The Beer Whore

One of my trailers was occupied by a guy named Dave. He was a good tenant, for the most part. He had a little bit of a drinking problem, but went to work, paid his rent on time and never really caused any problems.  One day I noticed a woman on the porch of his trailer. I went by, introduced myself as the owner and she told me she was Dave’s girlfriend and her name was Rhonda. I told her that, if she was going to stay for more than 3 days in the trailer park, that she would have to pass a background check according to Dave’s lease agreement. She said, okay, but without offering any more information. I mentioned it to Dave and he said that she was just hanging out now and then and wasn’t living there. I’ve heard that before and told him that I’d be watching. 

A week or so went by and Dave caught my eye and motioned me over to his porch. Mr. Paul, I need your help! Sure, I responded, if I can help, I’d be happy to. What’s going on? Well, I’d like to get her out of my trailer, but she won’t leave. Can you throw her out? I think that’s your job, Dave, I responded. What happened?

He took a breath and rolled his eyes and said, “Well, the other night, we were having a few beers and we ran out. She asked me to go to the store and get some more…well, I was half drunk and didn’t want to get in my car. the cops know me, ya know?” Good call, I said, “What happened then?”

“She said, Oh, I’ll get us some beer, if you won’t. Then she left and walked over to Sammy’s trailer and knocked on the door and went in. She came back about 20 minutes later with a 6 pack of beer in one hand and her panties in the other. she screwed the guy for a 6 pack…and it was only LIGHT fuckin’ beer, ya know?”

I could hardly keep from laughing and said, “so just throw her out’. “Okay, I’ll try’.

A couple of more days went by and I didn’t really think about Dave and the Beer Whore. In a 27 unit low income trailer park, there’s always a new crisis to deal with, so Dave’s issue wasn’t at the forefront, until I saw a Police car in front of his unit. I walked over and said hello to the officer. He knew me and said “I was just telling Dave that he can’t just throw that girl out, ‘cause she’s been living there for a while. He has to legally evict her”. I knew there was no way Dave had the resources, either financial or otherwise to pull off a legal eviction. We both told the cop that we understood, and thanked him for his time. I had good relations with the local Police and wanted to keep it that way. 

I told Dave that we could work together and get her out. We hatched a plan for me to evict him, for lack of payment ( he was paid up, but Rhonda didn’t know that!) I would send him a formal notice, but NOT file it with the County. He would complain loud and long about me being an asshole, and he was outta there! A few trusted people in the park were in on the deal and we arranged to take Dave’s furniture  and possessions out of the trailer and stash them in a few different trailers. Once the trailer was empty, Rhonda picked up her bags and left. 

A few days later, Dave moved back in with the help of friends, furniture reappearing overnight. We all had a good laugh over it, particularly when Dave said that it was the hardest he ever worked to get laid. He said if she had come back with at least a whole case of Good beer, he might have thought about keeping her around. I guess a 6 pack of Keystone Light just didn’t make the cut!   

Earl Flanagan

One of the things about owning a trailer park that I wasn’t prepared for was the mystery and misery of a Lift Station. A lift station is a sewage thing. All the trailers in the park were connected to the lift station by 4” sewer pipes that allowed their waste to flow by gravity to this deep six foot in diameter concrete tube stuck in the ground about 16 feet deep. All the waste water ran into this tube where it was ground up and pumped out by special high powered pumps into the County sewage system. There were two pumps that alternated the job of grinding up shit, toilet paper and whatever else was drained out of 27 mobile homes. the two pumps alternated to share the load but also to provide redundancy. If both pumps went out you had about 24 hours to empty the lift station by one means or another. 

Septic pumping businesses provided two services. In an emergency they could pump out the waste and remove it but a truck only held a little over 1,000 gallons which isn’t much so it was a very expensive and inefficient way to remove waste and suitable for only the most dire emergency. The other service they provided was to pump out the Solids that would accumulate in the bottom of the lift station. it was important to do this every 6 months or so to keep the pumps from being damaged, at least that was my understanding. 

