I have been pondering mobile homes on and off for quite some time and I have a question in relation to that: Why?
I mean, you’ve seen a mobile home recently, right? Sixteen, eighteen, even 32 feet wide and somewhere between about 56 feet and 180 yards long. Occasionally, you’ll see a brand new one going down the road in as many as three parts. You can tell it’s new ’cause it’s still wrapped in plastic with that little UPC sticker in the corner. You know, the black and white bar code they ran across the register when the person bought it. These homes can be quite large and not at all what you would call, in any practical terminology, mobile.
Mobile homes did, however, have very honest, humble beginnings. That was back in the early to middle part of the 1900’s when they were unwhincingly known as “trailer houses.” For many families whose livelihood was mobile, like construction workers, harvesting crews, traveling show people,, bank robbers, etc., the trailer was often the only home they knew for quite some time. Whole families lived in these few rooms on wheels. They could work the job and then back the old Dodge up to the house and take off for the next job site only to return in several hours because little Billy wasn’t sleeping in his bed in the trailer but was over at Jeffies’ playing. But then, nothing is perfect.
American tradition, however, led to a continuous increase in the size of the trailer house. In short order you could no longer pull the trailer with the old Dodge. You needed a new Heavy Duty GMC pick-up and a trailer towing package. Then a one ton truck. Soon it was no longer much more convenient to have a trailer house than it was to own, say, the Baja Peninsula. Somewhere in here the idea of the trailer house diverged into two distinct lines: the Mobile Home and the Camper.
Take the camper. Along an evolutionary scale, todays’ camper compares to the original trailer house in the same way a new automobile follows after the first Model T Ford. The idea is the same: basic shelter which is easily transportable from place to place. Naturally, the new camper comes in more sizes with more options and more available luxuries, from a pop–up camper which is essentially a tent that has the additional ability to roll into the lake after you set it up, to a large, split level 5th wheel trailer, which, no matter how you count them, ALWAYS has at least 2 extra wheels (that would be SIX). The advancements in campers have some so far as to have actually moved 180 degrees, from the trailer house to the trailer car. In this case, a large engine moves the camper and the camper pulls a small sport utility vehicle. Or maybe as the units got larger they went from spare tires to spare vehicles.
On the other hand, the original trailer house leads to the modern mobile home in the same way the first stone wheel eventually sired, say, the TV Dinner. Not only is the size different, the whole idea is different. Yes, you can still move your mobile home yourself, provided you are presently an independent hauler with your own Kenworth tractor and a commercial drivers’ license. In any other case it will cost you only slightly less than moving a standard construction 30 x 50 ranch style home with a double garage (basements do cost extra). As a matter of fact, many contractors build conventional homes with the intention of selling them and having them moved to your lot (basements cost extra). The only real difference is the standard home is built on blocks and moved to a foundation, whereas the mobile home is built on a steel frame with wheels, moved to your location and placed in your yard on blocks – kinda’ like that old Buick by your Uncle Frank’s shed.
To be fair, many of today’s mobile homes are quality built, fuel efficient, ergonomically designed homes that are comfortable and pleasurable to live in. These also can be placed on a basement (which costs extra) to make a complete home. Despite this fact, most mobile homes are not placed on the home owner’s lot, but are set in a mobile home court, estate, villa or manor. These are typically large parcels of land – usually recent soybean fields – which are devoid of some of the amenities of your standard home site. Things such as curbs, trees, level ground, character, etc. They do, however, have one redeeming quality for the mobile home owner: they are zoned for mobile homes.
So here’s what you do. You find a nice, large, beautiful double wide mobile home, for which you pay, say, $90,000 (on a 30 year mortgage at 9% interest).. Because of zoning ordinances, you’re not permitted to place it up the hill next to Dr. Hectors’ house so you rent a lot in a mobile home court. Now, since you’re thinking you’re not going to move the darn thing anyway, you build a nice double wide garage with a loft next to your mobile home on a piece of land which does not belong to you. For this you have paid an additional $40,000 not counting the monthly payment you need to make on the lot rent.
Let’s say in three years something comes up and you decide to move. Since it costs so much to relocate the mobile home, not to mention the garage and that concrete floor and driveway, you resolve to sell your home where it is – on someone else’s land. This will likely net you a loss of about 60% from your original investment, not counting any appreciation you may have gained on an actual home, which is probably none because any increase in your real property value would likely be recognized and offset by the realtor fees, legal costs, state and federal taxes, storm door surcharge fees and penalties for the use of chartreuse shag carpet.
So, as you see, the only actual mobile thing about a mobile home seems to be the value, which moves on pretty quickly after you buy the thing.

