Queen of the Trailer Park

You may recall that a few weeks ago my family was in crisis. My brother was in jail again and my mom had decided to leave my stepfather to go live in her van. Well, things have calmed down a bit - my brother is out of jail, whereabouts unknown. At least I know he has some spending money - about $100,000 from the sale of his house. That should keep him drugged up for a while.

At the time of the crisis, my mom went and looked for a new place to live. She found this nice little trailer on five acres in the mountains near her house:


She was so enamored with the trailer (as happens with we trailer types) that she made an extremely low offer on the place - almost half what the owner was asking. Of course, it was an all cash offer. Funny thing is, my mom does not have the cash to make such a purchase. She was banking on my brother buying it for her. Yes, I'm sure he was thinking about spending his unearned money on his dear mother. Just like he was planning to quit doing meth for her, reimburse me for bail money, get a job, go help at the ranch, and clean up his act. All things I'm sure he intends to get around to one day. At this point I'm fairly certain a phone call to let her know he's alive would suffice.

It turns out the owner accepted the offer, and, after seeing some photos of the property, checking some comps in the area, and determining the trailer was somewhere my mom, or brother, or both, could potentially live that was far enough from me to keep them out of my daily life, I paid the down payment and escrow was opened. I went up there last weekend to check it out and fell in love with it. Well, not the trailer, but the land. This view of the meadow on the west 40 is one of the reasons why:

Now imagine it covered in snow. Oooh, aaah. Yes, it snows there, and the trailer has a nice, albeit illegal, wood stove that is sure to blaze the 463 square feet of wood laminate and formica. I could see myself felling trees and chopping my own wood, roaming the mountains in snow shoes, sipping hot cocoa on the deck, writing the great American novel, becoming a nature photographer, finding a new internet dating pool of lumberjacks and hunters. Ah, the romance.

But when I got home and looked at the pictures of the magical place, I came to the conclusion that maybe it's just another old trailer parked on a hill, complete with a dead Chevy Vega (anyone else see Batmobile potential?):
Then I realized by purchasing this, my second trailer home, I am indeed becoming the quintessential queen of the trailer park, complete with polyester curtains and a redwood deck. I guess I am really living the lower income American Dream, on blocks.