I was scared to death of having my lift station screw up as I couldn’t conceive of having to deal with 10,000 gallons of shit. I resolved to have the solids pumped out on a regular basis. So, after asking around, I found a company called Monroe’s Sand and Septic, who provided this service. I called them up an scheduled a pump out. on the appointed  day, more or less on time, the big Septic Pump Out Truck rolled into my maintenance area of the trailer park. the driver got out, came over with his hand extended and introduced himself as Earl Flanagan, I took his hand, trying not to think of what it may have touched earlier in the day, and introduced myself and thanked him for coming. 

“I’m the best in the business’ Earl declared. “Nobody pumps out septic tanks like me”. Unsure how to respond to his boast, I just replied that I was glad to have the best in the business. Earl was already unrolling big corrugated hoses and laying the out in a straight line, coupling them together and started to drop one end into the lift station. It was about 1/3 full and I asked if he wanted me to pump it down all the way. He said “No, I’ll need some liquid to do the job right”. Assuming that he knew his business, I said okay. Pretty soon he had the pipes connected to a powerful pump on the back of his truck which, once started made short work of sucking shit, garbage, toilet paper tampons and condoms into his truck at an amazing speed. once the pipe made a big sucking sound, indicating that it had sucked all the treats from the hole, Earl said “That’s pretty much all of it…now stand back and I’m gonna show ya why I’m the best in the business!”

When a guy named Earl who has 1,000 gallons of liquified shit on his truck, connected to a high pressure pump and a 3” corrugated hose, tells you to Stand Back!. you damn sure stand back. Earl threw a big lever on his pump, informing me that he was reversing the pump, which started spewing shit at high velocity, back into the lift station! He yelled, over the noise of the splattering shit, this knocks the stick-on off the walls of the lift station. it’s the only way to get ALL of it off. Earl reversed the pump again, rapidly sucking the shit stew back out of the lift station into the truck. he put down the hose, leaned over the edge of the lift station and said, “there’s still some stuck on there….the last guy didn’t know what the fuck he was doin’ “. Not to be deterred Earl flipped the lever yet again, sending  a high pressure fecal flow at the offending and stubborn stick-on. At last the stubborn shit yielded to Earl’s efforts and he, again, reversed  the pump into suck out mode. This time, the powerful slurping sound was the last of the efforts and Earl shut the valve and turned off the mighty pump. “This here lift looks clean as a whistle now. Call me every 6 months and we’ll keep ‘er that way”. Inwardly cringing at the thought of a 16’ deep tube of shit being compared to a whistle, made me wish that I hadn’t made plans with a friend to go to lunch. 

Earl was a good as his word though, and whenever there was any problem with the lift station, he knew the answer. I don’t think that he ever noticed that I never shook his hand again.

Girl Dog

I make my living renting my properties. I own 30 residential units, a two unit warehouse and a couple of offices. My major property is a 27 unit low income trailer park. I might be considered a “Slumlord” but I keep the trailers in pretty decent condition for the price I charge for them. I’m very strict about drugs and problem people and I try to give my tenants good value for their hard earned $. I do most of my own maintenance and spend a few days each week working on various properties for maintenance and improvements. I don’t allow dogs in my trailer park since the units are close together and dogs are a nuisance in those conditions.

One day I was working on a trailer in the back row of my park when I noticed that one of my tenants “Rose” had a dog by her side. I said “Rose, you know that dogs aren’t allowed in the park…why do you have a dog?” Well, Rose is a woman of about 5 feet tall and maybe 90 lbs. She has the thickest Southern accent I ever heard and she responds ( I’ll attempt to write in dialect here) “Wey’ll, the dawg belongs to Steven’s (her husband) Grandmaw an’ she’s sick inna hospital an she didden have nobody to take care the dawg.” I responded ” I’m sorry that Steven’s Grandmother is sick, but you can’t keep the dog here. you’ll have to find another place for the dog to live”. Rose, ever agreeable, said ‘AwRight”

A few days went by and I happened upon Rose again and she told me that Steven had taken the dog to live with some friends. I thanked her for complying with the rules and never thought about the dog again. Until a few days later….when I saw Rose walking down the line of trailers with her “Dawg” by her side. I asked her why she had the dog back in my trailer park again. Rose responded “Wey’ll Steven had ta go git the dawg and bring it back here cuz his friends broke tha dawgs jaw” The dog looked OK to me but I had to ask, “How did they break the dog’s jaw?” Rose replied…(take a deep breath here ) “they broke tha dawgs jaw havin’ sex with tha dawg” 

What do you say to that? All that I could manage was “Your husband has friends who have sex with dogs?” Rose never missed a beat before responding “Wey’ll it’s a girl dawg!”  ( When I tell the story, this is where I slap the side of my head and say) “Oh, of course! It’s a girl dog!” I was thinking it might be a little weird otherwise.

