MONTEZUMA - A truly wonderful surprise for an unsuspecting mom and dad came just in time for Mother's and Father's days.

Robert Roe had a great scheme to pull it off, and he kept it under wraps for months. In fact, he literally pulled it all the way from Charleston, S.C., to Montezuma.

Rob, 30, a native of Port Byron and Montezuma, wanted to surprise his parents, Mary and Keith, in desperate need of a new mobile home. Their 1971 trailer on East Loop Road, home to them and their family of four children for the past 18 years, was rapidly deteriorating.

The two-bedroom home had sprung leaks in the roof, so the Roes made do with strategically placed 5-gallon buckets to collect the water. The floors and walls were getting weaker by the day, and they had to keep an electric heater going night and day during the winter to stay warm.

Roe, 30, a deputy U.S. Marshall living in Charleston, S.C., now had the means to help out his parents, so he bought a “like new” 2000 trailer to replace their old one and spent three weeks selecting new living room, bedroom, and kitchen furniture, appliances, rugs, and linen to put in it.

The mobile home Rob ordered was waiting at the dealer in Eaton, 71 miles of Montezuma. He had secretly enlisted the help of his friend, Ernie Thurston and his dad, Earnest Sr., from Auburn, to secure it.

Rob hitched a 12-foot hauler to his truck, filled it with the furnishings, and drove 15 hours from Charleston to Montezuma on Friday.

His parents had no idea he was coming home. In fact, his dad had just returned from a 12-hour trip himself. As Rob pulled into the driveway, he honked the horn and convinced his reluctant parents to go for a ride to get lunch.

“I put my parents in the truck,” Rob said, “and got them to almost where we were going to see the new trailer. Then I took out a package containing the keys and title to the trailer. I blindfolded them and had them guess what the objects were in the package. They had their backs to the trailer. When they took off the blindfolds, they saw the keys and the paper with the title in the package. Then I asked them to turn around and they saw the trailer.”

“My mom had a funny face when she turned around and saw it,” Rob said.

They were so excited that when they got back home, Keith, Rob's dad, began unhooking the old trailer from its moorings and stayed up until 3 a.m. working on it.

“He was out there with a lantern working on it until the fuel ran out,” Rob said.

The Roes have an RV that they will occupy while the new trailer is hooked up and the furniture gets moved in.

The new trailer will be delivered and hooked up on Thursday. On Monday, May 12, the Montezuma code enforcement officer will make sure everything is up to code.

But Rob wasn't done, yet. On Saturday morning, he edged his parents over to the small trailer behind his truck and opened it, revealing the furniture, to be moved into the new trailer next Friday.

“He's going to kill me with all these surprises,” Mary Roe said with tears in her eyes. “I guess your recliner goes,” she told her husband, Keith.

“I don't have a problem throwing out that stuff,” Keith said.

He also vowed not to smoke inside the new trailer at all.

“We've been 18 years in this trailer,” Keith said. “It was supposed to be temporary. We were just making ends meet.

“We tried to get permits to fix it, but the ordinance said you had to have a concrete slab that cost $3,000. We were saying we might have to sell the property,” he said. “I could actually see the walls breathing in on us.”

Keith told the story of how he had moved his family from a mobile home park in Port Byron to Auburn, but his children were heartbroken not to be going to Port Byron schools. So, he decided to sell his Pontiac Grand Prix and put a downpayment on the '71 trailer in Montezuma.

“It was a carpenter's special when I bought it,” he said, “but we fulfilled that dream. It was a real struggle getting it paid for. It cost $17,500 but I spent $42,000 by the time I finished payments. The temporary trailer was here a lot longer than I expected.”

The new trailer doesn't require a separate slab. It has one built in. Rob said he'd contacted the code enforcement officer and was told that as long as the factory specifications, manual, and a factory recommendation were made, the mobile home would meet the building code.

The Roes' new trailer is two feet wider than their old one and is 80 square feet bigger. The “temporary trailer” will be junked and harvested for its metal.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net