Ruminations

About My Trailer

I know far less about my trailer than I know with any actual certainty about it.

I know it's a Nashua because that's what it says on the original step still attached to the frame that pulls out under the front door. I know it's a "park model" because there's no indication that it ever had any holding tanks of any kind. I know it was built to run a stove, hot water heater, and furnace on liquid propane because the pipes are still there and are an integral part of the frame structure. I know it's been painted at least four times because that's how many different colors I'm able to pick out, in layers, on the various panels of original siding that haven't been removed or replaced. I know 3 out of the four front windows aren't original. I know one window and three vents were sheetrocked over by the previous owner because they can still be seen from the outside of the trailer. And I know it measures exactly 8 feet by 35 feet because I got out my tape measure early in our association to determine those particular dimensions.

What I don't know could fill a book.

I don't when it was manufactured. I've looked through the dozens of photos, advertisements, and brochures of different Nashua trailers on the internet, and found nothing that definitively dates mine to a specific year. The best I can do, based on changes in body shape and door/window placement, is narrow it down to probably sometime between 1956 and 1962. On television, the lead character in "The Rockford Files" lived in, and worked out of a '59 Nashua, one of whose sides had been removed to facilitate shooting. There are a lot of similarities between that trailer and mine - especially on the outside - but on the inside, they look nothing like one another at all.

Which really doesn't mean anything because one of the other things I don't know about my trailer is how the inside looked when it rolled off the manufacturing line. I can make some pretty informed guesses about its layout based on both the advertisements/brochures I've seen, as well as where the propane lines place the stove, hot water heater, and furnace.

It would definitely have been pretty cozy.

Breaking the interior space into five segments of seven feet each, this is what I think you would have originally encountered as you walked through my trailer: you would have entered through the front door into a living room that transitioned, probably via some kind of half-wall/partitition unit, into a kitchen with the sink, stove, and possibly refrigerator on the right and, to the left, first a small table then a bank of floor-to-ceiling cabinets which is where the refrigerator would more probably be located; just past the cabinets, you'd enter a narrow hallway that took you past a small sleeping alcove then bathroom (both on the right) before it ended at the door to an actual bedroom in the back of the trailer.

This is pretty much the setup Jim Rockford had. About the only thing in my trailer that might possibly remain from this setup is part of the wall that separates the backroom from the bathroom. Instead of five distinct rooms, I have three. The partition that separated the living room from the kitchen has been removed, and I'm pretty sure the kitchen itself has been moved back to sit in the space previously occupied by the sleeping alcove. This makes for a much larger,, and much more open shared living/kitchen space which was - and actually still is - quite nice on a purely aesthetic level.

But it came at a major cost to the structural integrity of the trailer itself. Robbed of the support both the partition and sleeping alcove wall provided, the ceiling in that one big open room is very noticeably bowed - as is the original roof to which its attached. The weight of the water pooling in that bow would have increasingly made the problem that much worse. To address it, someone, at some point, put a whole new roof over the existing one. How a roof - that is apparently bending under the temporary weight of what little water the scant rains of Mojave may be able to pool upon it for an hour or two - is supposed to be able to stand up to the constant weight of all that lumber and all those asphalt shingles that comprise this particular "fix" is beyond me.

Luckily, for the trailer, I'll be giving the ceiling at least some of the support it was originally designed to have when I enclose the sleeping alcove I've made for myself at the very front of the trailer. Moving into a place that needed so much work meant having a place to both store and use the equipment, tools, supplies, and materials required to actually do that work. I didn't want it my living space. It couldn't go in the bathroom. That left the designated bedroom in the very back of the trailer. Which left me needing a space somewhere in the main living area to put my bed. The five feet between the front of the trailer and the door seemed a natural - plus it gives me the view of the windfarm and moon at night that I love so much. I'd wanted to enclose the space to create the sense of having more privacy anyway. The knowledge that doing so might ultimately keep the ceiling from falling in on me just makes the whole idea all the more appealing.

There are a couple of other, equally scary things I don't know about my trailer as well. I don't know where all the wires go, or if they're of thick enough gauge to actually handle the 20 amp circuits that give at least some of them their power. I don't know if the water coming out of the tap is particularly safe to drink. I know it doesn't ever get really cold. I know it sometimes smells of something vaguely unsettling - something either metallic, sulphurous, or both - and I know it really burns when I get it in my eyes but it's hard to tell whether it's actually the water, or just the sweat and dirt I'm trying to wash off. There's the vertigo I experience as a result of the trailer almost imperceptibly moving under my feet every time a train goes by. There's the mysterious clunking of something against the frame every time I step on a certain section of the sub-floor in the bathroom. There's the other mysterious clanging and scraping of metal I occasionally hear coming from underneath the trailer when the wind blows hard and in just the right direction.

There are other things I don't know about my trailer that are less a cause of concern than they are of simple reverie and wonder.