After taking a breath or two and digesting the information I had to ask, ” but I still don’t understand…how did they break the dog’s jaw having sex with the dog?”  Rose looked down at the ground and shifted her weight from one flip flopped foot to the other and said “Ah don’t know if they broke the dawg’s jaw holdin on to it while they’s havin’ sex with tha hind end a tha dawg or if the broke her jaw havin sex with tha front end a th dawg”. She paused and frowned and went on ” If Ah find out that they had sex with tha front end o th dawg, Ah’m really gonna be mad”.

Apparently, there are some lines that you just don’t cross when having sex with a dog. Even when it’s a Girl Dog. Lesson learned.

Fitty, the Duck and the Great Pizza Payoff

I was careful when renting my trailers to do thorough background checks and to have clauses in my leases that and “Guests” that stay longer than 3 days have to submit to background checks as well. Most times I didn’t enforce that rule if the Tenant was responsible and the guest seemed okay. But there were times that I needed to have that tool available to me. 

Trailer #8 was one of those times. As a one bedroom, one bath unit it was one of my smallest trailers. The Tenant ,Gerald, had been fairly reliable and hadn’t caused any trouble. One month, his rent payment was late and, when I spoke to him, he told me that he had lost his job but was pretty sure that he had another one lined up and he would catch up on his rent. Whenever this happened, it almost always ended in the Tenant falling behind and eventually leaving of their own accord or getting evicted. Once in a while they would get back on their feet and catch up. I was usually pretty patient with well behaved tenants in a situation like this as having a tenant leave, cleaning up, repairing , and finding a suitable replacement was not an easy task. 

About a week after the conversation with Gerald, he told me that his cousin was coming to visit and would be staying for a few days and would pay him something that he would pass on to me. Sure enough, a few days later, I meet his cousin a twenty-something very large girl and, unexpectedly her Boyfriend. He introduced himself as “Fitty”. I welcomed them and told them that they could only stay a short time as the One Bedroom trailer was limited to occupation to a single person or a couple. They mumbled what passed as agreeing. I wasn’t surprised when, after a week, they hadn’t moved on and “Fitty” had taken walking around the Park and talking to everyone he could find. He was an extremely fit young Black man who spoke in a hard to understand Ghetto vernacular. Other Tenants had started to ask me who he was and why he was here, not an unusual thing in a mostly White, low income trailer park in the South. 

I approached “Fitty”and Gerald one day and gave them forms to fill out to do the background checks and reminded them that they couldn’t stay in that trailer any longer. They said “Okay”. A day or two later, I approached Gerald to get the background check forms and told him that, if they passed the check and had the money, I could move all of them to a larger trailer. He agreed that would be a good thing. Later that day, Fitty came by my office/ shop area and told me they wanted to rent a trailer and handed me one of the background check forms. The form had the information for his girlfriend, Eugena but, in the area for his info it read:

Mr. Paul, it’s almost Thanksgiving and me and Eugena got nowhere to go and she’s pregnant, so do me a solid and give me a place to live for the Holidays. Thanks, Fitty Niggas.  

Well, now I knew what Fitty meant. It was ghetto for “Fifty” and I was amazed that he referred to himself as “Fifty Niggers”.  Obviously, he seemed unfit as a prospective Tenant, with no background information, no income information or employer and not even a real name use in a background check. That night I wrote up an eviction form and gave it to my Tenant Gerald the next day. A few days later I was informed by Gerald that the steps going to the back door of the trailer had collapsed with Eugena and Fitty on the steps. She was “only shaken up and bruised” but Fitty had been more seriously injured. 