Okay, let’s grab a chance to set aside an hour, hop in the car and take a drive. Today, however, instead of taking the freeway to the next major city or your local highway to the closest town or even the nearest through street to that trendy neighborhood brewpub – which we both know will take you a lot more than an hour – let’s take a drive on some back roads. These are mostly spare roads that people are hardly using right now. I mean, they may not be as good as your main roads or thoroughfare or even a side street and some of them may not even be paved. Because we’re always needing roads they just know that someday we’ll find a use for them so they save them and put them out back. That’s why they call them backroads…maybe.
The federal government used to keep these roads in central storage facilities in the midwest but during the F.D. Roosevelt administration they decided to distribute them to the public along with jobs, ration stamps and those 5 pound blocks of cheese (which they’re still not out of). Later on they took these storage facilities and made missile silos out of them. Now they’ve filled the missile silos all with dirt, concrete, asphalt and other paving materials, which they could have used to generate more roads – go figure.
Now before you take off, don’t confuse backroads with sideroads. Sideroads, too, are quite common and can be found near or often right beside many main roads, if you can believe that. They can usually be identified by names like “Rough River Road” or “Cherry Creek Drive” or “Porky Parkway” – things near which they run or destinations to which they go. Often these sideroads existed alone for quite some time because people actually wanted to go to these places. Finally some astute person pointed out the error of having a side road without the benefit of a main road from which it stemmed so the local residents were faced with the options of renaming the sideroad something mundane, like “County Road 118.3” or “Brown County 7.” Taxes were then increased to generate more money for additional roads to connect to the sideroads. This is the American way… Except in some metropolitan areas like Illinois, where you pay taxes for the roads and then you pay again when you actually want to use them. This is the “Chicago way.” This method also works for “protection” for your business and expensive loans in alleyways, but that’s for a different article.
“Fine,” you say. “I’ll take a backroad. But where do I start?”
This is the easiest part of the whole process. Look out your window. Wait! Take this paper with you. Okay, look out the window. See that street? That’s your best place to begin. Some schools of thought advocate the need to go to the edge of town to start or maybe the first main highway. I have always found the best place to start is where you’re at… It seems if you have to go somewhere else to “start”, you never quite get around to it.
Once you take off on your aimless backroad drive, you should actually have an aimless backroad. Identifying one is fairly easy. First of all, it won’t be more than two lanes and in most cases, it won’t be paved – unless a politician lives there, which is unlikely since they all move to the city to keep their finger on the pulse of America. Of course, the city they move to is usually Washington, D.C., where they know absolutely nothing about the pulse of America. They also know nothing about the respiration, blood pressure, cholesterol level or kidney output of America, much less the backroad system. Let’s just simplify. You turn onto a gravel road and drive for, oh, a couple of minutes. You stop. You look around and the thought occurs to you, “This road doesn’t go anywhere!” This is a backroad.
Of course, just because this road goes nowhere you normally want to be doesn’t mean it doesn’t go anywhere. Somebody probably lives on this road. You might find a young family trying to escape the hectic life of the city or an older couple going about the business of simple farm life they’ve worked all their days. Perhaps you’ll come across a compound of neo-religious zealots with underwear on their heads and automatic weapons… Or maybe a secret government installation where they’re hiding captured space aliens with atomic blasters and underwear on their heads (the space aliens, not the government people, although what they do in their off time is legally none of our business). For the most part, however, you’ll find the people are very friendly. They’ll wave or even stop to converse about the weather or the crops. Unless the backroad you’re on happens to run across the deepest part of their land or you have one of their cattle tied to your hood. For the most part, you’re okay to take the road if there are no signs, gates, concertina wire, flying lead or bomb craters, nuclear or otherwise.
“But what if I get lost?” you quiz. Well, the whole idea is to place yourself in a semi-misplaced state; an aimless exploratory situation in an open and tranquil setting. Getting completely lost would seriously hamper this position so it’s good to have a general concept of where you are or at least how you got there. One way to do this is to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Aside from being time consuming when done from a vehicle, this has been historically and scientifically proven to be an unreliable method of trail marking by the research team of Dr.’s Hansel, Gretal, Grimm and Grimm.
One of the better methods to use in not getting lost on backroads is a simple understanding of the basic backroad layout and a sense of the directions around you. Your direction of travel can be monitored by use of a standard compass, a tool invented by the Boy Scouts, I think. The placement of backroads in the United States is normally done in a grid pattern of roads around pieces of land in either quarters, sections, uh, halves, townships, dimes or parsecs…maybe. Generally, the further west you travel, the larger the spaces between roads until in places like Montana and west Texas they use road grids which coincide with county lines and time zones. These roads will usually run in a west-east, north-south network unless they are forced to circumvent a natural barrier or landmark such as lakes, rivers, hills, Pike’s Peak or John Goodman.
I should note that government owned land does not necessarily have a layout consistent with the standard grid system. Normally these roads will wander aimlessly, often taking off in a different direction entirely whenever a new administration took over.
If you are still unsure of your ability to remain aware of your location at all times, you may want to acquire a mobile GPS, or Global Positioning System. These devices are wonderful modern appliances which can be purchased quite inexpensively or added to your smart phone via an app. There is no better, faster way to find out just how lost you really are.
Have a nice drive, enjoy America and relax! If you get lost you have a really good reason not to be at work tomorrow.

