A slowed cumbia rebajada track by Babylon
Motorhome, which is timely because I’m simultaneously reading Sunset Trailer
Park essay by Allan Berube at work, and also contemplating trailer life and my
own class history, and how my Clayton Homes attempt to move next door onto land
failed miserably, and I was ripped off by them (and thus Warren Buffet) and I
borrowed a thousand dollars to get that con moving faster, in desperation, and
they only gave me $415 back, and in fact on back of check have a stamp that
says basically “if you cash this thing you let go of any claims against us, or
others of us, or any of us just barely involved in this sham”. I have not
cashed the check yet, requesting more info, not that I can recoup any of it,
because I’m the desperate and doomed and not protected by law, but I’m smart
enough I’d like to at least make those devils work for their con. But I’m still
doomed.”
My grandmother held down our family from a trailer, most my life, though she
lived in a house somewhere when I was younger than 4. But summers and after
school were always at her trailer, Eastgate Trailer Park in Farmville, which at
the time was all-white, by design, the landlord wouldn’t rent to non-whites.
Just across the creek was the road to the projects though, and all-black, as
well as rowhouse rentals through the woods also all-black. We had snowball
fights and basketball games and football games that tended to break down along
color lines, and we all got along, but it was tense at times – a learned
re-creation of larger indoctrinations.
Eastgate started renting to non-whites, which caused problems with some locals,
but I’m sure it was a decision behind the scenes of power to do so, and this
timed along same timelines as Prince Edward Academy becoming Fuqua School and
finally allowing non-white (i.e. black) students. A woman I was around the same
age as wrote a book about how they need to fix Prince Edward County, where
Farmville is. She went to the private school. I stayed at my grandmother’s down
the hill from it, in the trailer park, a lot. This woman writer has been
successful in her career endeavors, and sometimes I’m resentful of how some
people have access to that while others (meaning myself) do not. But also, she
never hung out in a trailer park on a hill during a snowstorm where we had a
barrel fire at the top and rode a car hood down the icy paved hill all day
long, no fucks to be given, using old tires to plug the sewage drain system at
the bottom of the hill so as to not accidentally kill ourselves, but also
accidentally realizing (once snow and ice covered the tires a little) that we
could build a ramp at the bottom of the hill too.
Being broke sucks in this system, because this system is constantly trying to
sell you things, without relenting, so that every direction you turn, at home
on screens or in public with stores and billboards, there is something using
neurological triggers to make you want it. But you don’t have money, so you can’t
have it. This causes great shame because we’re also taught your economic status
is determined by meritocracy, and how hard you’ve worked and been rewarded. But
it’s just not true.
My grandmother’s trailer still exists, no longer
in Farmville but out in Meherrin. She died years ago, and my aunt lives there
now, with one of her sons, and there’s been a parade of people who’ve had to
take shelter there over the years. I went there a few months back because of a
thing that was going on, and the floor still sags here or there, and it’s tiny beyond
belief, and my aunt has updated the pictures on the wall so the old wall of history
that my grandmother had slowly built over time is gone. The same fucking trailer
from when I was like 5 – four decades of life squeezed out of this fabricated
home probably not meant to last that long ever, by design. How many of these “motorhomes”
exist in this Babylonian system, the wretched people at the bottom of the
socio-economic pyramid squeezing life out of these consumer items, making
broken things keep working, for as long as we are physically able? And people
still mock others as “trailer trash”… FYI, fuck y’all fake motherfuckers.
No comments:
Post a Comment