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| Early 21st Century |
Recently I was
sitting outside drinking coffee while the sun climbed into the morning sky.
As I was sipping my pre-breakfast cup I started thinking about
something. Let me set the stage.
When I was a
preschool aged boy "the early 1950's" we lived in a house down a small unpaved
side street across from a trailer park. I
remember clearly my mother telling me that I was not to associate with the
children or the other folks who lived in that trailer park. She told me that there was one nice older
lady who had been there for quite some time that we considered a friend and who
was safe, but the rest of the residents were off limits. I don't think she ever used the terms, but
she insinuated that the people who lived in trailer park were
"transients" and "trailer trash." The insinuation had very negative
connotations that the people living there were not our kind of people.
As I looked
around me that morning I observed that I was beginning my day right in the
middle of a trailer park. And i was probably going to associate with the folks in that park. It was a trailer park of the early 21st century and
it was much different from the one I remember as a small boy. There are thousands of these parks dotting
the countryside and they are called "RV parks." These RV parks do not for the most part
contain people that fit the demographic of people my mother worried may be living in the trailer parks of the early 1950's. But instead they are filled with people who
have been reasonably successful at something throughout their working careers
and who were considered upstanding members of established communities. They are not people about whom mothers would warn
their children not to associate. In
fact, a large percentage of them are grandparents who from time to time have
their grandchildren with them. Instead
of one nice older lady like my mother told me about in the park across the street, the park is full of nice
older men and women. I am talking about
retired people.
Perhaps the most
interesting group of people I meet in these trailer parks are the RV
"fulltimers." These are people
who live full time in their RV. They are
interesting to me because after spending a lifetime accumulating stuff and
being a part of a fixed location community of neighbors, churches, schools,
civic organizations, hospitals, etc. (you get the idea); they decided to
sell, give away, or throw away 95% of their stuff, leave everything else behind
and move into 200 to 400 square feet of space that moves around from place to
place. What would motivate people to do
such a thing? That is the question that
makes them interesting.
Our economy is
built on obtaining stuff. Our society also has a huge group (town, school, community) spirit component. But when these people retired they moved away
from all that in a big way. An extreme
downsizing took place. Were they
rejecting their previous life style with its set of drivers?
I don't think
they were rejecting their previous lifestyle.
But I believe they felt a need to retreat from that lifestyle to
experience a life directed by a different set of drivers. They felt the need to live life in a
different way to achieve different things.
With their new lives they are making a statement that their past lives do
not represent the only valid way to live.
These “fulltimers” are truly interesting people.
Note about the picture: Our rig is the fourth one on the right. It is the one with the dark brown front cap. The park is in Jersey City, NJ just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Note about the picture: Our rig is the fourth one on the right. It is the one with the dark brown front cap. The park is in Jersey City, NJ just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
