Question of the Day

When did “trailer courts” become “mobile home parks”? I keep seeing all this coverage of Hurricane Katrina — which, of course, every time I hear the name of, I naturally start to hum that smile-inducing song, “Walking on Sunshine,” sung by those one-hit wonders, Katrina & the Waves! — and pictures of wind-ravaged, rain-pelted mobile home parks. But no trailer courts.

Huh.

When I was a kid, my aunt lived in a trailer court. Briefly. And what I remember most is spending the night with her and then getting to ride the bus to school the next day. Which, when you don’t have to do it every day, is a treat and an adventure, all rolled into one. (The adventure actually occurs after school when you have to manage, somehow, to remember which bus you’re s’posed to get on. Not as easy a task as it sounds!)

: )

What I remember second-most is the kid who lived in the trailer court who had part of a pop bottle embedded in his head. I think it was the result of a fight with some older kids.

My dad also lived in a trailer court a few years later. Briefly. What I remember most about that is how loud the rain sounded when it hit the trailer, and how cold the pop was in the bottles in the Coke machine in the laundromat, from which Debra, Bobby and I were constantly trying to figure out ways to get free bottles of pop.

(I have lived in Southern Illinois for many, many years now; hence, I now refer to “pop” as “soda,” usually, although when I order it, I usually just say, “Coke.” Which actually prompted a girl working at the Jimmy John’s near Navy Pier in Chicago to ask, “Are you from the South?” To which I replied, “Well, Southern Illinois” — knowing that, to most people from Chicago, anything south of Kankakee is considered “the South.” She told me that most people from the South order pop/soda by saying, “Coke.” [I asked her where she was from, and she said, “Houston” — which confuzzled the heck outta me!])

: )