MALCOLM, Neb. - Jerry Price is an unpretentious, anything-goes nomad.

He spent a year or so in the 1970s crossing the country in a makeshift camper that was a modified hearse. He gutted a school bus once and drove it from Lincoln to California, with his kids in tow, sleeping on bunkbeds and eating whatever they could keep in a cooler and cook on a Coleman stove.

So his life now - as unglamorous as it is - seems kind of glamorous in comparison. He and his wife, Sharon, live for much of the year in their 37-foot air-conditioned Damon Intruder camper, with a three-burner propane stove, 6-cubic-foot refrigerator and storage space stretching from the door to the bedroom in back.

At 69, Jerry Price is a folksy retiree living a simple life as a campground host at the Branched Oak State Recreation Area, about 20 miles northwest of Lincoln. The Prices, both Lincoln natives, clean the campground bathrooms, pick up discarded beer cans on the beach, dump charred wood from the fire pits and guide visitors.