Trailer Tippin in The Varmint Liesure World

            Sadly, our family and friends have a secret. I’m not sure if our neighbors have started to notice yet, but something happens here at our house on Friday nights. Cars can been seen driving in after the sun has set and most normal, rational people have gone to bed. Only a few people know about it, and even less have actually had the courage, dare I say the guts, to participate. Those few know who they are, they know why they come, and I’m certain that they would not like me letting their little secret out of the bag.

            And, I wouldn’t, if it hadn’t started effecting our daily lives, they way we see the world, the new philosophy with which we rear our children. We are not necessarily proud if it mind you. And I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart. All it takes is making the mistake of being our friends, or showing up here at the wrong time of night. You might be mistaken in what you see. It may look like a friendly little get together, but as you will understand when you walk in the door -which from some reason now has to be hooked back on its hinges - there are some sick and twisted paraphernalia sprawled out on our kitchen table. There are people in straw hats, and some with no teeth. Suddenly, you begin to understand that this is anything but a normal friendly little party. This is war! A Trailer Park War!

            We warn you now, just like we warned our friends and family. You may come as yourself, but when you leave something will have forever changed in both you and your children. You long to be someone different, not only in our house, but even in yours.

            That night, you dream of being a Swashbuckling Cowboy, or a Bad Ass Biker Couple. You want to try just one night as Starla, the Chain Smoking Stripper, and you suddenly realize that you are, and possibly always have been, The Redneck Family with 6 Kids.

            The next morning, you don your best work clothes, only to realize that for some reason, when you were putting on your makeup, you absent-mindedly blacked out your front tooth with your mascara. You laugh a little and blame it on the Beer Beer you drank at the Warwick’s, now nicknamed in your mind, The Dump View Chicken Neck Korral.

            As you drive to work, you suddenly see that you have brought something with you. No, not your kids new pet Opossum that you unexpectedly have this odd craving to grill up for dinner that night, but you’ve brought your camera too. You try to deny it at first, and pretend that life is back to normal. You have your coffee, just like you have every other morning, and you turn on the radio only to find out that you now listen to country. And not just any country, but the old stuff with twang.

            You smack your lips and pick up the toothpick you used to harvest the roasted ‘coon from you teeth last night. You start pickin’ again and find a leftover. At this point you are a little shocked, but sadly, alone in your car, you are not ashamed. You start chewing on the meat, no longer counting calories. Instead you are trying to decipher what part of the animal that was. You remember Wave, The Bar B Que King, grilling up the gizzards of the 'coon, that his son kept referring to as cute little Ben. Wave roasted the feet too. You didn’t want to try one. You said no politely at first, but there was just something about that smell, and the fact that everyone else was already in line with their paper plates that called to you. What if there wasn’t enough to go around? You got in line too, and you feared what it meant.

            But, this morning, you know the truth. You know who you are now, and you know why you brought the camera.

            You sit up a little straighter in your seat, and put a fist out the window to signal to the Long Haul Trucker who just passed you by to give you a honk. He does, and you are now certain that you just passed Wheeler Turnin. He’s single, middle aged, and you know full well that you would hook him up with Burnice, The Hot Flasher if you only had a hitch up card. “She’s so hot…she can grill a cheese sandwich just by holding it in her bosom.” You like Burnice, but you remember that you like Anita Break, The Single Mom with Kids, just as well. She’s only one age group away from Wheeler, so she’s fair game for a hitchin’ too!

            And then you see it. You know now that you will be a little late for work, but who cares. You can only imagine what your friends at Dairy Aire’ Flamingo Estates will say when you bring that little token of camaraderie to the war next Friday night. They’ll say, “It’s time to go Trailer Parkin’!” If you had a Thief in the Night card, you’d do it too! You’d “steal that trailer and add it” to your own park. But then you realize that you've hit the mother load! For a moment you can’t even believe it, so you take in the rest of the surroundings.

            This is not just any trailer, or trailer park you are looking at on your normal way to work. This trailer stands on matching cinder blocks and has only been painted two colors. It looks like a place for Uncle Clem, the Local Tycoon, or Jerry Attrick, the Frugal Millionaire. And why? You know why. They not only have pink plastic flamingos lining their walkway, with they have garden gnomes too! You don’t mean to, but you have to do it. You hop out, and take a long stride. You picture yourself like The Pizza Delivery Gal, Tipper or Dye. “She’s faster than a jackrabbit on Red Bull,” or Robin U. Blind, The Kleptomaniac. He’s single, young and male, and “Robin is so bad…he’d steal a widow woman’s lap dog.”           
            So, you do it, not because you want to, but because you have to. For the sake of your friends, for the sake of your honor…not that you have any anymore. You walk up to the edge of the sidewalk, keenly aware of the multitude of landmines along the driveway. You instantly comprehend that this could be the trailer of the Pit Bull Puppy Farmer, Pervis Scruggs. “He turned 21 in prison, but he’s out on parole.” You get as close as you can, and then bam! You snap a picture of the lighted flamingos that adorn the front of the trailer. That’s it!

