Living The Big Sky Life: As The World Turns

If all the world’s a stage, then drama must be the name of the game.

And far be it from me to argue with Shakespeare on the subject of drama, especially when I myself had once been typecast as a headliner on Big Sky Broadway in the post-deliverance dramedy now known as “Living The Big Sky Life”.

Once I’d managed to put enough distance between me and the cow town of Whitefish, it became easier to see one major reason why the story played out as it did: the more I persisted in playing the part I thought I was supposed to play, had been trained to play; the more dramatic the surrounding acts of my life seemed to get. Talk about not fitting in, and going against my own grain instead of with a more natural personal flow. And the fact that I felt captive and basically powerless to skip beyond the scratch-in-the-record script spinning around in my head didn’t help my cause either.

My final curtain call on Big Sky Broadway was promptly followed by a turbulent departure with little more than the clothes on my back. The subsequent 2-year intermission I endured in obscurity left no room for anything other than mind-numbing survival and life-altering retrospection, during which time I recognized that I was probably better suited to writing my own scripts and directing my own performances than I was to reacting to the manipulative directions of others as I lived out their dreams at the expense of my own.

Upon my exodus, the only parting glance the Flathead Valley got from me was in the rear view mirror when I exited off of the “pray for me, I drive 93” highway for the very last time. Yet, like all things Montana, even that backward glance was thoroughly obstructed because the backseat of my little urban-mobile was packed solid, floor to ceiling. At that point, it didn’t even matter that I’d arrived in Whitefish with a 3-bedroom household four years earlier. I believed myself lucky to escape with my life (and whatever else my little car could carry), and the emotionless exhale I eventually emitted a la Zoloft must’ve camouflaged the dull sense of relief I'm sure I felt. Something I wish the migrating flocks of ducks and geese flying in the opposite direction had been able to say.

As my world turned on its axis in 1996, it shattered most of the youthful illusions I’d once held about what my life should look like and how things were supposed to be. I guess when the drama gets old and boring, it’s time to cancel the show. Just ask the former cast of “As The World Turns”. Another approach, however, might be to simply change the channel to something more amusing, like a "Twisty Travel" Channel tour through "T T" Territory.

Coming up next, on the "T T" Channel.

Living The Big Sky Life^TM
© by DK King

When Nature Calls, All I Get Are Flashbacks

Childhood memories can be a funny thing. Or maybe not, depending on the memories.

Like most people, there are times when things happen to me in the present moment that trigger surprising and unexpected memories from my past. Sometimes the flashbacks are so strong they leave behind a residue or a lingering feeling that’s difficult to shake off. It’s hard to predict just what kind of feeling might be left behind too because it can run the gamut…from happiness to heartbreak and everything else in between. And then there are the times when nothing's left but an empty ache because some gaping hole in my life has just reminded me that it hasn’t yet been filled.

When old memories opt to superimpose themselves upon my present-day reality, I’ve had to remind myself more than once that “that was then and this is now” since there’s nothing like a blast from the past to catapult me right out of the here and now. Where my childhood memories are concerned, things really were a lot different “back in the day”. Social structures were different, priorities and values were different, belief systems were different, normalcy was different. You name it, and it was probably different.

I grew up in a big family and like most large families, it always seemed as if there was never enough to go around. Never enough money, never enough food, never enough underwear. We competed for limited resources and our right to take up space, and I suppose in the end, we all got what we needed for none of us seem overtly worse for the wear.

My point? Well, in a previous post titled “Living The Big Sky Life: Been There, Done That”, I’d indicated that my childhood camping flashbacks had posed a few personal challenges for me during the time I spent in Boy’s Town Montana, and then asked the following question to give evidence of their origin: where do two parents with little money to spare take Grandma King, five daughters barely a year apart in age, and occasionally an older brother they called uncle on an affordable family vacation every year?

The King’s answer was, of course, camping. Nature’s drive-in where you don’t pay per head but per car load. And the dirt was always free.

For obvious reasons, this King family never had the fancy wheels I’d see driving through Whitefish year after year. Many of our camping trips saw the eight of us tightly packed into a first edition white Datsun station wagon with no air conditioning, only to pour out of said Datsun when we reached our campground destination like a bunch of clowns climbing out of a clown car.