I went to the trailer to find the the steps had, indeed, collapsed and that Fitty was limping around on crutches telling me he was going to “own the Trailer Park soon”. 

I repaired the steps and told Gerald that the Eviction Order would be enforced. I regularly checked the steps to the units as an insurance company requirement. There had been nothing wrong with them. The Tenant next door told me that he had seen Fitty, jumping up and down on the steps and purposely destroying them and once he had torn them down, he took photos of his Eugena, placed among the wreckage. The neighbor also told me that Fitty was going to lawyers to find someone to sue me. 

It took about a week, but eventually I got a letter in the mail from a Lawyer named Barbara La Duque. It was a notification that I had to pay a certain amount of money or face a lawsuit for some astronomical sum of money. What was strange was that the letter was not sent registered or certified and that the envelope and stationery was cheap discount store stock and had been printed on a low quality inkjet printer.  I looked up Ms. La Duque and found that she actually was a lawyer, but had changed addresses 4 times in the previous two years and had been evicted from the last office just a few months before. It appeared that she was operating out of a residence in a small neighborhood. The letter, fortunately, contained Fitty’s real name. After a few hours, I found that Fitty was on Parole from a prison in Tennessee where he had been released after serving time for assault. A little more searching yielded the name and phone number of his parole officer, who was very happy to take my call. He told me that Fitty had NOT been showing up for his required check ins and that he had no idea where Fitty was. I gave him  Fitty’s temporary address and he thanked me and said he would have him picked up. 

That day Fitty approached me and told me that he “would drop the lawsuit” if I would give him and Eugena a trailer to live in. I told him that I did not rent to people who had been convicted of violent crimes. He asked what I meant, so I told him that I knew of his conviction for Assault. He responded with “Assault is a violent crime?” I assured him that it was and I left him yelling that he was gonna sue me and that he “would own the trailer park”. As for Barbara La Duque, who I renamed ‘the Duck” I called her and told her that her client was a fugitive Parolee, who had intentionally destroyed the trailer steps and she could file her lawsuit if she wanted. She responded that “she would sue me on behalf of the pregnant Eugena” who according to The Duck was just now discovering some health issues.

I knew that The Duck would never file anything except maybe her own nails, so I wasn’t all that worried but thought that I should try to head off trouble be getting her to sign a “Hold Harmless” document stating that she was not injured and was not seeking any legal remedy. I found the required legal language and typed up the form, complete with signature blocks for her, my company and a witness. 

A few days later I heard that Fitty had been picked up and was on St, John County jail awaiting transportation back to prison in Tennessee , so I thought the time was right to approach Eugena with my Hold Harmless document. I went with my employee, Jeff, to serve as a witness. Eugena came to the door and asked me what I wanted. I explained that I wanted her to sign this document and in exchange, she and her cousin could stay in the trailer and I would forgive Gerald’s back rent. She thought for a minute, asked me to repeat the deal and took the clipboard to look at the document. She quickly looked it over and was about to sign it. I was relieved to get the thing resolved…but then, her eyes narrowed as she looked up at me and said, “Wait a minute” I groaned mentally at having gotten so close to closing this deal, and she continued “Can I get a large Pizza, too”?

As I pulled my phone out of my pocket I asked, “Is pepperoni okay”?

Uncle Daddy

At first, Monica in #15 seemed like just another typical Single Trailer Park Mom. She passed the background check with only a few traffic tickets scattered amongst her court records which mostly had to do with her divorce a few years previously. She was a pretty nice looking woman, if you stepped back far enough. Tall and slender, from a distance you couldn’t see the thick hooker looking makeup or the unrealistic colored contacts to go with the heavily sprayed “Big Hair” 

Still, in my business, looks don’t matter as long as the rent was paid and, aside from a few complaints about her trailer from time to time and some rumors about her drama…she was a good tenant. She worked in some kind of “sales” and seemed to change jobs often but, for the most part, paid her rent. If I saw her, I tried to avoid any conversation as she could talk for a long time about nothing.   

