Have you ever lived in a trailer? Would you? Why or why not? What is your impression of the trailer-inhabiting lifestyle? Would you prefer a double-wide on your own land or a tiny silver affair on wheels in a dysfunctional trailer park? How about RVs and travel trailers? What about "manufactured homes"? Are they the missing link or just a fancy name for the same old trash?

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2000

Answers

People always assume we live in a trailer park, but actually we have some land that we're buying along with our mobile home. The land's worth more, I'm sure.

Oh, and I forgot to say that trailers are "caravans" for y'all across the ocean and stuff.

I knew a couple who had a silver trailer that they could hitch to their mini-pickup. It was actually very nice inside. A perfect starter home.

I fantasize about travelling across America in an RV when I'm old.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I spent a lot of summers on Chincoteague Island, Virginia (where they do the Pony Swim and have poor old Misty taxidermied for the world to see) in a large trailer, and a lot of the locals lived in trailers, mostly double wides.
I always thought they had the coolest places. I felt very comfortable, homey in them.

I want to do like Gwen when I get old; just me and my old fart of a man driving from town to town in a huge honkin' RV, working occassionally in little diners to earn extra money to send weird stuff to our grandchildren (like dead animals suspended in a gel-snowball shaker thing.)

If I decide to go through with taking statistics and major in sociology, I'll do my doctorate thesis on the dysfunctional relationships within trailer park communities.
Hey, Harvard just gave some sociologist an award for his thesis regarding Canadian donut shops and the social workings within them. I figure I have a chance too.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

tornados love trailers....I could never live in one. I would have tornado nightmares every night and my hair would finish going grey. I would spend all my time at work and never come home...that's worse than dying in a trailer in a tornado.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I haven't lived in one, but a friend does. I think the ones that look like houses (only more rectangular) are pretty nice. People who build decks around the house-like ones f***ing rock, in my book. I would totally live in a house-like trailer with decks on it. If there was a storm shelter nearby, I mean. Because it *is* Oklahoma, after all (scary tornadoes).

I have plans similar to Gwens regarding old age and traveling in an RV. Last summer when the spouse and I were camping in Colorado for a night, I very much envied the elderly couple and their sleek, comfy RV next to our old ratty tent.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I lived in a trailer (in a trailer park) the first year and a half of my life. I don't really remember it. I think the trailer park was called Herman Brothers. It was in Regina.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I'm afraid of tornadoes as well, but everytime I stay home sick from work, I see all these commercials for new "manufactured homes" that have monthly payments less than my rent and I wonder what the hell I'm doing throwing my money away... I'm not sure if my old-person ambition is the same as Gwen's but I've always wanted to buy and RV and use it to travel so I can mallwalk in all 50 states before I die.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Hey, Ann, I think it'd be worse to die, during a tornado, in the pissy men's bathroom in the basement of Blue Planet while waiting for Missing Persons to come on stage. Coz that's what Tania wanted us to do. The tornado wouldn't have killed us, but the suffocation would.

We've had two tornadoes pass pretty close by. It seems like they get closer every year. I can't tell if that means that we're destined to be hit by one, or if two close brushes equal one catastrophe on Fate's scorecard... or what.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I've never lived in a trailer, but my best friend lives in a manufactured home. It wasn't very attractive when they first moved it on their land. Then her husband built a great screened porch onto the side and a deck on back. He also built playground stuff from salvaged materials. My friend painted all the rooms really funky, cool colors. It's a really beautiful place now.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

OMIGOD! THEY STUFFED MISTY! Eeeeeeee! That's maybe even worse than the 6 legged stuffed steer in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Musuem (in Wisconsin if you're making travel plans) which caused me to loudly scream when I turned the corner and spotted it....

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

yeah, well, Tania's a freak..but at least she has the sense to hide from a tornado...{...love me some Tania...}

I've only been thru one 'nado and by the time we got all the scared shitless terrified dogs...and me...in the shower stall with the mattresses piled up against us and the pillows protecting us against the glass, and the blankets draped over us, suffocating..it was long gone. Of course it took us about 10 minutes to decide which of the 2 bathrooms we have, to cower in....

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

As a kid, I lived in a trailer in the middle of the Florida boonies. We had chickens and grew corn. More recently, I stayed in a trailer on Christmas night with my old high school sweetheart (am I the only one who instantly steps into a time machine every time they visit their hometown?). He lives in one of those old silver bullets, it's beat to hell and up on blocks in the junkyard behind his autoshop. Every horizontal space in the trailer is covered with old car parts and dog hair (did I mention to bed-hogging pit bull he lives with?). Still, I thought it was a fine way to spend the night (lust retardation, maybe), but I was teased mercilessly by friends the next day: "you were with who?! you went where?! you slept in what?!"

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

British people pay a fortune to go on holiday/vacation in a caravan. Like #350/ $500 for a high season week. Always freezing, except for the one day the sun shines, when they immediately resemble stifling hell. We don't usually live in them, as we would not then be able to spend 51 weeks of the year in gleeful anticipation.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I once lived in a brand-new mobile home. They come already decorated and color-coordinated and I didn't like that the decor was so 'pushy'. You couldn't change up colors or anything. It was in a trailer park and in summer it was like living in a campground, everybody cooking out and hanging out together. But my kids bikes started disappearing at an alarming rate so we moved.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Is a manufactured home the same as a mobile home? I used to get confused when Gwen said that she lived in a trailer because my definition of a trailer was a small thing with wheels on it that is pulled by a car, but what she was describing sounded way too big to be that.

I think mobile homes are common in Canada but I don't think there are many places in this country in which you could actually live year- round in a trailer (the small kind without any insulation) because it is too damn cold here. You do see a lot of mobile homes in the country that aren't in parks. People just buy land and stick one on it. They look pretty permanent but I guess the bonus is that you could move it if you really wanted to.

