From the First grade until I was 20 years old, I lived in a doublewide mobile home at the end of a dirt road. Prior to the purchase of the trailer, the filial home had been a one room "cottage" that was converted from a goat barn into a domicile. Our barn had been clean, and so too was our trailer. It was just like any other home, it just had a seam running down the middle of the room. It was small and humble, but it was enough room for the three of us. We owned 10 acres of land to begin with, before my parents split up the parcel and sold half of it. There was more than enough room for me to roam, skip, scamper, and cavort. There was a time when I was daring and liked to do jumps off the one foot ledge of dirt near the road and ride my roller skates down the ramp of our shed.
After thinking long and hard about it, I can only remember two friends from elementary school that I spent the night with that lived in anything other than a trailer. (There were plenty of kids who did live in houses, mind you, but we weren't on playdate status.) Make that three - and since my parents were the local repair people, I not only knew what type of dwelling all of my classmates lived in, I also knew the state said dwelling was in. I knew who's mom was a lousy house keeper and who didn't clean up after their pets. I also knew that there were more of us living in trailers than not.
Maybe this is a reflection of where I grew up. Crescent City, Florida is first and foremost a retirement community. Someone even went so far as to write their dissertation about my own personal Mayberry and called it Crescent City, Florida: Problems and Potentials of a Retirement Town. What does that tell you? Most of the older model trailers around, as well as a great many of the new ones, were originally purchased as winter homes for retirees. I would estimate that at least one quarter of the town up and leaves come Easter and we see hide nor hair of them until October. In high school, I was a regular church goer, and the pews were never so bare as in the middle of the summer. They had to recruit people from other churches sometimes just to staff Vacation Bible School.
Because the retirees only live in town half the time, often issues arise in their home state that forces them to forego their frolicking in the winter sun. When this happens, they need to sell their trailers. The next largest group of people in Crescent City are people living below the poverty line, and those are the ones who buy when the retirees are looking to sell. Either you live in a 25 year old trailer, or you live in the PJs, and at least most of the trailers come with land. There are very few "trailer parks" in the area, and all the ones I can think of are AARP members only. As a result, they are very clean, quiet, and they have the most wonderful light displays at Christmas Time.
So yes, there are a lot of poor people in my town living in old trailers. That doesn't mean that they are all trash. Furthermore, most of the area's middle class choose to live in trailers because it's far more affordable than building a home. As a matter of fact, the only subdivision in the south end of the county was built within the last five years and no one lives there. The greedy developers thought they would make a killing by building these "affordable homes" and moving everyone up from living on cinder blocks, to living in them. Then the housing bust came, and everyone realized that owning your trailer and the land under it free and clear was a whole lot better than paying for one of the cookie cutter houses that sat in a subdivision that to this day, has incomplete infrastructure.
Wanna know some nice things about trailer living? Septic Tanks. Well water. Large Bathrooms. And let's not forget about land. As I mentioned earlier, while there are "trailer parks" they are populated with what are affectionately referred to as "snow birds". The rest of us trailer dwellers are proud to say that our homes are located on at least one acre of land one average. Around these trailers there are gardens, citrus groves, grape orchards, chicken coops, ferneries, and cow pastures. It is the idyllic agrarian lifestyle that your city dwelling granola crunchers pine for. Just with trailers. Now, I would be telling a lie if I said that there was no meth being cooked in trailers in Crescent City. I'm sure there is. The economy is in the tank and anyone my age who's stuck there hasn't really got a chance, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. The point is, just because you live in a trailer does not mean you are trailer trash. Trash collects in all sorts of places, or haven't you heard?
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