I’ve been doing this kind of thing for years.

I mean writing this stuff down.  I had to…it started building up and causing serious issues.  It took me a while before I noticed that others didn’t quite understand where I was coming from in my view of life and my surroundings (I wasn’t a really bright kid).  Eventually, I started laying these thoughts on paper and one day began actually saving them.  Still, I never really did anything with them aside from place them in a folder to dust around.  Okay, I don’t really dust anything, but you get what I’m saying.

A few weeks ago, I was perusing my bookshelves while researching another project – yes, I can write “real” stuff – and I came across my old folder.  As I was thinking of throwing it away, a voice in the back of my mind said,”Don’t throw it OUT; throw it at THEM!  Use the internet.”  That was likely the same voice that caused me to write these things in the first place.  Understanding that may help you forgive me.

Okay, then.  The internet.  While I use the technology daily, this had never occurred to me before (I mentioned I wasn’t too bright, right?)  I do, however, know some young people.  Some of them I actually helped raise.  Understanding that may help you to forgive them.  Anyway, they suggested I dispose of my ramblings, both old and new, by placing them in a web log or “blog.”   I think they feel this may be therapeutic, thereby assisting me in the betterment of my mental health and reducing the chances they may have to watch me in my old age so I’m not a danger to myself and others.  I’m not sure that’s going to work out for them, but let’s keep that to ourselves, okay?

And while we’re on the subject…shouldn’t that be spelled “‘blog,” using an apostrophe to indicate the missing letters?  If we write “blog” without an apostrophe, shouldn’t we use cant, won’t, lets or, for that matter, shouldnt?  Shouldn’t I bring this up in a separate article?

If your answer is “no,” perhaps you should refrain from reading these periodic ramblings.  This is the type of subject which encourages my off-center thought patterns.  Well, this and geographic name changes, consumer GPS units, cleaning the garage, professional sports strikes, educational opportunities and the weather.  This is not a comprehensive list as much as it is a cross section which indicates the theme.  That theme would be “non-existent.”

Really, the only commonality in these virtual pages will be the “slightly skewed perspectives” which help me, and hopefully you, to see the world in a less severe way.  An opportunity to take the world a little less seriously and possibly smile instead of fume.  To quote that most famous of philosophers, Anonymous, “You gotta  laugh.”

This may be a good juncture for me to reiterate the need to be a bit less serious. If, or perhaps, when you see something in these writings which offends you, please try not to immediately submit to the knee-jerk reaction to fire off a scathing rebuke.  Though I have, over the years, acquired several scathe-resistant coatings, I am not immune to scathing.  I don’t deal with rebukes well at ALL.  Anyway, I have a few pages about hunting, though not specifically lions or dentists (it’s topical – look it up.)  At the same time, I enjoy a few “educational?” pieces on ecology and our natural environment.  We don’t agree on every topic with ANYone and this is not my platform for social change, aside from the idea that we all need to lighten up a bit.

If , however, you find yourself offended repeatedly in the reading you do here… Why are you doing it?  Obviously, it’s not your thing.  Nobody’s forcing you to do it.  It’s definitely not a homework assignment (I hope) and while you may be the very person I’m trying to reach, I don’t want to take any abuse, verbal or otherwise, for the privilege.  Thankfully, we are still free to choose what we wish to read as well as what not to read.

Of course, much of today’s media exists not to inform and promote thought, but to shock and advance controversy.  That is not my purpose.  Actually, I am happy to say I have no purpose…  We’ll, no.  That’s not what I meant to say, but when it comes to these pages, it’s close.  If you read something here that prompts ideas or idea changing thoughts, and let me reinforce the fact that this is as likely as finding life on the fourth moon of Pluto (I have no idea if Pluto has four moons – or any, for that matter), that’s great.  And I mean great on the Tony the Tiger scale of GREAAAT!  If, on the other hand, you find something you see as wildly controversial, well, you’re reading it wrong.  Look again.  If you still see it, go back to listening to Rush Limbaugh or Bill Maher.  I’m pretty sure you’re in the wrong place, virtually and mentally… And that line right there is the kind of thing I’m talking about getting flak about.  Having seen it, I could edit it, but I will leave it and point it out as an example.

Let’s see, what else?  I guess we’ve gotten this far, we can work out any other issues along the way.  I just want to say welcome and thanks for stopping by.  I hope you will visit often and can occasionally leave with a smile.  And perhaps a slightly skewed perspective.