            You did it! You got it! Initiation complete! You are forever one of them now! Sadly, you understand what you have become, that there is no going back. You know who you are …and possibly who you’ve always been. You are trailer trash and you now have your own picture of just exactly what you did on the way to work the next morning to prove it! You will be the envy of all next Friday night, and the target for everyone as well!

            You drive off with your prize, wishing you had had the courage to knock on the door and ask just where they found such magnificent creatures as those lighted neon pink flamingos. Oh well, you think. Baby steps!
           You have all week until the next game night at the Warwick's; a whole week to think of new amenities to go with it; a mud bath for the kids, Friday night Jell-O fights for the ladies, bathtubs full of plastic flowers that you hope will entice the residents from other parks to come and live at yours! Thankfully, you have all week to think of a name for it as well!

Writer's Block

Today's place of insiration

 I’ve been working on two novels for three years now. One is Young Adult. The other is Women’s Fiction. Every day I sit in my living room for four hours and pound away on the keys, amid fielding phone calls and questions, the hourly beep of the washing machine, unsolicited texts, the Seventh Day Adventists doing the Lord's work at my doorstep, and my own devilish procrastination. Maybe a snack will help, or a ten-minute break, or starting completely over, or pushing headlong on through type-o’s and all. Nothing really has.

            Behind me I feel the pressure of those who desire - either out of loyalty to a local or hopefully because I actually have talent– another book like my first one. I so want to give that to them. I can see the bold features of my characters and smell the cool earth beneath their feet. I can hear the robins in the background and see the house that they live in. I am given the rare gift of being able to sort through their problems like some ethereal psychotherapist who wants to be their friend. But, what I have to possess in order to make my readers relate to my characters as deeply as they, themselves, relate to their own friends (or if I'm truly lucky, make them hate them as much as they hate their worst nemesis) is inspiration.

            That, in my wonderfully warm living room is what I am lacking. I’ve seen that couch so often that it has lost all beauty to me. I know the people who sit on it, and am too accustomed to the stains in the floor. Inspiration for me comes from changing scenery, something so new that it may be a path trodden heavily by another, but it holds a mystery for me.

            So, I have wandered away, outside my living room, onto roads I have driven and paths I have walked before. They might be slightly familiar, but alone I see them with a different eye.
There are ducks in the pond below me. I have seen that pond before, but I've never stopped long enough to see that there are so many cattails. They alone bring me bring me back to my youth. They remind me of days at the Rock Crusher where the local neighborhood children and I would have cattail wars, and spend countless hours making forts amongst the boulders that we might never return to.

            There is a mysterious house down there too, set against the backdrop of the most amazing forest. It is only minutes from my own backyard, and has probably been here for well over a half a century, but it is new to me. I can see the kitchen, where once there might have been bacon cooked so early in the morning, and up the road there is an old gunshot riddled “School Bus Stop Ahead” sign. Were there children who ran to it at one time? Did they carry lunch pails, or dine on school lunch? Were there school breakfasts offered during that area, or were the kids expected to be well nourished at home prior to racing each other to the stop?

            And where are they now? Did a mother, in a dress or in cool lots, tend to that garden as the earth was just awakening in the spring? Do the worms still wriggle in the earth waiting for the first plantings of potatoes and lettuce only to wonder where all the commotion has gone? Was their a father who lit fires in that crumbling fireplace at night?  Was the atmosphere tense, cold or warm and full of laughter?

            There is mystery in the house. Probably not for the people who lived there, but now, standing alone and in danger of dilapidation, there is for me. I have always wanted to get lost in story, in mystery, and adventure. With every day outside as a child, feeling the cool spring air on my skin, or wiping the sweat from my heated brow only to find a outdoor faucet on a neighbors house to drink from, I found both adventure and inspiration. What I see today is that to find adventure, you must first be adventurous.

            Every day I will try and find inspiration, and maybe someday it will lead me to you; the ghost who waits for an ear who will listen; the character whose story needs told.