We’ve also been known on occasion to take the “T T” approach to problem solving when necessary…like that time we drove through the Mojave Desert in August in the Datsun without A/C, and decided to replace the luggage in the back with a solid 12” x 12” block of ice which we promptly encircled and smothered with sweaty, swollen body parts in desperate need of cooling – quite the opposite of roasting hotdogs around a campfire. Side note (for those who might not remember): Datsun was the predecessor to Nissan, and there was no such thing as a seat belt law. 


The Datsun does Mammoth

Then there was the classic two-toned emerald green 1957 Chevy 4-door in mint condition we inherited when Grandpa King died. Grandma King (who couldn’t drive but could never turn down a chance to go fishing) would often be along for the ride and she always rode shotgun on the front bench seat while clutching a brown paper sack to her side like a wino with a bottle of ripple. But instead of periodically lifting the bag to take a nip of the formaldehyde nectar as one would expect, she would pull down the top of the paper bag just enough to unscrew a brass lid covering the mason jar hidden inside, and then proceed to spit a huge glob of brown snuff juice into the glass jar, mile after mile after mile...


The Mustang does Mount Hood, Oregon

One summer even saw eight of us packed into a 1967 convertible Ford Mustang for three months as we traversed and camped every inch of Oregon and Washington.



We had a father who’d turn into Mr. Hyde at the prospect of driving fast on any winding mountain road as if it were a rollercoaster. He’d return to his senses with irritation only when several of us would turn green in the backseat and he’d be forced to turn off the road so our mother could do damage control. While other tourists at those lookout turnouts were busy gushing on about the breathtaking views, we were busy puking our guts up in the gravel. Good times.

Getting from one campground to the next invariably saw us arriving at our destination around midnight, half asleep, cramped and cranky. You haven’t really experienced the King’s kind of camping until you’ve learned to set up camp in the dark. It was hardly ever worth pulling out those annoying Coleman lanterns since the unreliable little silk bag-bulbs used for illumination never failed to dissolve into a useless fine ash at the slightest provocation, and always when you needed the light the most. We ultimately became quite skilled at balancing a flashlight while stringing up an orange glow-in-the-dark tube tent between two trees. Side note: There was no fancy canvas tent with spikes and poles in our trunk. All we had were neon orange plastic tube tents. They were cheap and compact, and if they were good enough for the Girl Scouts, they were good enough for a King girl. BTW-The materials used in today’s fancy gore-tex tents with bending fiberglass frames weren’t even a glimmer in some hiker’s waterproof dream.

Late one midnight we set up camp somewhere around Lake Shasta. Early the next morning we were rudely awakened by a cacophony of loud honks, and we all scrambled out of our vibrant orange tube tents rubbing the sleep from our eyes to see what all the ruckus was about. Queued up in front of us was a long line of pickups pulling boat trailers waiting to launch their boats into the lake. The problem was we’d unwittingly set up our camp in the center of the lake's only boat ramp. Clearly we were the hold-up. Good times.

The summer we covered the Pacific Northwest saw us spending many comfortable nights on the mossy turf of Oregon’s lush rainforests. As harmless as they were, those slimy rainforest slugs took some getting used to. They were Jurassic Park huge, and we couldn’t help but get squeamish every time we’d have to string up our tube tents around mucus covered trees hosting mongo snails without shells. Condensation dripped onto our faces at night as we laid in our sleeping bags and involuntarily listened to the death squeals of those doomed slugs getting squished in the middle of the road every time a car passed by. The sound of a dying slug squeezed of its last breath was scarier than any ghost story we could’ve ever heard around the campfire. As far as haunting memories go, it’s a toss-up between the crying dying slugs of Oregon and the earwig colonies of Lake Cachuma. Good times.