I don't know where it was purchased, where it's been, or when/why/how it found its way to Mojave. I don't know who its first owner was - what dreams they had that were realized in some way by its purchase - why they chose this trailer over any other brand, make, and model available at the time - why they turned over ownership to someone else. I don't know how many owners its had, what drew any of them to wanting to own it, how long any of them owned it, or to what specific purpose it was put by any of them either. I don't know what kinds of things its heard said and seen done over the course of its life.

I don't know any of the many parts it's played, or meanings it's had to any of the people who have sought and found shelter in its slender embrace over the years. The holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, gatherings, and homecomings it's hosted. The hope and relief that's walked through its doors. The children it's seen conceived, born, and raised. The struggles it's silently watched taking place. The grief, loss,, suffering, and pain to which it's born witness. The tears that have fallen on it's floors. The laughter that's bounced off its walls. The lives, in all their richness and brevity, of which it's been a part. The many changes in, and of that lives it's taken so gracefully in stride with each year that's passed since it first rolled off the assembly line over fifty years ago.

This is, perhaps, the one thing I don't know about my trailer that I hope, in time, I will eventually come to learn - how to remaining standing, open to even more change, when the changes that have already taken place have left me feeling so empty, abandoned, bowed, and ready to fall in on myself so much of the time- and the means by which I came to be in this state remaining so fundamentally so much a mystery to everyone but myself.

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About the Park

My trailer occupies one of the 60+ spaces that constitute the legal entity known as Tierra Grande Mobile Home Park. It is one of only 12 spaces to still have an actual occupant - not counting the abandoned RV that sits in the next space up from mine, blocking what would be an otherwise spectacular view of both the town and mountains to the north. There are four homes in the row across the street from me, three in my row, two on the row behind me, and 3 in the row across from that. We are scattered in clumps, the empty spaces that separate us as neighbors like missing teeth in a mouthful of broken promises.

All have left bits and pieces of themselves behind. In one space, hand-poured concrete squares tic-tac-toe themselves across a yard now barren of any vegetation, let alone landscaping at all. In another, a shallow pool made of cinder blocks bristles against the cement pad in which it's set that still bears the impression of the small hands that were there the day it was poured. In another, a small square of tightly laid bricks that have no obvious purpose. In another, ceramic molds for pouring a bowl, an urn, a pair of cowboy boots, and a swan. There are spark plugs, bottle caps, nuts, bolts, nails, and screws. Broken glass. Broken dishes. The spray nozzle attachment for a hose.

Like beachcombers, everyone who lives here walks the empty spaces from time to time, mindlessly scanning the gravel for whatever treasures the latest windstorm, rather than high tide, might have cast up from the depths. It is a recreational activity, and one of the few Tierra Grande actually has to offer.

There is no pool. No playground. No gym. No rec room. Not even an official office where you can drop in to pay your rent or lodge a complaint. There's really just the 12 trailers, the people who live in them, and a whole bunch of really wide open space to separate them from the rest of the world..

It's the comfort with, and perhaps even attraction to that kind of separation we share that essentially unites, distinguishes, and defines us as a community. We all tend to keep to ourselves for the most part. We all seem to prefer it that way, and we all seem to expect that everyone else here prefers it that way, too. We aren't unsociable or unfriendly with each other. Quite the contrary. We all at least recognize each other by sight. We nod, smile, and wave anytime we happen to run into one another. It's just that, beyond basic introductions and offers of help if we ever need it, we pretty much leave each other alone to do whatever it is we came here to do in the first place.

Which is one of the reasons I think I feel more accepted, and more at home here than anywhere I've lived in my entire life. So long as it stays inside the fence that surrounds my little piece of land on three sides - whether it's demolition, construction, me deciding to sand/paint my truck, or just the music I play while I work - no one cares. There is a tremendous amount of freedom in that for me, as well as a great deal of respect for the neighbors who allow me to actually exercise it.

This has not always been the case. I've had neighbors complain about the color I've painted my house, the kinds of flowers I've planted in my yard, and the way people cutting the corner wore a trail in my lawn. I've been threatened with litigation for using my fireplace, barbecuing, painting, allowing people to smoke in my backyard, and putting out my garbage before I actually heard the truck coming down the street by one neighbor who made it repeatedly clear he had major respiratory problems and considered all of those things to imminently dangerous to his health. I've been castigated for being single and having four kids. For being self-employed, not working regular hours, or having a steady income. For not being interested in, let alone able to afford a nicer car.

I cannot imagine any of that happening, or being allowed to happen here where entire homes have been left to fall to ruin without anyone feeling any driving need to question, criticize, blame, intercede, or do anything other than simply watch them fall without any judgment or prejudice at all.

It is a level of acceptance - of the ravages of time, of decay and death, of things passing into and out of existence, of the choices each of us make about where, how, and with whom to live our lives in spite of all those things - I would like, and have been trying so hard for the last four years to have for changes that led me to seek out this refuge in the first place.

Perhaps being given that kind of acceptance by those with whom I now so gratefully share all this wide open space, it will make it more familiar and easier for me to find therefore within myself as well.

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