved Rusty and had to make some serious adjustments in her life and in 2021, she turned the reigns of the club over to Don Allen of Killeen, Texas. Don and his wife Pat have been active in the club since 2004 , hosting many rallies, and Don is currently the web site manager for the Boomers. We have members from four corners of our great State! From the Houston area north to the Dallas/Ft Worth area west to include Big Spring/Odessa all the way down south to Del Rio and everywhere in between: San Antonio, Austin, College Station, Schertz, Boerne, Granbury, Adkins and Devine Texas! The term "Boomer" was originally intended to encompass people of the "baby boomer" age born between 1946 - 1964 and profiled as those who are pre-retirement and empty-nested. However, such a description is NOT the case with the Texas Boomers! We have attendees who are younger (and older) and we have some whose children light up the campground whenever they are able to come! We have those who are full timers and others anxiously waiting for their turn on the open road! Most of us, though, are still working stiffs who have adopted the motto that we only go to work to earn enough money to keep our rigs rolling on the weekends!!!! Original Pink Chicken The first indication of how the beloved pink bird would soon become our motto and mascot was at our first Christmas Rally White Elephant Gift Exchange. In December 2000, four couples gathered at Galveston to celebrate the holiday season. After our rally supper, we began our gift exchange. Someone DARED to bring the tackiest thing they could bring for the gift exchange..…imagine that! Little did we know that it would be the hit of the party! We fought valiantly over that pair of birds; however they ended up in the hands of a couple who were leaving to traverse the country as fulltimers. We received many emails of their adventures and everywhere they went, the birds were photographed in fabulous, exotic places. Three months would pass and eight couples would gather for our first Easter Rally at an RV Park on I-35 just east of San Antonio We are leaving out the name of the park for obvious reasons that will later be explained. It just so happened that a Motorhome Group was at the same park at the same time. They were of the “$500,000+ persuasion” and were every bit as snobbish as the price tags on their rigs. It was very apparent by their actions that we were certainly not in their class. All attempts to be polite to this RV group went on deaf ears and upturned noses. We’ve never been treated so badly by other campers before or since. That afternoon, a couple in our group was out walking their pet when they overheard them talking about “the trailer trash that was having a rally in the same park”. There was no doubt they were talking about us! This group was absolutely astonished that the RV Park would allow another group to share the same space with….them? Later that night, we all gathered outside a rig and enjoyed visiting with one another. Someone brought up the term “trailer trash” and we all added our definitions of what that might be. The question “what is the tackiest thing that truly depicted trailer trash” was asked…………we all chimed in that it could be none other than having a pink flamingo in our yard! The next morning, the RV Group left…………and left the RV Park in shambles. They allowed their pets in the swimming pool and the rally building and left residue (of the four legged kind) all over the place. Their sites were a muddy mess as they washed their rigs before leaving (which was against the park rules), but of course none of that mattered….they were of the $500,000+ persuasion you know. Unfortunately, the Texas Boomers got blamed for it though! The rest of the day was spent on a recognizance mission - we were “cited” for everything imaginable and unimaginable by the RV Park owners. That did it! We decided if we were going to be called “trailer trash” and be blamed for every infraction caused by the other RV Club - we would show them was true trailer trash was! The ladies headed to Garden Ridge that afternoon to buy our pink flamingoes! Thus our mascot was birthed! Over the years, the pink flamingo has become our status symbol. We take pride in what we have regardless of the price tag attached. We work hard and make sacrifices to get our RV’s and take care of them for as long as we have them. And they’ve become our statement as well. We are not an exclusive RV Group as many are. It doesn’t matter if you have a pop-up, a 5th wheel or a $500,000+ motorhome with all the bells and whistles. What matters is being a part of a great group of people, making new friends from across the state, enjoying a rally filled with fun and laughter and doing what we all live and love to do - get out in our rigs. Wherever we go, our birds follow. They are proudly displayed in front of our RVs and create quite a stir with other RV’ers in the parks. The story is told far and wide and the Texas Boomers continues to grow because others see that we’re good, honest folks just like them. If that makes us “trailer trash” then we’re proud to be called that!