Our Tube Tents give the Rainforests of Oregon a hint of color

A traditional King postcard scene would show our father propping up every lakeshore we ever graced with a line of little King girls holding fishing rods baited in goopy pink salmon eggs. The fishing rods on the lake as little girls eventually evolved into backpacking out of Bishop (Mammoth) where once I had to catch a rainbow trout from a running stream with my bare hands like a Paiute Indian. That was after the time Grandma King got third degree burns on Lake Mary (Mammoth) because she had hit the just-been-stocked fishing jackpot and refused to get off the lake while it was “hot”. And the time we caught a bucket full of crawdads later boiled for dinner from a mountain creek by dangling an opened safety pin from the end of a line in between the rocks lining the creekbed.

The times we were stranded on lakes and rivers in boats with engine failure are too many to count, but that time we went bobbing to the point of sea sickness on the sticky waters of the Salton Sea under a scorching sun for three hours was especially memorable. Yep, good times. And honestly some of it really was. In fact, the more time that passes, the softer and fonder some of these memories seem to get. Fortunately for those of us who were there, we're still laughing about it.

Childhood memories can indeed be a funny thing, yet do any of these flashbacks make me want to honor nature by roughing it in the woods and catching my own dinner? No, and hell no. Like I said ... been there, done that.

Living The Big Sky Life^TM
© by DK King

Living The Big Sky Life: Been There, Done That

Not unlike many kids who grew up in the 60’s, “Green Acres” was one of those weekly T.V. shows that I rarely missed. Never, however, in a million years could I have predicted that as an adult I’d actually come to know first hand how Eva Gabor’s character and uprooted city dweller, “Lisa Douglas”, must’ve felt when she was convinced to move to Hooterville because her husband, “Oliver Wendell Douglas”, craved the simple life.

Impartial observers would be hard pressed to find any outward similarity between me and the likes of Lisa Douglas, yet when I made the big move to big sky country, I could’ve sworn her hillbilly universe had somehow intersected my own; for here I was, just like Lisa Douglas, loyally compelled to live out my husband’s dream of ‘quality of life’ which was appearing more and more each day to surreally coincide with Oliver’s definition of the simple life.

Chef doing ‘an Oliver’ in the backyard 

… or maybe just his best 'Forrest Gump'

My Hooterville, as it turns out, was called Whitefish, Montana - a resort town named after its own lake (or perhaps it was the other way around) and nestled at the base of the Big Mountain ski resort. Whitefish is 25 miles west of Glacier National Park, 25 miles north of Flathead Lake, and about 60 miles south of Canada’s BC/Alberta border. Considered to be a vacationer’s paradise by many, and historically nicknamed "Stumptown" by the local community, I secretly came to call the place “Boy’s Town” instead because it was where all the boys came to play, and well, live the dream of being one with nature, even if that meant hunting nature down. Yep, it had it all, and anyone who heard the call of nature and yearned for the Big Sky Life after seeing “A River Runs Through It” or “Legends Of The Fall” knows what I’m talking about.

Now I appreciate the wonders of nature and beautiful country as much as the next human being, but living the dream for me at this point simply did not include camping, fishing, hiking, or hunting, because frankly, I’d been there, done that (except for the hunting part…never gonna happen).

One look at my childhood and a typical King family vacation can only beg the question: where do two parents with little money to spare take Grandma King, five daughters barely a year apart in age, and occasionally an older brother they called uncle on an affordable family vacation every year?

Camping is where. Out into the great outdoors where the dirt is free. And as the nature spirits prepare to take the stand in my defense, I swear there’s probably not a campground in California, Oregon, and Washington that the King family hasn’t camped in, a lake or river it hasn’t fished in, and a waterfall is hasn’t hiked or packed in to. The Colorado, Utah and Arizona territories were covered when I got a little older. Then, of course, came Montana.

So when those vans, trucks and campers would come rolling through Whitefish every year over-packed with the latest roughing-it regalia, fishing gear, and loaded rifle racks, I confess that I wasn’t quite prepared for the strong level of boring distaste that would sweep over me every time I'd hear “isn’t this the life?” The ensuing flashbacks of a childhood rife with camping trips and bright orange plastic tube tents didn't help my attitude much either. Undoubtedly some of those memories will make their way out of the closet in a continuation post I feel compelled to call “When Nature Calls, All I Get Are Flashbacks”.

