PACKAGED HOME SWEET HOMES
Until quite recently, I was unaware of the fact that the use of the word “trailer”- meaning a home which has qualities of mobility - has dropped out of our general-use vocabulary.
For many years we thought of a trailer and being as part of a substitute, temporary dwelling which was dragged from place as owner's work background demanded. It lived a relatively short life, as a rule, standing on stacked cinder block. It became modified, perhaps, as a “travel trailer” for a time, but, as such they got so ornate, fancy, frilly and frivolous that they defied normal types of lifestyle. Many even had swimming pools attached. It was more dragging of basic hotel facilities along behind a car or truck if one wanted to “travel:"or just move with the season to a warmed or cooler climates.
More and more people started putting them on a lot and built a regular house around them, so you would never know the original core had been a trailer at least from the outside. In time, the inside also became deceptively permanent to the casual visitor. l
”Trailers” are now a nostalgic oddity thought to be funny. Lucy and Desi Arnez took a vacation trip in one years ago in a motor less contraption lugged along by a pinned-on car or truck. We remember the flour-dusted predicament Lucy suffered when she rode in the trailer portion while Desi drove the overall rig remotely. That was, of course, illegal at the time, but it was done anyway other than in films.
We still have some trailer towns around the edges of our cities. Most of them stem from hard economic times when clusters of such dwellings festered in oft-times moldy groups on the edge of large cities. Some are still there, but they are being replaced for the simple reason that they are now thought of, and spoken of, as “slum areas” units.
The modern modular home, of course, is a totally different form of housing. They may have had a background of trailer-lore. Our American home also has a nostalgic factor in the form of the traditional log cabin, wigwam, hut or hogan. Modular home have become, in a real sense,come, which are to be placed on a permanent foundation , which happens to have been constructed somewhere else and transported to the site in sections and segments. The design and workmanship can be as as good as, or superior to, on-site construction which is subject to weather changes, environmental restrictions, noise regulations, material and supply shortage competitive labor problems and many other puzzling hazards. Such conditions add to the costs of construction, as well. In-plant construction of modular units makes more sense in many ways and is speedily becoming the accepted mode. Notice, if you will how roof trusses arrive at the on-site construction location completely assembled and are place in position and pinned down while suspended on a huge crane or derrick unit. The entire roof structure arrives on one truck and can be set in place secured and covered in a matter of hours rather than days, or weeks.
Housing styles,too, are changing rapidly, of course. In most of America what is being built most often is a two or three-car garage with living quarters attached. They will, naturally, tend to look very much alike with a central features given to it as a place to best keep the families wheeled vehicles.. Utility is the main theme, rather than beauty in anesthetic sense. The practical side of building can be a thing of beauty in an economics consideration and a joy to the pocketbook forever,too, enabling some people to be able to afford a good home The can have their dream come true much more reasonably.
To start with a home has to be a house. Making it a home is up to the people who choose to live there. Check on changes in zoning laws in your area. They are “a'changin'” and a modular home may prove to be right for your future.
A.L.M. March 9, 2003 [c690wds]
