Mobile, home?
One of the most fantastic memories I have of college is when I was in my first year and we had to come up with a research project. I had no idea whatsoever what I wanted to write about and I was running out of time. I went to WVU and I had only been around Morgantown (college towns usually are self-contained and you really don't have to leave too far to find everything you need) and had never been outside of the town much.
Inspiration came one day when we were having pancakes at Denny's after a night of partying and I commented on how I had never had grits. My friends teased me mercilessly and told me that it was silly that I had not had grits being that we were in West Virginia. So sue me if I was kind of naive and never associated West Virginia with being barefoot and pregnant and snake handlers and trailer parks. And grits.
So I decided that I was going to do an ethnographic study as an outsider and would go into a community I was not familiar with and write my project. I came up with the idea of studying the cooking traditions of Appalachia and their ties to early immigrants of the zone. And where was I going to do this, you’d ask? Well, in several trailer parks around Morgantown. And off we went to find out what they cooked and where they got their recipes. A classmate and I knocked on doors in three trailer parks and got one of the most eye opening experiences of our lives.
We were actually well received by people who had nothing in common with us (it was painfully obvious we were college students and definitely not from West Virginia) and we learned a lot about cooking traditions in Appalachia and about human nature. Those people fed us and talked to us for hours and sent us to see their friends and relatives. At the end, we had to turn down invitations because we had a huge corpus of data and needed to do transcripts to start writing our paper.
When I watched this video by Vice about a trailer park in California, I wondered if the people in those trailer parks in West Virginia would be going through the same trials as these people in California. And my heart broke a little bit.
XOXO
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Just so you know, we have grits in Central PA. When I stayed with my grandparents we had 3 choices for breakfast: oatmeal, cream of wheat, or grits.
ReplyDeleteHahaha
DeleteI love oatmeal and cream of wheat is fine. But grits were new to me!
XOXO
One of the most expensive communities to live in is a trailer park in Malibu, Seriously; it overlooks the ocean.
ReplyDeleteI can absolutely believe that.
DeleteThey have become prohibitively expensive. The people who live there are literally exploited.
XOXO
In my opinion, affordable housing must always be based on the non-profit model and any city or government that is truly committed to affordable housing needs to use that model.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely!
DeleteBut as you saw, corporations are taking over non-profits. That horrible man sold the park to the highest bidder He probably got money out of it, too.
Housing is big business.
XOXO
I’ve seen stories about this happening across the country. It’s deplorable what is happening in these communities. The residents may own the trailer, but the land is being sold out from under them.
ReplyDeleteWhen they default and are evicted, they don’t have the money to relocate their trailer, if it is in any state to be moved. They’ll be charged to remove the trailer and will most likely be sued to recover those costs. It’s a lose-lose situation for them.
XOXO 👨🏼❤️💋👨🏽
It is absolutely heartbreaking.
DeleteFor people to still think that trailer parks are for 'poor people' is disingenuous at best. They may own the mobile homes, but like you said, they are exploited for the land in which they are located.
Horrible situation. Capitalism is evil.
XOXO
MMM. I love a good plate of grits!
ReplyDeleteHahaha
DeleteI think I prefer them sweet though..
XOXO
The MMM grits comment was me. Not sure what happened again. Technology can't live with it, can't live without it. But really? Haven't had grits?
ReplyDeleteOh, Blogger is very temperamental.
DeleteAnd I have had grits. I prefer oatmeal, though...
XOXO
This is a great argument... proving once and for all that capitalism is evil. When the man spoke about packing his things in his car and sleeping on the expressway I just... man. That is harsh. This is not what our lives should be about - ever. Creating homelessness. Deciding you'd rather deal with this kind of people and not that kind. This is racism. This creating poverty. This is ruining people's lives. This... is capitalism. Why are people so greedy? What is the need? Someone... do a paper on that.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I firmly believe there is an evil plan in DC to make everyone in this country either extremely rich or extremely poor.No in between. It's already happening...hence why some are working two and 3 jobs just to stay above water....and will not let themselves be poor, but stay middle class. It shouldn't be that way. We are going to cause our own destruction.
DeleteOh, capitalism is evil, that's right.
DeleteIt is also the foundation of the United States. These stories are so heartbreaking... But conservatives love keeping the status quo: the poor need to stay poor and the rich need to stay rich: it's the law of capitalism. There always needs to be an exploited class. Why do you think Repugs hate everything the 'progressives' do?
And Maddie is correct. People need two and three (!!) jobs just to say above water. Ugh. So glad they passed student loan relief.
XOXO
That was an interesting video. Makes me wonder how much longer trailer parks will survive. And I agree with Deb's comment.
ReplyDeleteMorgantown???? Are you from there? Or just school? When my maternal grandmothers' parents came over from Czechoslovakia, they settled in Morgantown! My grandmother was the only one to leave the state once married. I went with her once when I was very young when she went to visit her siblings. She would go down every summer. The siblings all lived on acres of land. Each had their own large home, with a short distance drive between each. Heavens knows what the price of that land must be. To my knowledge, their all passed on, except for their children, many of whom would be my mother's age or older now. Other than that, I never saw anything else, or again of WV.
Haha
DeleteNo, I only went to college there. West Virginia is a beautiful state and two or three generations ago it was full of immigrants. All the recipes we collected were left to the people by their European ancestors. Some were written in languages other than English.
I cannot imagine what that land may be worth today.
And trailer parks will survive because landowners and corporations will always have someone desperate enough and poor enough to live there...
XOXO