Like most single women, she got her share of attention from the constantly-on-the-prowl men in the Park. Still, I never heard much in the way of rumors about her romantic entanglements which was surprising, because rumors traveled fast when people lived in such close proximity and sex was a popular pastime in the trailer park. I became aware that Monica was related in some way to the guy in the trailer next to her. It wasn’t until I heard her kid refer to “Uncle Daddy” that I became curious about the connection. A few discrete inquiries provided the answer pretty quickly. Her neighbor was her ex-husband’s brother and, it turned out, the father of her second child. I guess that she didn’t try to keep it a secret, so her son got to know his Uncle as “Uncle Daddy”. That was a little over the top even for a low income trailer park but only a little and soon people accepted the relationship between the neighbor and Monica’s son. I never really found out ( or cared) if they were still an item or not. 

Monica, like many others before her, eventually fell behind in her rent and after many promises that she would “catch up” or “find a way to pay” she wore out my patience and I gave her the “Pay or Quit” notice that was the first official step towards eviction. A few weeks later she was just another former Trailer Park tenant and moved on.

Mike and Early On Line Dating

Mike’s a rare case of a Father who had custody of his kids . A woman in Florida has to be pretty awful to not get custody of her kids in a divorce. I guess the former “Mrs. Mike” must have fit that description. Mike was a pretty reliable Tenant and seemed to be a good Father. His early teenage kids rarely caused any trouble and were respectful with their dealings with adults in the Park. Mike went to work every day as a grounds keeper on a local golf course. He paid his rent on time and drove a decent car, which was always a sign of stability in the lower wage bracket folks. Aside from keeping too much junk on his front deck, he was a trouble free Tenant. 

Mike used to like to talk to me, and I would try to give my Tenants some time if they wanted to talk as it helped me keep tabs on what was going on in the Park. One day Mike told me that he was really excited because he had met a woman on line through a Dating Site, and they were going to finally have a date in person. I sincerely wished him luck and was genuinely curious about how it would work out for him. 

I didn’t see Mike for about a week and when I did, I asked him how it went with his date. He responded that “it didn’t go too well. she came over to my place and she didn’t look like her pictures. She was kinda big”. I said, “So, I guess you won’t see her again, how’d she take it?”  Mike looked down at the ground, shook his head and said, “I dunno, we drank some beer, and I fucked her. and then told her I was going out to get some more beer”. “Okay,” I said, “What happened when you went back?” His response floored me….”I didn’t go back for three days, I just waited for her to leave.My kids were at my ex’s place so I didn’t have to worry about that. She eventually gave up and left”.

Mike looked genuinely sad when he said, “I had to spend another $9 for another month on the dating site to see if I can find a better one”. 

So, What Are You Selling?

I always tried to keep drug users out of my Trailer Park and I tried even harder to keep dealers out. After owning the park for a while, a lot of the tenants trusted me and appreciated my efforts to make the Park a good place to live. From time to time, one of those people would come to me a whisper “Mr. Paul, I gotta tell ya somethin” . When I heard that, I always listened because that’s how I would know who was doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. 

So, one afternoon, I got a tip that maybe I should keep an eye on unit #5, that there was a lot of traffic, mostly on Friday afternoons, Payday. Sure enough, I arranged to be nearby, “working” on an empty unit and I saw enough vehicles come and go after a short time, to be pretty sure that something was being sold. I started asking some of the guys if they knew what was going on and bit by bit, the situation became clear. 

Yes, the Tenant was selling drugs, mostly weed and some pills, but that wasn’t all. He was also selling his WIFE. There was plenty of sex happening in the Trailer Park but I never expected this. She was a good looking young woman, and I never saw her leaving to go to work or out of the trailer very much. i guess she was one of the original work-from-home women. It made me feel sad, but my only option was clear…they had to go. They still had about 8 months to go on their lease so I had to convince them to voluntarily move on. 

I arranged to be nearby when my Tenant was coming out to his car and came up to him and asked if he had a minute to talk. He had little choice but to agree. I told him what I knew about the weed and pills and mentioned that I heard his wife was “involved”. At the mention of “wife” he brightened up…”Do you want to come in and talk to her? She can tell you that I’m a good guy and not a dealer”. I told him that I wasn’t interested in “talking” to his wife and the only thing that I wanted was for him to be gone. He protested that he wan’t doing anything wrong. I responded “Then, you won’t care if you get a visit from the cops sometime, like maybe when there’s a few friends of yours hanging around”. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” he yelled. “I have friends in the Sheriff’s office, they’ll come pretty much anytime I ask. So, you should plan on being gone by the end of next week”. 

