Time takes its toll on everything. I grew up in a trailer park. I never felt any less or more than anyone else though. I know the astigmatism associated with trailer parks but back in the day there were actually some very nice people that lived in there. They didn’t fit the “trailer park trash” scenario. Oh, don’t get me wrong I knew a few, hell I know a few people now that live in very nice houses I would classify as trailer park trash because of their behaviors and the association with the title. Yeah I know judge not.
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Some of them have earned my feelings on this though, trust me, eh or don’t. I have some very fond memories of growing up on the Sandpoint Road in that little trailer park. Playing for hours outside doing cops and robbers or going to the open field they had and playing baseball. I got beamed with the ball more than once in my lifetime. It was fun though and all the neighbors sort of watched out for each other and for all the children. We actually knew who our neighbors were. They would come and sit in lawn chairs and talk with us on many occasions. The memories are good ones but there is an old saying and in this case that you can’t ever go home appear to be spot on. A lot of those old neighbors I knew are long gone. They are a distant memory. There are still however a couple of their trailers standing yet in that park. It’s funny as I write this how vivid the memories of how it looked and how I felt at that time are coming back in a mass flood to my mind. It brings a tear because they are days that are gone forever except in my memory. I drove through that park the other day for a trip down memory lane and it’s nothing like it was when I lived there. The beauty that it did have has faded and it now lives up to the expectations people have of trailer parks. It’s dirty and dingy and to tell you the truth I could not help but wonder why the city had not shut it down. I took a few photos that I’ll share here of what it looks like now. Perhaps someday down the line I will take pictures of what it once looked like. Time though does take its toll on everything. The human body, the human spirit and all things material bend to its will. How it is the song says it? To everything there is a season and a time. Ah, I believe life has its seasons as well. In our childhood we are living in our springtime. In our twenties and thirties we have our summer.
Our fall comes with our forties and fifties which lead into the cold winter of the sixties and seventies. If you’re lucky you see past that time. It’s amazing to me how many people watch the seasons change every year and can’t see that it’s just earths own metaphor for their own lives. So yes time takes its toll on everything and we have nothing we can do but sit back and weather the storm. We seek shelter in the love and companionship of our friends and family. We learn life lessons too late sometimes and in other cases we relish the knowledge when it saves us from traveling down an abandoned road again. Life is what we make of it. There are things that are beyond our control, but for the most part our happiness and our wellness is in our own control. The park that I once lived in didn’t have to be allowed to decay and become what it is today. It was lack of caring and lack of pride perhaps. It saddens me to see it the way it is; however, the memories are always with me. They are and always will be forever in my mind.
