Apr. 23, 2006 - 19:34 MDT

WERE REAL

On Sundays The Denver Post usually has articles of interest, written by folks on the western slope of The Rocky Mountains. This mornings article is by a writer, David Feela, who is a teacher as well and a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org) in Paonia, Colorado. Bolds and italics mine.

MOBILE HOMES STAND FOR AUTONOMY

CORTEZ -- "It's like a soap opera romance, this ongoing affection of mine for the old-style single- or double-wide mobile homes, more commonly known as trailers."

"To me, their appeal is strongest when I'm driving a gravel country road, and out in a field I see one, perched like an alien spacecraft on a few open acres. Or I'm turning into the shaded niches of a well-worn trailer park, it's there, like a time machine, made of corrugated tin and glass. Sometimes it's been repainted, and never the bland manufacturer's color from 30 years ago, but a fresh swatch of purple or yellow or even turquoise and pink."

"I should know; I've been parked since 1986 in a 1972 double-wide. I don't know if it was new when it arrived on the property. It has no wheels, but when I have to climb into the crawl space beneath the mobile home, I can see where wheels have been mounted. There's not much security down there, knowing that tornados have a sweet tooth for mobile homes."

"My unit is also old enough to probably be illegal, manufactured during the era of pressed board flooring and thin glavanized metal roofing. I've done the mobile home roofover (similar to a middle-aged male combover) and I flush with caution realizing a flood could turn my floor into waffle wood. Luckily, I live in a county that essentially believes if you can drag it here, we can put up with it, which is why the hardier of these trailers should be preserved, designated as historic local treasures, of no lesser magnitude than those infamous bridges from that county in the Midwest."

"The mobile home's survival offers us a reminder of a time when a family's housing ambitions were scaled back somewhat closer to SAY, reality."

"No median sales price hovering around $207,000. No floor space with enough square-footage to hold a line dance for a football team. Mobile homes are proof that people could actually live with less, and did. I do now, and its constraint makes certain I continue to do so."

"Many others are still living that way, which is why I always slow down to admire these domestic time capsules. The vintage trailer is a covered bridge of sorts, spanning two banks: One side rooted with working people who could at one time OWN THEIR OWN HOMES, and on the other side the current real estate market, where a lifetime of slowly diminishing mortgage debt is the glimmer at the end of a tunnel. I know some people consider yesterday's trailers trash when compared to today's modular, custom, set-on-a-slab, triple wide castles. It is fair to say that a trailer does not have the investment potential of a ranchette with a massively imposing entrance gate. Maybe so, but I'd rather spend my days renovating the past than making payments on someone else's future."

"I'll admit that much of a trailer's styling, especially during the '60s and '70s, was a little too boxy, but it's tough to argue with a classic trailer advertising slogan, "Home is where you park it. For me , the idea of being self-contained has never lost its appeal."

"Housing needs are basic for all people, but available housing has taken a nasty turn away from anything approaching basic. In Pagosa Springs (Colorado), 15 homeowners in the Riverview Trailer Park have been evicted to make way for a 39-unit condominium development, with some units starting at a lofty $250,000. The same practice is happening all across the West as the boom in real estate sends trailer home-owners scurrying for cover. For our own protection as locals, before the real estate bubble pops, we'll all be wearing condos, the only safe housing available."

"Where's a romantically inclined professional photographer when you need one ? Maybe a lanky Clint Eastwood type, some one with and eye to show us the implicit beauty in an antiquated hallway without wheels. And even if the trailers look a little shabby by current standards, they embody a fiscal fantasy we're in danger of forgetting. THEY STAND FOR AUTONOMY, at least as long as they're allowed to stand."

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I never read the scoop on it, if it was ever published in the paper - - but way back when trailers and trailer parks began to blossom, they were not allowed existence in the City and County of Denver. I can make a guess that the real estate folks put the kibosh on trailer parks in the environs of our town. Consequently trailer parks sprung up in the suburbs. Some of them quite nice and some of them inhabited by trailer park trash -- those who, in town live in the cheapest run down residences and apartments. Now all those trailer parks are gradually disappearing as developers offer money too good for the property owners to resist. One very nice trailer park that had trees and other amenities was moved out when DIA was put in. And if nothing else, an individual owner who has title to the property his trailer sits on, stands little chance of keeping it on that land, zoning changes and other scurrilous actions move them out.

Off and on I have spent a goodly amount of time in trailers, I remember fondly the old Travel Queens with their arched roof, things of beauty they were, some of the time living in a trailer and other times visiting folks who lived in one. I noticed from the onset that one who has a trailer has to make wise choices of what they desire to keep. It is much like Japanese folks lived when I was over there. Even apartments were miniscule. Living quarters were small, many things had dual purposes or could be folded up and put away. Only things that were prized above all were kept.

I guess I personally could adapt to living in a trailer, a double wide would be nice. I know I could hold a big garage sale and give the residue to Good Will or the Sallies, but I am not sure Heather could live with it.

Mr. Feela makes a very good point -- we have as a nation lost touch with reality and mortgage our lives away, trying to keep up with house payments.

Another thing I have noticed in recent years, buildings that used to be apartments, without renovation or additions are now called condominiums and are bought, not rented. I expect the owners pay high "common area maintenance" per month above and beyond what they paid for their condo -- and the sellers can invest the money they received in one lump sum and get richer yet. I guess that is life as we live it and we eke our way along, inch by dyin' inch -- no way this man can master mind a change if there could be such.

But if one buys a condo, where can parking for their Hummer and their motor home and boat on a trailer be, -- a rented parking lot ? ? ? ?

Somehow I yearn for the days when a man had the possibility of buying a trailer, putting it in a trailer park and looking toward a decent retirement income. Now with pension funds going down, companies going overseas or south I wonder if even a double wide in a pasture somewhere could keep a man and family going when they retire ?

It would be nice to go back to the days when things were well thought out fiscally and WERE REAL . . . . . . . . . .

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