“Oh, I fell through the floor.”

I have made no secret of my love for Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have quoted various portions of Self-Reliance Hundreds of times. I often use it as pep talk material. Emerson’s work is one of the finest examples of American literature. It’s beautiful.

So, in the spirit of Emerson, we will be discussing self-reliance, trailer park style.

My wife and I often talk about trailers as a life hack because of their affordability. In many ways, especially in the current housing crisis, this statement rings true. There is a price to pay, however, that goes unseen… Until it doesn’t.

Shit breaks. A lot.

I have had a myriad of roof leaks. I fell through my deck. This dude that used to live with us fell through the deck a different time, and he also fell through the floor. He isn’t the only one, though; I had a dog fall through a soft spot in my bathroom.

The vinyl skirting around the outside loves to disintegrate as well, which leads to frozen pipes. The back of my house is near a cliff, and we had fences up in the yard with no gates, because why would we ever need to go back there? The answer is to replace like 15 feet of skirting that blew off, exposing my trailer’s undercarriage. Nothing but plumbing being directly exposed to single-digit temps and direct wind was left behind. That’ll break some stuff. We do have heat tape on our pipes as well, but like everything else. It fails every few years and needs to be replaced.

I have had a toilet leak from the base, as well as a valve for the washer crack, spraying water everywhere. The winter has given me frozen pipes, burst pipes, burst hose spigots, and more.

There are shitloads of electrical issues as well, which is one of the only times I call my guy Bob out. That’s Bob Kan out of Monson, Massachusetts. His number is always getting passed around, and he is a great dude. That’s Bob Kan – (413) 320-6838. I’ll take some free work now, Bob.

I met Bob in a hardware store electrical aisle, where I was buying new fuses for what I thought was a problem with the box. When I got home, I wired them up, and everything was great for two days. Then, half of my house lost power. I had an extension cord running from the living room to keep the fridge on.

Oops.

Bob came out, looked at my fuse box, and declared that I almost killed us all. “I will say, you’ve got some balls,” he said, mentioning how most homeowners wouldn’t even attempt such a fix.

Poverty is a great motivator for learning new skills.

Bob’s cool. If he comes out and it’s something dumb, he will toss me free outlets to put in or whatever, and then not even charge me. Bob does make sure to remind me of my limitations. “You know how to do that, at least,” was what he said the first time he gave me some of those outlets. Fucker.

I can do more than outlets now, folks. Sub-floors including joists, roof patching, toilet replacement, pipe installation, insulation, both in a spider-filled crawl space, and many other things. I can do it all, except for electric work, evidently. I can even do our annual furnace repair. The “Franken-Furnace” is guaranteed to shit the bed 1 to 2 times per winter.

I am somewhere between apprentice and journeyman in terms of my abilities, but I could totally be an old-timey handyman now.

I’ve always been a video game nerd and a bookworm, so aside from a few years in the construction business, I’m not a hands-on person. I slapped dough for most of my life, too, if that counts. When you live in the park, that does not matter. Most of us can’t afford to call people out, and those of us who haven’t learned rudimentary skills get to watch their homes slowly decay. We help each other where we can, though. I have spent some time on old ladies’ roofs patching stuff up for free. We all kind of hate each other, but we still rally around our shared identity. A social imaginary that we created to define whatever we are.

Needless to say, our places are dumps. I think they came that way out of the box. When my wife and I fixed up our master bedroom, we came to the realization that you could kick your way out of the trailer through any wall you wanted. If you ever want to break into one of these places, you only need five minutes and a Sawzall. Pick any spot outside and cut yourself a sweet doorway right inside. You could also rip off the vinyl and just kick your way through. I have no valuables and three dogs, so I’m not too concerned about sharing these hot tips.

Scrappers could even crawl under trailers for some low-effort copper harvesting. Two cuts and away they go.

If I am being completely honest, even though in the moment I hate doing the work, the labor is worth it to live here. I am certainly not alone in this mindset. Anytime there is remotely agreeable weather, you will always hear saws and hammers. Every single time.

We are a hardy and self-reliant people. You have to be to live in the trailer park.

Until next time,

JTC