He was gone a few days before the deadline and, as usual, the trailer was trashed. I was used to it and glad to have him gone. 

The Boys

It wasn’t unusual to have a trailer vacate and have a Tenant in another trailer ask if they could move to the now-empty one, particularly if it was a more desirable trailer. This happened when #19 came empty. It was a good move-out. The previous Tenant had left it clean and had paid her rent right until the end and even qualified to get her security deposit back, something that rarely happened in the Park.

I made a few upgrades and did a little painting, pleased that I wasn’t having to repair damage as was all too frequently the case. So, when two Tenants from elsewhere in the Park asked if they could look at the unit, I was okay with it. They were two rather large men and they were currently in a tiny 2 bedroom / 1 bath trailer, so #19 would be a nice upgrade for them, being a much larger 2 bedroom / 2 bath unit. Since their rent  was up to date, I agreed to let them rent it if their current unit was in good condition. they insisted that it was, so we arranged for me to inspect it and talked about the terms of making the move and the increased rent. Their unit was in good shape and a really easy one to rent so there was no reason for me to not let the move happen. 

A couple months later, I began to have concerns. Since #19 was right on the in park access road and across from the Park’s dumpster, I was passing by it much more than their previous location. I would sometimes hear a lot of noise…from the boys. not yelling, but more of a passionate type of sound. I had never suspected that they were gay and didn’t care, but they were quite loud. I wasn’t sure about how to approach them about the noise, just as if they were a heterosexual couple, I would have felt the same awkwardness. Finally, I decided to pretend that I had been passing by and heard the sounds and wondered if someone was hurt. 

I knocked on the door one afternoon while there was an encounter in progress. Someone yelled “Go away!” to which I responded “Landlord! Are you okay?” The trailer got quiet for a moment and then “just a minute!”. a few minutes later the door was opened by a sweaty large man, that I barely recognized as one of the Tenants.  “WHAT?!” he shouted. “I thought it sounded like someone was in pain, and thought I should check. Some of the neighbors have mentioned that you guys are kind of loud” I lied. “We’re just having some fun, go away!” and he slammed the door in my face. Following that exchange, the rent payments began to be spotty, late and eventually, not at all. I served a “Pay or Quit” notice which is the first step in eviction and was rewarded with a nasty phone call and a conspicuously missing rent payment. I served them eviction papers and got the usual  “You can’t evict us for 90 days!”  to which i responded with my usual recounting of the step by step eviction procedure, along with my assurances that I was very good at it and did NOT need a lawyer for the process. I made my usual “Just leave, and avoid having an eviction on your record” offer. Apparently convinced , the BOYS were soon sweating their possessions into their cars. 

Eventually, I assumed the were gone and let myself in. Yep! the TV was gone. no matter what kind of crap a tenant left behind, they ALWAYS took their TV. This place was no exception, Trash strewn about, rotting food in the fridge, it looked like the usual repossessed trailer…until I went into the hallway bathroom and saw a sight I’ll always remember. Two handprints above the toilet, made by someone facing the toilet with their arms over their heads. The prints were smeared and looked greasy and stained, but it was more than that…they were indented into the wall. The bathroom, like many in the trailer park, had thin drywall on top of even thinner wood paneling and the handprints had been on the wall with such  force that they compressed the drywall while splintering the paneling beneath. 

No matter how many times I troweled spackle over the handprints, they seemed to continue to show through, never letting me stop imagining the act of passion that had occurred there. “THE BOYS” left their image in trailer #19 forever.

Cat Dog

There was a rule in the trailer park, no dogs were permitted. The trailers were too close together, so noise was a problem without dogs barking and few of the Tenants were likely to be responsible enough  to walk, and clean up after their dogs, had I permitted them. Of course, I had plenty of people trying to get around the rules, by insisting, without merit, that their dog was a service animal or was, somehow, so wonderful that the rule should not apply to them. 

