Why We Live on the Side of the Road

Hey! This is Pp the Van.

Check out the story “Why We Live on the Side of the Road,” written and narrated by JG Artis.

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​Life has a way of stripping you down to the essentials when you least expect it. In 2020, I had a remodeled home and a big-screen TV; by 2024, I was fighting just to keep the blood flowing to my brain. Between those two points lies a journey of hard lessons, “big mistakes” made out of love, and a bridge burned with the people I thought would always be there. If you’ve ever wondered how a person trades a fixed address for a life on wheels, this is the raw truth of my last six years.

​Why We Live on the Side of the Road

​Well, this journey to the side of the road all started back in 2020 in Pensacola, Florida, in the middle of COVID. I had just remodeled our living room into an art studio with my 60-gallon fish tank, big-screen TV, and surround sound. When COVID hit, all the painting events I had planned closed. I was stuck at home with a back injury from the remodel work.

​My stepson got himself locked up for robbing a gas station for drug money. His mom, Kathy Rose, was afraid he would die in prison after her brother had a dream that he would. Her son called me and begged me to get him out; he said I was the only one left who would and could, so I did! Big mistake!

​He and his girlfriend moved in with us. He got a job and all was well, until it wasn’t. Money came and money went—drugs, yep, you guessed it. He didn’t give a first dime to help his mom or stepdad. A lot of our money was spent to get him out and down to Pensacola from Montgomery, Alabama. Finally, it was time for him to move on. Having to evict them to the street sent me to a low place and put a strain on Kathy’s and my relationship.

​A few months later, in August of 2020, I bought a 16-foot pull-behind camper that was headed for the scrapyard and traded my Ford Ranger for a full-size Suburban to pull it. After six weeks of work, we hit the road for a new and fresh start. I’ve always had a gypsy soul; being on the road recharges and reconnects me! We headed out east, then north. By the end of August, we visited northeast Alabama—my mom and sister’s place, our old home place. Then we headed north to the Carolinas, west to Memphis, south through the Mississippi Delta into Louisiana, east to New Orleans, and then back north to Alabama.

​My mom and sister talked me into spending the winter with them. They needed help with their rental properties in return for a place to park our RV, “Indy.” After a few months there, we decided to make it home. We moved into an old church that had been converted into two apartments; one was Kathy’s and one was mine, which I turned into an art studio.

​In June 2022, I hit a low again. The home-based life doesn’t sit well with me. I had a real rough day and just needed to be somewhere else. I left and drove to my youngest brother’s grave without telling anyone where I was, not even Kathy. I took a picture of my red, crying face in front of my brother Bartholomew’s grave and sent it to Kathy and my sister.

​Well, that was the most awful thing I could have done, sending it to my sister. Minutes later, I got a call—it was her, screaming and cussing at me. “Don’t ever send me a photo of my dead brother’s grave!” On and on she went. I tried to tell her I was sorry, but that I was having a hard day and we could talk about it when she got off the road. I told her I needed to get off the phone. She began to tell me what a piece of shit I was and how much of a problem I was. I told her exactly what I felt about her, and I wasn’t very nice about it. I then said, “I’m hanging up; we can talk when you get home.”

​She has never spoken to me again. My mom told me I could find somewhere else to live and that I was an untrustworthy, no-good person. When I asked what I had done, she couldn’t give me an answer. She hasn’t spoken to me again to this day. I sold Indy, bought a shuttle bus, made a quick home in it, and six months later we moved in and moved it to my brother Mt. Man’s place in November 2022.

​I tried and tried to get it running—a new rebuilt engine, then a used engine—but it still wouldn’t run. By March 2023, the place where we were parked had become a swamp. A gun-slinging lady living on the property threatened me over her wild dogs trying to kill the “baby dog” of the landowner, and we couldn’t let our baby Chihuahuas out.

​We left and moved to my best friend’s empty lot on the side of a state highway. The first year, we just survived. Then I got a “rent-a-shed” and moved into it, making myself a bed and a place to paint. All was going well, but in the winter of 2023/2024, I became sicker and sicker. I thought I was dying. I had dizziness and nausea and breathing issues; it felt like everything was shutting down.

​In February 2024, my left arm gave out. I had surgery and thought all was good, but four weeks later, my right shoulder blade swelled. I was in bed for six weeks in the most pain I had ever experienced in my life. It turns out I had two discs in my neck herniated, cutting off my circulation and blood flow to my brain. It took until February 2025 to get the surgery done. By April, I was healed and given the clear to resume life as normal. The only problem was that I was weak from over a year spent in bed.

​I had bought a 1999 Dodge van in July of 2024 in hopes that I would get better and could turn it into a tiny home. That dream was put on hold until April of 2025. Now, almost one year later, that 1999 Dodge van has become known as “PP”—Purple Passion. It is halfway built and ready to hit the road soon—hopefully by mid-April 2026.

​So, that’s how we ended up living on the side of a state highway in northeast Alabama.

​Looking at “Purple Passion” now, she’s more than just a 1999 Dodge van—she’s my ticket back to myself. The surgery is behind me, the pain is fading, and the strength is coming back into my hands one day at a time. This stretch of Alabama highway has been a place of healing and survival, but my soul wasn’t made to stay parked in one spot forever. Come mid-April 2026, the engine will turn over, the dust will kick up, and we’ll finally leave the side of the road in the rearview mirror.

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