The death of a home

[Alistair]

They moved a brick home close by, just across the street from where it had been. I have no idea why. It was moved to an open lot and created an open lot. The front of the house has a southern exposure, maybe they didn’t like that

 

[NotHardUp1]

They moved a brick home close by, just across the street from where it had been. I have no idea why. It was moved to an open lot and created an open lot. The front of the house has a southern exposure, maybe they didn’t like that

St. John's Episcopal Church in nearby Decatur, AL was literally lifted and rotated back about a century ago, apparently because the then priest didn't think it had been oriented correctly.

Talk about architectural feng shui!

 

[belamyi]

St. John's Episcopal Church in nearby Decatur, AL was literally lifted and rotated back about a century ago, apparently because the then priest didn't think it had been oriented correctly.

Where to, Jamestown?

 

[Peloso]

The first part of the OP reminded me of a house in the New Jersey town I used to live in. It, too was at a T intersection. The road that led up to it , James St., was a convenient conduit to both US Route 1 and the Menlo Park mall, so it got a lot of traffic all day and night. The thing was, though, that the house's driveway was aligned perfectly with the end of James St.. There was a stop sign, but stop signs mean nothing if it's late and you're drunk and speeding. One night, a car careened right through the stop sign, up the property's driveway, through the garage and into a hallway inside the house. No one in the house was hurt. I imagine the driver probably was but can't remember for sure.

Not exactly a freak accident because in less than a year after the house was repaired, the exact same thing happened again.

The property the house sat on was higher than the road. Rather than slope down to meet the sidewalk, the houses occupants had built a brick wall that always kind of looked like it was keeping the soil in the yard from tumbling out onto the sidewalk. After the second accident, the homeowners reconfigured the yard so that the driveway no longer aligned with James St ; the driveway instead crossed the front lawn, it's access to the main road was about 20 yards to the right. They, ofcourse, tore down a portion of the brick wall to make for access to and from the main road via the driveway, and extended the brick wall the the extreme left of the property where the driveway had been. It was still banked by the yard itself, so now instead of a ramp for drunk drivers, there was a brick wall reinforced by the yard itself. Impenetrable.

I moved shortly after, so I never knew if there was a third incident, which surely would have involved a tremendous crash and at least one casualty.

I just looked at Google maps and the house, wall and all, is still there. Only now there's a guardrail in front of the wall. I wonder if that's enough to avert a catastrophic crash.

 

[peeonme]

Well, that epithet is an honest one in how it evolved.

The early mobile homes were full of walls with plastic seams between sections and at corners. They had cheap windows, cheap linoleum, cheap carpets. The kitchens featured particle board (pressed sawdust) cabinets clad in paper veneers and with cheap hardware. The closets and hallways were small and narrow. Sometimes walls were covered in cheap wallpapers, but just as often, plastic panels.

Design accents were garish, glitzy bronze, brass, or other shiny finished plastic or aluminum trims.

They were just the housing equivalent of a Hostess Twinkie versus a Napoleon. Where building was particularly expensive, such as in the mountains or far from metropolitan areas with supplies, they made some degree of sense. They provided cheap, affordable modern housing for people who had been living in usually rural squalor, with dilapidated old houses without modern bathrooms, etc. They were built for blue-collar people.

As such, they attracted the poorest, and quickly became slum properties.

Over time, the quality of the homes improved and were used more for lake homes, or by people who had more money than the poor, but couldn't afford as large a home if they had to custom build one.

And, they began to be used in overpriced markets in big cities as affordable retirement communities. Those like Chuck lived in were actually nice places to live at one time. I saw one in Albuquerque which was indeed a beautiful neighborhood, except for the crowding, which I'm just not comfortable with. I love people, at a distance.

So, the epithet at some point migrated from condemning the relatively low quality of the materials to the neglect and abuse and condition of a mobile home once renters or recent owners had trashed it, included leaving toys out all over the property, broken mowers, piles of junk. There are most definitely people who live as trailer trash, but there are also the same behaviors in wealthy families when an old home ages out and some scion declines and can not longer pay help and begins to hang on to a property without maintaining it. See Cold Comfort Farm.

The first trailer I lived in wasn't in a park, rather it was parked in a driveway. It was 21 feet long that was just about 72 years ago. My dad worked construction and followed the work. I was brought "home" as a newborn in his Packard (don't know the year or model of said car) which was used to tow our home to the next site. Upon finding a job that would require no longer moving dad bought a new 10 x 50 foot "mobile home". We lived in a small trailer park about 3 miles outside of a small town that was around 40 miles north of Detroit Mi.

I loved living there, I was around 4 years old and started kindergarten the next year. Were there draw backs? I suppose that the place was indeed a bit cramped (to this day I like a "cozy" home) and I am sure that it wasn't built of the best materials.

However, the worst thing was dealing with the dregs of society! My goodness, the lowest of the low... knuckle dragging inbreed, ignorant low life's, unread, brutish sluggards that would refer to us as "trailer trash".

 

[NotHardUp1]

However, the worst thing was dealing with the dregs of society! My goodness, the lowest of the low... knuckle dragging inbreed, ignorant low life's, unread, brutish sluggards that would refer to us as "trailer trash".

Indeed. Trashy people exist at every eschelon of society.

 

[NotHardUp1]

The first part of the OP reminded me of a house in the New Jersey town I used to live in. It, too was at a T intersection. The road that led up to it , James St., was a convenient conduit to both US Route 1 and the Menlo Park mall, so it got a lot of traffic all day and night. The thing was, though, that the house's driveway was aligned perfectly with the end of James St..

There was a house in my hometown on a curve in the road, and idiot after idiot continued to plow through their front yard and crash.

Eventually, the owners had steel I-beams driven into the lawn as posts to serve as a barricade. It's probably illegal to set a minefield.