Trailer #21 was kind of a legacy trailer…originally occupied by someone, who bought in a friend to help pay the rent, and the original tenant departed leaving the friend to casually assume the lease. “Legacy Girl” was so unremarkable, that I don’t remember her name, what she looked like, her age or any of the other usual identifiers. Her sole distinction was her creative effort to be allowed a dog. 

Neighbors mentioned to me that she had a small dog and I asked Jeff, who worked for me, to go talk to her and find out what was going on. When Jeff knocked on the door, part one of the question was resolved…a small dog started barking that annoying yap that typifies a small dog. When  Ms. Legacy answered the door, she played dumb and asked why Jeff was there. He told her that she wasn’t allowed to have a dog. she countered that she didn’t have a dog. Jeff told her, “I heard the dog barking!” and, as if on cue, the little critter poked it’s head thru the curtains of the window next to the door and cut loose with a stream of yapping. Jeff said “that’s the dog! I’m looking right at it!” Ms. Legacy, in a blatant disclaimer worthy of a seedy politician, said “That’s not a dog, it’s a cat!”. Jeff was neither amused nor swayed by her insistence on the type of animal barking at him, calmly informed her that the dog had to go, or she would be evicted. 

I don’t recall the final outcome, but I’ve had years of fun accusing Jeff of having “Animal Confusion”. 

I’m Not a Slut

In a scenario repeated all too often, a tenant slowly disintegrated. Trailer #25 was, for a time occupied by a young lady named “Crystal”. She was only remarkable for having been the on again – off again girlfriend of another of my tenants named “Ozzy”. Their love affair was the usual mix of screaming, drunken fights and mad passionate trailer shaking love making. Crystal, like many young women in the trailer park found herself to be the object of desire of several of the lonely men in the park. I never inquired nor cared about her dating habits as long as the rent payments kept showing up in the payment box. 

Inevitably, the payments went from late to missed to non existent and I had to give another of my “Leave before you’re evicted” talks. Crystal decided to take my advice and, in the dark of night took her prized possessions and her TV and slipped away.

I had expected this and was checking daily to see if she was still around. When it became evident that she was gone, I had another trailer to make ready for it’s next 

tenant, whoever they might be. As I let myself in, equipped with my turnover kit ( a new set of locks for the doors, to keep the former tenants from coming back ) and the cleaning tools, which might range from a broom and a shovel to a shop-vac and 40 gallon trash can. I noticed something written on the window next to the door. It seemed to be written in lipstick or something of that nature. When I got close enough to read it I was amused to see the exclamation “I’m not a slut, ‘kay?”. I hadn’t heard any particular stories of Crystal’s virtues or lack of them, but it occurred to me if you need to write that on your window, then you might just bea slut. 

This assumption was later confirmed as, in the course of my usual cleanup, I opened the fridge to toss the usual leftovers, rotten fruit and sparse condiments. When I opened the freezer, I noticed several ice trays. While that wasn’t unusual, since I disabled any ice makers that my fridges had since they were high maintenance items, these ice trays didn’t seem to have ICE in them. As I pulled them out, I realized that in each little compartment there was a used, partially filled condom, tied off above the contents and frozen for posterity. Or perversion, or a scoreboard. It seemed, from the number of ice trays that Crystal most likely had been a slut, at least while in Trailer #25.

Knee Socks

One of my three bedroom trailers started out with three tenants, then dropped to two and eventually to one. While less people means less wear and tear on the trailer and less cars to need parking spaces, it also meant less income for the person getting the money orders to drop in the payment box. 

This was the case with Trailer #21. The usual routine of the payment showing up late, that would progress to no payments at all. When I started seeing those signs, I would keep my eyes open for the Tenant(s) leaving. There was almost never any communication before someone left, just one day, or night, they took out as much of their stuff as they could and left the rest or, if I was lucky, they put some of it in or around the dumpster. 