Anymore I find it intriguing how often people tend to confuse the whole communing with nature thing with ‘quality of life’ - which typically translates into living a lifestyle that induces an overall sense well-being. Achieving that sense of well-being is a very personal thing, and what ‘quality of life’ feels like to one person can be completely different for another. And as I heard those Boy’s Town die hards chronically bleat on about ‘quality of life’ as if I didn’t get it, I couldn’t help but wonder…who were they really trying to convince? Me or themselves.

Frankly Dah-ling, just give me the sea, because the mountains don't do a thing for me.

For more of “Living The Big Sky Life”, learn what I should’ve known by “Reading the Signs”.

Living The Big Sky Life^TM
© by DK King

Living The Big Sky Life: Reading The Signs

Born in 1899, my Grandma King was a simple country woman whose formal education ended sometime during the sixth grade. One of the fondest childhood memories I have revolves around hearing her backwoods southern drawl call out to my sisters and me for a little lovin’ when she'd warmly declare, “come and give me some sugar”.

It’s funny how young minds can innocently tie things together that don’t necessarily belong together, and even funnier how that intermingling can oftentimes become so integrated that a lifetime of decision-making can be subconsciously influenced by these misconnections. For me (and who knows if Grandma King really had anything to do with it or not), I think equating love with sugar must’ve been one of those obscure childhood misconnections.

Case in point takes me back to the early ‘90’s, to a time when life was busy pelting me with lemons, and I was sure that love was the sugar I needed to turn it all into lemonade.

Apparently that subliminal belief set the divine stage for me to reconnect with an old OC friend from grade school who’d been living in Montana for about ten years. He was passing through Orange County (yes, That “OC”) on his way to Baja for two weeks of surfing as he did regularly in the fall. A reunion of mutual OC friends ensued, and the rest became my Big Sky Life history.

Naturally I visited Montana to check things out before actually marrying Chef or agreeing to move my family and 3-bedroom household up there. I'm generally pretty open to new experiences, and it helped a lot that I was keen to get far away from Orange County and the arrogance of a deadbeat ex-husband who refused to pay child support. Had the deadbeat unilaterally opted out of supporting his own children, yet had had the intelligence to understand that he couldn’t have it both ways, the location situation might’ve been sustainable. Be that as it may, my particular deadbeat staunchly believed it was his right to go behind my back and hang out at the house I struggled to pay for in order to spend his 'free' time with the children he decidedly felt no obligation to financially support while I was away at work. And that was just for starters.

The week of the wedding arrived…and a sign of things to come.

It started off with an urgent court summons smugly delivered over the telephone at 7:00am by the deadbeat himself who was convinced that I had no legal basis for taking the children he vehemently declined to support out of California. After paying two thousand dollars I couldn’t afford to an attorney and enduring incalculable levels of distress, I spent the day before my “happy day” in a courtroom, sans Chef, where the judge practically tore up the deadbeat’s audacious petition in front of all parties present, his own parents included.

Chef, on the other hand, had spent most of that week alternating between surfing (stress management he said) and reception dinner preparation. Since Chef was in actuality a bona fide Chef and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA)-Hyde Park, NY, no one (me especially) wanted to ever hear him complain in the follow-up years about the food served at our reception attended by more than 100 well-wishers. The rest of the preparations and arrangements had been entirely mine to handle, and the day of the ceremony saw me completely numb from exhaustion before the wedding march had even sounded. If all of that wasn’t enough, my body had gone to the extra trouble of reminding me that very morning (and ten days early no less) that I wasn’t getting married because I HAD to.

And then there was the honeymoon. Well, more like “what honeymoon?” because the “honeymoon” saw us cramming my 3-bedroom household into the biggest U-Haul truck we could find, and taking to the highway on a grueling 1,800-mile 36-hour road trip to Big Sky Country and my new home.

The first half of the trip was long and dry and relatively uneventful. Everything changed when we pulled into Pocatello to gas up. One of the back dually tires had apparently gone flat sometime after Salt Lake City. Not something that could be easily fixed, especially with a full load sitting on top of it, so we waited several hours in some empty parking lot on the outskirts of Pocatello for U-Haul to send a repair truck.