I would live a mobile or manufactured home if I didn't have to live in the city. Right now, I've got to live close to where I work.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

I lived in a trailer with my parents and brother when i was in grade 5 and 6. It was a step up from the two bedroom apartment building we had to live in when my dad lost his job in Port Alberni, BC, Canada and we had to move to the Queen Charlotte Islands so my dad could find another job. The trailer was so luxerious compared to the apartment -- where i had to share a bedroom with my younger brother and because i hated him, i opted to sleep in the walk-in closet of the room (it was cozy!) The trailer was on its own land and it had a huge addition with FIVE BEDROOMS! It was infested with rats, but i never saw one -- only heard them at night. We did not own it however, we had to rent it. As i am writing this down i realize how sad this sounds, the Queen Charlotte Islands, the apartment, sleeping in a closet, the trailer we could not afford to own, the rats... But I did not feel poor, probably because everyone around me was poor too.

Really, that is the best thing about trailer living, especially in a trailer park (where i lived with my boyfriend/fiance from the ages of 21-22)everyone around you is kinda poor and kinda trashy. It's like a club.

When i was in University a few friends had gathered around and we were discussing our childhoods. One girl admitted she had lived in a trailer when she was young. She was so ashamed! Then, one by one, we all told stories about trailer living. Almost all of us had at one time or another inhabited a trashy trailer. Yet we all felt compelled to keep our deep dark secrets. But no more. I want everyone to know that trailer life is OKAY!

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

This is how I believe it goes:

A trailer is literally a home that you can hitch to a car and drive off with. Like the silver bullet ones and the travel ones that expand when you push a button.

A mobile home is also moveable, but you tie it down to the ground with cables and cover the ties with skirting. But I think that if you had to, you could still move it on your own... as long as it's not a double-wide.

We live in a double-wide "manufactured home". The companies that make them want you to call them "manufactured homes" or "modular homes", but everyone else America still calls them trailers. They're way cheaper than real houses on stone slabs, and they're cheaply made, too. You can almost always recognize them by the skirting around the bottom. (It looks like fake slats of wood. We covered ours with real wood, though, because we're uppity like that.) However, I've seen some new models with fake stone or fake brick for skirting.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again -- the best thing about the trailer lifestyle is the freedom. People don't expect much from you, so you don't have to strain yourself. There aren't any neighborhood associations, either.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

We lived in a trailer the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. It was in a bona fide trailer park and everything. One girl befriended me and gave me one of those candy necklaces. My dad's girlfriend wouldn't let me eat it, though. Maybe she thought trailer park residents were unclean.

When they retired, my grandparents lived in one of those ones you call "manufactured homes" in a retirement village (trailer park, sorta) in Northern California. Only they called them "coaches." Doesn't that sound fancy?

My next-door neighbor and I bonded in the aftermath of the '98 tornado, and she told me she grew up in Tornado Alley in North Dakota. They lived in a trailer for a while, and she remembered their parents scooping up all the kids and driving to the local shelter all the time.

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

No, no, no...I grew up in Oklahoma, and would be paranoid about tornados every time there was a bit of cloud cover. (Although out here in SoCal, the circular winds they call tornados are not even close...more like large dust devils or something!) And it seems as though trailers have a terrible tendency out here to be engulfed in flames while all occupants are tucked sweetly in their beds...no way.

-- Anonymous, June 18, 2000

Thanks for the clarification, Gwen.

There's another kind of home in Canada (you may have them in the US, I don't know), which is manufactured. I only know them as Viceroy homes, which I think was the original manufacturer and now other companies make them. Basically, they come in kit form and they always used to be designed to look like cottages or what you'd imagine swanky cottages to look like. Anyway, I think now they aren't designed as vacation homes so much, but as regular homes. I love looking at the catalogues of designs and floorplans and imagining which ones I'd pick if I had some land somewhere.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2000

I've never heard of those. If you get a catalogue in the next two weeks, save it for me!

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2000

Gwen, my spouse told me where a showroom of those homes is located. I'm going to try to go there are pick up some stuff for you. If you ever come to visit me, maybe I'll take you there.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2000

I lived in a mobile home for six months. Our neighbors next door were quite a pair. The girl was a raving alcoholic and the guy was a hapless longhair with a Fu Manchu mustache, who kept hitting on me. They fought every other day. Their kids wandered around with their mouths hanging halfway open, perhaps in search of something stimulating.

But there was a pool and it was right next to a beautiful state park. And it was better than where I was living before. I moved out right about the time my girlfriend bought a place there. She had more trouble than me. Her street was full of drunks and stoners, who neglected their kids, who grew up to be the miscreants that broke into everyone's homes.

Like everyone else, I'll be buying a trailer and touring the country. It'll be pretty funny when we're all interviewing for the same diner job.

-- Anonymous, July 01, 2000

My husband and I bought an old trailer back in 90 thinking we could save money living that way......it went downhill all the way. Eventually we had to file bk to get rid of that darn thing........the park it was in though was a first rate West Coast park. Excellent facilities and nice neighbors. I got teased by my family and in-laws for being trailer trash.......gee they have a modular on a piece of land in Nevada.

-- Anonymous, July 21, 2000

I sent an email to Gwen about this site a while bak before I knew how cool she was and now I feel like a dork for sending it but I thought I'd share it with yous guys because everybody's sense of humor is different. I got it off a website for joke teef (order some, they really will make you feel better and laugh). They are especially fun if you have a retail job. People just aren't expecting to see them teefs when you smile and say hello. I know, I live on the edge.

www.drbukk.com and www.drbukk.com/gmhom/park.html

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2000