Number 21 was a little different. The Tenant had a couple of cats and as long as I saw them in the windows, I knew that the trailer was still occupied. One day, I realized that I hadn’t seen the cats for a while and I decided that it was time to have a look inside to see if the Tenant had skipped out. With my Master key in hand, I knocked several times, calling out “Landlord!”, to no avail. I put the key into the lock, noting that just the handle had been locked and not the deadbolt. I opened the door to a horrible stench and a pile of stuff in the living room floor. The floor was covered with cat food, cat shit and the bodies of two cats. As I quickly went through the trailer I saw every room filled with a mix of old furniture and trash. It seemed like the only thing that had been taken, as usual, was the TV. I noticed that the hallway bathroom door was shut and, as that was the only room that I hadn’t seen yet. I went to push it open. It wouldn’t budge, it wasn’t locked, but it wouldn’t budge. I gave a shove and still nothing. I REALLY gave it a shove leading with my shoulder and it reluctantly slid partially open. The smell was atrocious. I looked down to see that the reason the door wouldn’t move was that a dead cat was glued to the floor by it’s own rotting body!!!.  I almost threw up and bolted for the door to get some fresh air. As I lurched outside I realized my legs were getting itchy ( I was wearing shorts in the summer heat ) I looked down and it looked as if I was wearing black knee socks! Except that the “socks” were Fleas covering every inch of my lower legs. I grabbed the nearest hose I could find and sprayed my legs as hard as I could, not caring about soaking my shoes or anything except to get these f**king fleas off of me!

Now, I was sporting red dots all over my lower legs from the flea bites. I needed to come up with a plan. I went back to my shop / office combo on site and sprayed repellent all over me and prepared to go back in, armed with a couple “Bug Bomb Canisters” that I always kept in stock to fumigate trailers. I went back in, deployed three cans throughout the trailer, activating them as I went. slamming the door behind me, I knew it wouldn’t be until the next day that I could brave the Cat Graveyard / Trailer again.

The next morning, wearing long pants, bug repellent and a respirator I entered trailer #21. I opened windows and doors and left again for a few hours to let it air out. Returning after a while, have resprayed my body with bug repellent, I braved the horrible scene. I started methodically going through the trailer looking for anything important when I found the gun atop a cabinet in the Master Bedroom. I stepped outside to call the Police, warning them about the scene that they were about to find. 

When the officers arrived, I summarized the scene, the dead cats, the mountains of shit, cat food, trash and the gun. I told them that I had latex gloves on when I picked up the gun before setting it on the bed and leaving. I offered them bug repellent, but they laughed it off, saying they’d seen it all and had been through worse than a “few fleas”. A couple of minutes later, they emerged, cussing and scratching at their legs, one of them holding the gun in his hand. Apparently the bug bombs only took out some of the fleas, leaving plenty to share with Law Enforcement.

The Officer holding the gun, explained that it was actually a BB gun, with the tip painted over to look like a real pistol. He told me this was not unusual if someone wanted to be able to scare someone, without the liability of carrying a real  weapon. I apologized for wasting their time as they reassured me that I had done the right thing and that, NO, they couldn’t charge the guy with cruelty to animals about the cats. 

Next step was to start to empty the trailer of everything that needed to be thrown out…pretty much everything that was in there, Aside from the dead cats, cat food, cat shit, trash and filthy broken down furniture, I found a few more gems. I guess that Mr. Silver was a ladies man who was lacking in an essential area. I found a penis extender. If you don’t know what that is…it’s like a condom with a kind of dildo add-on in the end. thank God for latex gloves! There were perhaps a hundred “Beanie Babies”  little stuffed toys that were popular at the time. these almost all had the tags on them but were covered with flea shit so were of no value to anyone. I also found the Tenant’s Credit Card! 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just run it and pay myself what was owed to me as my Trailer Park didn’t have a Merchant credit card account. But I thought I could hold his card hostage and try to get paid. I knew where he worked and decided to go there and return his card, for a price. I didn’t really expect to get paid, but thought that it was worth a shot. when I got to where he worked, I was informed that he had left suddenly and the employer had no idea where he went. What a shock! (not). On the way home, I had to drive through a bad part of town. Near a corner where I knew that crack was regularly bought and sold, a sudden gust of wind blew in my truck and blew the credit card off of the dashboard and out the window. I sure hope that whoever found it didn’t do anything improper with the cat-killer, penis extender wearing, trailer trasher Mr. Silver’s credit card. That would be terrible.