After the tire had been repaired and the tow truck had long gone, as if on cue, the U-Haul’s electrical system went on the fritz. The cause? It seems the truck had been packed so tightly that one of my couch cushions had smothered an overhead light fixture long enough to not only burn a smoky 6” round hole into the cushion, but to comprehensively blow out the truck’s entire electrical system. Although we were lucky the over-stuffed contents of the truck didn’t explode into flames somewhere on I-15, the already white-knuckled drive became even more dangerous when it began to intermittently pour rain and hail as we traveled through Montana without having the use of our windshield wipers or headlights. But in the true pioneer spirit (or maybe it was more like the Donner party spirit), we carried on. That, and Chef was homesick and wouldn't hear of another delay, even if it was for repairs.

And then there were my California license plates. The engine on my little urban-mobile hadn’t even cooled down from the trip before Chef ushered me back into my car and off to the DMV to change the car’s plates and my driver’s license. He insisted that everyone would give me ‘stink-eye’ if I dared to drive around town with any smell of California on me. Frankly, I think he was more worried about getting the ‘stink-eye’ himself. Something about guilty by association. Whatever. I deferred to his anxiety on the matter and hid the evidence within two hours of arrival. The rest got handled with a hot shower and a bottle of lemon juice (for scrubbing the tan off, oh duh).

They say that hindsight is always 20/20, and so it was for me - even if it took a few years to come into focus. I suppose things might’ve been different had I better read the signs during one of the longest weeks of my life. Oh well. Live and learn. And what I learned that May day in 1992 was that when you move to Montana, you need to hide all evidence of your past and move into a house that looks just like the Unabomber’s. That way you blend in with the rest of the pack, and save yourself the notoriety of becoming an open target for the ole 'stink-eye'.

For more of "Living The Big Sky Life", you might want to start with "T T Territory".

The first Montana house I moved
into had the same floor plan as
the Unabomber's.

Living The Big Sky Life^TM

© by DK King

Cabin of Unabomber
Theodore Kaczynski
in an April 6, 1996 file photo
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson).

The Butterfly Goddess Sheds Her Cocoon

A special thanks to Artist KAd Collins for allowing me to use the image of her exquisite "Butterfly Goddess" as my avatar. She is truly magical! Thank you Kate.

Butterfly Goddess © Copyright by Artist, KAd Collins.
To find out more about the artist, go to ArtistKAdCollins or KAd's Etsy Studio.

Artist KAd Collins is currently working on two new collections for release sometime in 2012 and 2013. If you are interested in becoming a collector, contact the artist directly.

Living The Big Sky Life: “T T” Territory

My first on-the-ground experience with “T T” territory happened long ago, once upon a time, in a state, far, far away - a state that still fancies itself “Big Sky Country”. Tourist propaganda notwithstanding, my quality of life in “the last best place” was the equivalent to hell on Earth with little hope of deliverance no matter how loudly I squealed.

In hindsight, I don’t know that anything could’ve truly prepared me for the small town initiation I would get when I set up shop in the cliquey postcard community I was to call home for the next four years, three months and fourteen days. And the citified and seasoned business sensibilities I brought along as baggage only burdened me with a naïve assumption that doing good business was good business no matter where you were from. Suffice it to say that I have never worked so hard to make a living that barely scraped the poverty line as I did during my tortured tenure in this state of purgatory.

The descriptive captions written on the back of every photograph taken of me during this time read “deer frozen in headlights”. I was convinced that the country gods of big sky country had used my own tube of red lipstick to make a life-size bulls-eye right on top of me, and the look of trapped panic that rarely left my face was testimony.

Sources have told me I’m a survivor, and surviving the harsh elements of "T T" territory demanded that I significantly alter my approach posthaste, which really meant that it was time to put into practice the old adage “Keep it simple, stupid”. So I grudgingly "KISS-ed" them all in the name of survival, and refined the art of doing business on a handshake while shootin’ the breeze with them good ole’ boys of the backwoods smelling of cow chip campfire and dried fish guts while all duded up in cowboy hats and big silver belt buckles, or sporting hunter orange vests stained from buck ‘n duck blood and speckled with goose down particles.

