"Trailer Trash"

We are trailer trash! At least we were. We (Munga & Bunga)and Mel & Val & Jennifer lived in a trailer park in Mississippi and in Tucson. And living in a trailer in Mississippi in the sixties might be about as low as you can go?? I was a poor student when we were in Tucson in a trailer. It was on the edge of town.
I just finished reading an article in the last issue of "Oregon Humanities" magazine titled, "Immobile Dreams; How did the Trailer Come to be a Symbol of Failure?"
When we got to Mississippi, we decided to buy a trailer house even though we could have gotten into base housing. When Jennifer was born she came home to a trailer. Oh, the horrors of even thinking about it! But my boss in Base Supply, a fine Major and his family, also lived in a trailer, so maybe it wasn't so bad. So only Andrea escapes the stigma of coming from "trailer trash".
A few quotes from the article; "Thier crime was simply that they didn't know any better than to live in a trailer. Yet the trailer -the mobile home-has become a powerful cultural icon of class immobility. Thus trailer parks were relegated to industrial areas, nonresidential zones or alongside highways outside of or at the eddge of town. Americans have un critically embraced the negatave cultural image of trailer parks. Americans use the trailer park as a way to distance themdelves form athea economic failures of society. The stigma of trailer trash priveleges "us" over "them' and ..."
And, to make it worse, I was a "dirty truck driver" at one time. Pretty bad family legacy, yes?
Bunga