Living in a Trailer Park in the 2000s, Phoenix, Arizona


I was taught to never say "Trailer Park" by my parents who lived in a Mobile Home Community in the 2000s in Peoria, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. And since I remember it well, it occurs to me that you may have never spent time in a Trailer... oops, I mean Mobile Home Community. Let's go visit.

The Trailer... I mean Mobile Home Community where my parents lived was for people 55 and better. You never said "older", you said "better". Get ready for a LOT of rules!

My parents were "snowbirds" since 1989, when I moved back to Phoenix from Los Angeles. No, they didn't stay with me, they started out staying in an apartment in the same complex where I lived, which was specifically for winter visitors. It rented monthly, and included everything you would need, not just furniture but dishes, pots and pans, that sort of thing. Then they found a rental condo, which was actually pretty darned nice, over on the El Caro golf course. I'm pretty sure the condos are still there, but the golf course itself has been abandoned. It was a nice little course at one time, and I played it often, and would stop at my parent's place, which was near the 7th hole.

But my parents are more thrifty than that - good Midwestern "value for money" people, like I am. And they eventually bought a Mobile Home in a Trailer... I mean Mobile Home Community. What they had was called a "double wide" - you can see the seam in the middle where two trailers were put together, so it wasn't quite as narrow as you might imagine. Not big, but not claustrophobic, either.
Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring blog posts are shared there daily, also there's "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, and super high-resolution photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona
This is how it works: you buy the trailer, but you rent the space. I visited there a lot, and have to admit that it's kinda cool - there's a community of people who all kinda look the same (grey hair and glasses), a swimming pool, community center, and lots and lots of things for the old folks, oops I mean persons of age, to do. Now let's talk about the rules, and why there are so many rules.

A Mobile Home Community, like the one my parents lived in, is very aware of the stigma of "Trailer Parks". In my lifetime, I remember the trailer parks that I used to see over in my neighborhood by Lopers. They were places without any rules, or, as far as I could tell, laws. Great places for people who just want to be left alone, but scary places for law-abiding citizens, if you understand what I mean.

Anyway, one of the rules that I didn't quite understand in my younger years is that you had to wear a shirt to go the pool. The pool was just a few steps from my parent's place so, I would change into my swimming trunks, grab a towel and go. No. I was told to put on a shirt. Now I understand - watching old men shirtless with big old bellies walking around isn't a pretty site. My dad might have been OK, athletic and fit even in his golden years, but most guys really needed to cover up. And that's just the beginning of the rules.

The rules went on and on. And people there obeyed the rules, not because there was anyone in particular to enforce them, but because they wanted to live in a Mobile Home Community, not a Trailer Park. There's a big difference, and I learned that from my parents.


Image at the top of this post: At the Casa del Sol Mobile Home Community in 2000, 91st Avenue south of Grand Avenue, Peoria, Arizona. Not a trailer park.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more