When private equity came for trailer parks

I’ve never been called “trailer trash”, but I did live in a trailer in Northeast Georgia in my early teens. Trailers don’t have the best reputation, but I liked it better than the home I grew up in. It was well-insulated, with a shotgun floor plan, so my room was far from my mother’s and her boyfriend’s, giving me more privacy than when we’d shared a wall (Iggy Pop, who lived with his parents in a trailer in Ypsilanti, Michigan, felt differently, and tells how he used to draw pictures of fantastical, u-shaped trailers where a boy would have space to hide). There was a hill I could skate down, woods to walk through, and because we were parked over gravel rather than dirt, we didn’t have as many problems with bugs. I had lived in a typical postwar suburb where neighbors were suspicious of each other and maintained a degree of distance. The trailer park, by contrast, was cozy; people knew each other and waved hello. I remember having long talks with a man there who owned four beautifully restored Ford Mustangs from the Sixties.