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I grew up delivering newspapers to Winslow’s Trailerpark in Okemos, MI.
It was a tidy place back in the 1970’s, full of retiree’s plus a few low-income folks.
It’s the prettiest trailerpark I can imagine. It has little winding roads and hundreds of mature trees of a dozen kinds.
They also have a dozen little one-room cabins — still in decent shape. Plus a couple unusual, quirky little multi-story walk-ups.
Delivering that paper route as an early-teen is where I learned to love the beauty of autumn and the inner warmth of winter nights as they get close to Christmas. (It got me, in large part, over being afraid of the dark, too.)
If you have a favorite trailerpark, feel free to upload a link to a pic or some html displaying the pic (no more than 700 pixels wide).
Nowadays, the trailer-park is half empty and probably lots more than half low-income. But it still has a nice sense of community. The kids hang out together and wander around together. Sure, they get into trouble sometimes, but at least they’re outside.
They’re the only kids I’ve ever seen playing pick-up football in an empty lot. Thus they win the Best Kids prize from me. Their score goes up even higher because there were young and old and boys and girls in the games I saw. Even higher because they played in view of the road — no fake youth consumer “embarrassment” of “being seen” by the wrong people, etc. And even higher yet because little posses of them have walked up and down the local roads knocking on doors asking to rake or shovel for cash.
The trailer park abuts against a large township park forest with trails. (It’s VanAtta Woods — my parents and brother live on one side of it. We live on the other. We’ve gone through the woods, in the snow, to grandmother’s house, pulling a sleigh full of presents and kids, for Xmas.)
It seems like it could be an ideal small neighborhood.
I’d say it could be one of the best places to live in this area. It has beauty and conviviality. And a vintage trailer can be fixed up to have style. Heck, just keep it clean and you’re good to go. A livable place is something to be proud of, no matter what.
All those trailers should have people in them. Somehow they could find folks who’d be responsible. Who wanted to live there. That means keeping it all fixed up and charging MORE for rent. Sadly, affordable housing equals trashed housing and non-payment. Ironic. Or, it means owner-occupied. I thought that’s how it was done already. But then the terms of ownership have to be high and strict.
With the emptying of the trailers it seems like there’s something nefarious afoot, a development plan of some type…
Oh well.
The Boulevard.
Cottages in the Park.
