Trailer Parks and Newspapers

On my new daily commute, I pass Bannister City, the mobile home community where my aunt and cousins lived for most of my childhood. Each time we stopped in to visit them there, I would come home to our four bedroom ranch-style house on a beautiful seven-acre hill feeling pretty lucky.

My dad's first house was a trailer. He bought it in college, and lived in it from then through his first bit of marriage with my mom. They upgraded later to a starter house, and finally to the house on the hill, which will be where they retire. 

It seems to me like that sort of gradual upgrading was pretty typically in the 1970s and 80s. Now though, young people, myself included, are hesitant to buy into the world of manufactured and starter homes. I'm not here to write a polical tangent; we all know about sub-prime homes and the people who have taken on mortages that are beyond their means.

What I'm talking about here is nostalgia for a time when everything didn't have to be bigger and flashier and better. A time when it was fashionable to be a little bit frugal; to have some money in the bank, and to have a home you could afford.

I gave The St. Louis Post-Dispatch an earnest try this morning. I was turned off by many of the comments left by readers on this story of a perfectly preserved 1950s home and the family who preserved it.

Many readers left unsupported comments calling the family "mentally ill" or "wierd", and I found myself angry at the judgements against this family who the readers had never met. Instead of commenting on the house's pink bathroom or 1952 Frigidaire, readers were focused on tearing down people they didn't even know. 

Rock on, readers of The Post-Dispatch, rock on with your hateful selves.

I'm not sure if this says more about the way St. Louisans think, or more about the St. Louisans who comment on The Post Dispatch's stories. Either way, after twenty minutes of reading The Post-Dispatch, this story's comments were the breaking point for me, and I found myself running by to my old standby, The New York Times. 

As I read the front page, my shoulders relaxed, and I settled in to my indulgent weekly Times time. The first story that caught my attention was on, of all things, New York City's only trailer park.

Check it out.

In Missouri, a trailer park isn't exactly luxury living, but for New York City, to be able to buy several rooms, a washer and dryer, a sunroof, parking, and "a garden knome or two" for $500/month is pretty attractive. There's something to be said for living well, but keeping things within your means.