Goodbye Number 20

When I was young, my dad drove me through a trailer park in Orem.  He told me that if I wasn't careful, I would wind up married to a guy who would bring me to live in a trailer park.  He suggested that he'd help me find a good husband and I was relieved.
I guess I grew up thinking that trailer park husbands were pretty scary, and trailer houses in general were scary too.  I mean look at the statistics of trailers that get destroyed in tornados!
Anyway, my dad didn't have much to do with picking out Mike for me, but he did approve.  Mike also owned a trailer house.  He had pulled it into a park in Smithfield just after his mission and rented it out to help pay for college.  He sold that trailer just before we got married.
My parents owned storage units that had exterior storage space.  Someone had parked a trailer house on it and were delinquent on their payments for years.  We were engaged and Mike saw opportunity with that trashy trailer.  It went to auction and we picked it up for 500 bucks.  Before I knew it, I was marrying a man that was taking me to a trailer park!

 


We pulled the trailer into the park in Smithfield and I have some fond memories of fixing it up.  I was living in Orem, so I drove up with my dad a few Saturdays that month to help fix it up.


Left to right, piece of crap trailer with no siding, my dad, Brian,ladder that squished my dad's hand earlier in the day,  Mike, Scott, and me. 

 We spent a lot fixing it up.  New siding, windows, paint, carpet, furnace, and all sorts of other problems that arose from it sitting so long.  We had a room that we called the dead cat room.  Something had crawled up under that room and died.  On hot summer days, the room would stink so bad it drove us crazy.
We lived in that trailer for a year.  My memories are of frozen pipes in the winter, and icicles in the bathroom shower when our furnace went out.  They are of burning candles to combat the dead cat smell.  Memories of finding wet patches of carpet every time it rained, of Mike climbing up on the roof to tar the holes up to eliminate the wet patches of carpet.  I remember doing laundry in our tiny hall, and playing hours of Dr. Mario on the Nintendo with Mike when he got home from work.  I remember making new recipes...and discovering that Mike isn't a fan of broccoli cheese soup (I was on a quest to find the best recipe for it and he told me when I got to the 3rd or 4th that he doesn't like it...no matter what recipe I tried). 
I remember the sounds the trailer would make as it settled at night.  I swear it was haunted (possibly by the dead cat).  Mike said it was just the way trailers are. 
Mike got me a dishwasher for my birthday because I was a diva and hadn't ever lived without one before and it was cramping my style.

My new birthday dishwasher, flowers, and book (Walden)

I remember setting up the decorations of my very first Christmas as a married girl and thinking that it was pretty fun.   Remember the story of the screwed on top of the tree?

 

I also remember the day that the man came to fix the furnace.  He showed up with long hair, no teeth, tattoos everywhere and exclaimed that he felt like he was home again because he grew up in our trailer park.  When Mike came home from work that day, I told him there was no way we would be raising our kids there :)
 

So, the point of this post is to say goodbye to good old trailer number 20.  When we found the house we live in now, we rented the trailer.  Eventually, we found a buyer.  She couldn't get credit to buy it outright, so we were the bank.  For 8 years, she helped pay our mortgage.  We worried that one day, she'd tire of the dead cat room, and the leaky ceiling and quit making payments.  But she didn't.  And this summer, she paid it off.
When we moved into our house, Mike and I worried about affording the mortgage.  We always said that at least we still had the trailer that we could go back to if we needed to sell the house.  I think we were in our house for about a month when we realized that we could never go back :)
We do have some great memories of that place.  It was a great first home and a great way to start out our marriage.  I love looking back at the pictures and remembering those days.  In a way, my dad was wrong about marrying a guy that would take me to a trailer house.  Starting out in a trailer park helped us get to where we are now.  I'm glad Mike was ambitious enough to see the potential in that piece of junk we hauled up to Smithfield.
Now, it's officially someone else's home, but because of it, my kids are growing up in the best neighborhood ever.  So, goodbye number 20.  Thanks for the memories and for helping us get where we are today!