Trailer Trash

I think I'm trailer trash. But then, I don't get the "trash" part of it. Basically, I love trailers. My family of origin did a lot of camping when I was growing up. And then one time when I was around 9 and we were camping on the Mc Cloud River in Northern California, a huge bear came into our camp. Have you ever smelled a bear? There's really no missing it. Thank gawd he/she bear was content with the Hershey bars and milk cartons found in our cooler (which he/she easily smashed like an accordian!) When my dad could hear it sniffing about outside our heads, and smelled it , it was pretty scary with only a thin sheet of canvas between Bear and Family.  We had met only one other family downriver. And after that trip, my parents always owned a trailer while I was growing up. Of course this decision was 98% mom-directed.

Shopping for these trailers was a Fantasy Land to me. Mom and Dad viewed and haggled, while I was invited into one open door after another. Each interior a virtual playhouse, where I was  hostess to a plethera of make believe friends and imaginings.

And once we owned one, off season it became the clubhouse of sleepovers and slumber parties out in my driveway. Little girls, laughing until late into the night in our own little fort. Music and hair styling and sweets and soda and nail polish. The garish turquoise patterned curtains that felt like home in there, but Mom wouldn't be caught dead with in our house on Cedar Avenue.

And delightful summers at the Safari Trailer Park in Avery, CA, which (at that time in the sixties, but sadly shabby last time I drove through in 2001) hosted green sprawling lawns, huge shade trees, crystal clear swimming pool, horseshoes, shuffleboard, and exploring-paths galore, through huge rocks, manzanita, and pine. There was Squaw Rock, along with the legend that an Indian Maiden was buried underneath it, and from atop it's heights, I expected Little Joe Cartwright to call down his deep love to me anyday now. There was the deserted old shack, where we kids shimmied through a broken board, into a treasure trove of old colored bottles and trunks of old linens. The quiet, stuffy sunlight of summer pouring though the cracks and resting on the spiderwebs and dust mites in the sleepy air.

And always back to our very little home bedecked with a huge piece of astroturf under an awning strung with colored plastic lanterns, a long picnic table with benches, chaise lounges, a transistor radio, a barbecue, kerosene lanterns and laughter. Breakfast cooked in the electric skillet that plugged into the outside wall of the trailer. Bacon or trout caught fresh that morning, and eggs, and pancakes.  Quick lunchtime sandwiches with iced tea or Kool-Aid at the picnic table, while we took our short break from the pool area each noon. Card games, 16 Magazine, roasted marshmallows, star-gazing and warm cocoa by night.

In the evenings we would walk through the park when the air finally cooled, and nod friendly nods to other families enjoying the evening in their astroturf yards. Folks from all over the state, all leaving work and school behind to live together, for this short era called summer, for rest, and slow living, and family time. Good Neighbors, in this little tin can town in the Calaveras Redwoods.  A place of pure enjoyment that boasted a single, dusty path through a dried, thigh high, grassy field into the "real town" which consisted of one general store, a one-window post office and a gas station (with "pops" for sale in the bright yellow refrigerator cooler where you could pull out a wet, icy bottle of pop, and reach down and flip off the cork-lined bottle top and listen to it clink down into the receptacle. Life was "tidier" then, a place for everything. Then along came pop tops, and Jimmy Buffet, and...well you know the rest.)

All of us visitors to this simple place, no one living in the park regularly with the exception of the managers. Our trailer was an Aristocrat. And then we had an Oasis. And then when we moved our "summer home" to South Lake Tahoe, it was a 2 bedroom Broadmoor. All these perfectly tidy, easily maintained, one-room homes on wheels that hold my heart. Tin treasure chests full of shiny memories. Once before the official "move" from the Redwoods to Lake Tahoe, we were pulling our trailer from one place to the next so we could enjoy both places on our vacation.  I remember we took a "short-cut" and ended up on a desolate road high up there in the mountains and our trailer couldn't make the turn.  We all had to get out of the car and stand by the side of the road while dad sweated and cussed that trailer into submission.  I was pretty young, but I remember it vividly.  I think I even remember it was "Highway 4".  (I have no real idea, and I'm going to check out my accuracy after I finish posting!)

And someday? I will own a little camper trailer that rides on the back of a truck, that I will drive to anywhere and everywhere, stopping where I damned well please, setting up camp next to a stream, a river or the ocean, or in a park with swimming pool and green lawn; reading, knitting, barbecuing, walking, with my kids, and grandkids, or just my dog, nodding hello to the other folks from other places...that is my dream.  My simple dream.

The one that makes my heart sing. 

Comments

[Beth]

We were trailer people too. We had popup tent camper, we pulled it all over the country once school was out. Mom was a teacher and she would hit the road with my brother and me and then Dad would fly out and join us for a few weeks wherever we were. I love the memories of the campground pool and an ice cream treat from the campground store--cute boys that I never saw again, carrying ice back to the camper--good memories--thanks for triggering them.

[SusieH]

We were a tent-camping family, but oh how I loved camping...thanks for this post, which brings back my own memories!

[tracey k in Ohio]

What a wonderful story! We were "motor home people" (LOL!) Once I relaxed & got over the fact that I would be jammed in this small space on wheels w/my 2 brothers & my father that snored like a freight train, it was great fun. We took lovely vacations across the country. Thanks for the memories.

[Lisa]

Sigh. You had the childhood vacations I dreamed of! I wanted to be a frequent camper trailer child who actually went to RV parks with swimming pools and ice cream sandwiches. We were way up in the tules. I hoped for a camper with calico curtains and dingleball fringe. You know the kind. Or at the very least, rick-rack trim. We had a camp trailer that my dad took up to "hunting camp" and when we were lucky in the off-season, the kids got to go. We sat for long hours in the high country amid the quakeys (aspen) with our friend Tony,a Basque sheepherder, who made bread in a dutch oven, slathered it with peanut butter and fed it to us. Sometimes there was nothing to wash it down with, but that was ok. He didn't speak a lot of English but he and my dad understood each other, and were the best of friends for 40 years. He could swear pretty good.
I remember my dad getting up in the wee hours to make coffee the old fashioned way with loose grounds and egg shells. Once I slept in the hay trough of an open topped horse trailer with a tarp thrown over it, and when something (a bear? A cow?) rubbed up against it in the night I about wet my pants!
Then there were trailers I lived in, mobile homes, one in a belt of cottonwood trees on a feed lot by the Gunnison River, one in a mobile home park in the northern Colorado town where I went to college. I found a friend next door in an elderly woman who re-taught me to knit (I was mercenary; I need to get it down to make my then boyfriend a sweater, so I befriended her). She was my adopted grandma for the next twenty years and died in her 90s. Some of my best times happened in trailers. I will be trailer trash anytime. And you can most certainly park yours at my place. :) Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
love,
Lisa

[Lorraine]

My poppa had a camper that slid into the bed of his truck. Every summer for two weeks we were allowed to travel with him. Eating pringles or ring dings to our heart's content. I'll never forget the magic of the redwood forest and the friends we made at each stop while we traveled up the coast to seattle or portland. Or that blue chinese resturant with the wall of mirrors in fresno, where my mom always met poppa for our delivery...wow I haven't thought of those days in awhile. I hope someday I'll be able to give my children memories like those. Thanks, Lorraine