Just because survival made it necessary for me to blend into a world that was far removed from any civilized grid I’d ever known, doesn’t mean for one second that I was inclined to turn all ‘wild west’ or anything. You know, like trade in my little urban-mobile for a Ford pick up with a gun rack. Or replace the business suits and pumps in my closet with bib-overalls and Dingos, or my briefcase for a well stocked tackle box. OK, I admit - I did have to slip into a pair of hip-waders on occasion because frankly, someone had to wade into the creek (alternately pronounced ‘crick’) at the edge of the property to tear down those damn beaver dams that flooded my backyard every run-off season.



View of my backyard

As far as I was concerned, this strange land was a poster child for “T T” territory - raw and uncensored. And while I internally obsessed about escape, I came to understand why many never did.

Part of it was financial, of course, because barely making enough in minimum wage to cover the cost of room and board, boxed wine and beer means there’s not enough left over to lease a U-Haul. I realized, however, that the greatest impediment to escaping for the majority was simply perception – meaning it was less about being so po’r that you can’t afford to buy an extra “O”, and more about what escape really means to you.

The keyword here being ‘motivation’, and it usually begins with the standard line of questioning: ”escape from what? go to where?” If we perceive ourselves as content and congruent with the mentality and ‘quality of life’ around us, then what could possibly need changing? Escapism can be easily achieved in thousands of ways that happen to be a lot less complicated than packing up the shack for no good reason.

Feeling that sense of belonging to a community with those of our own ilk is a natural tendency and can hardly be summarized better than “birds of a feather flock together”. Ultimately I didn’t feel so bad when I recognized that even the migrating flocks of ducks and geese passing through big sky country who were lured in by the ‘quality of life’ struggled to make their escape after landing, especially those peppered with buckshot.

Clearly some never made it out alive.

Living The Big Sky Life^TM 
© by DK King

“T T” Territory: Laying A Block Foundation

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video speaks volumes; and the most epic and honest mobile home commercial ever made can show you in about a minute just how easy it is to cash in those empty beer cans and make a down payment on a “T T” starter home.

…looks like there’s a price range compatible with almost every budget. And while it may be one thing to agree upon a price for your new abode with a spit and a hand shake, it’s quite another to get a loan from the bank to close the deal before all of the kids move in - especially when loan underwriting guidelines are so excruciatingly tight, as any weak economy would dictate.

Not that getting a mobile home loan was ever very easy, even in the best of times. Perhaps it’s because banks just can’t decide what kind of loan they’re actually making, so the asset ends up on their books in some catch-all general ledger account called “Deliverance Loans”.

It always seemed like a ‘collateral conundrum’ to me since a mobile home isn’t really a house that is permanently affixed to a foundation in the space where it’s parked – ‘parked’ being the operative (or it is inoperative?) word here. Nor is it really a car (even though it’s parked) in possession of a built-in engine powerful enough to move it down the highway autonomously. In summary: A mobile home is basically a trailer-type movable living unit that can be relocated anywhere on a whim and a belch or occasionally on a twister; and this bestows upon it an unsavory classification which, by its very nature, creates a special lending niche with a tailored style of underwriting.

Given my long, and perhaps not-so-illustrious, career in the world of real estate finance, it was inevitable that over the course of time I would find myself in circumstances where I was forced to learn how to do something I never thought I needed (or wanted) to know. Reflecting on my days of “living the big sky life”, I confess that learning how to close a mobile home transaction was one of those occasions.

Special loan niche or no, most prudent lenders like to at least appear as if they’re underwriting loans that hide behind the three “C’s” of lending: Credit (“T T” mindset), Capacity (size of welfare/disability check), Collateral (the Trailer/MH).

Back when lenders had a shelf full of underwriting books (now everything is on-line), there was usually a book for mobile home loans as well. Although I never had any proof (and no one ever copped to it), I was convinced a second book existed - a secret book that was locked up in some back office which contained the real guidelines for making a mobile home loan, or “T T” loans as they came to be called.

Based solely upon personal observation, I wouldn't have been surprised if excerpts from that secret book had faux guidelines that looked something like this:



Since discrimination is prohibited by law, every requirement itemized below shall apply to each Borrower regardless of gender. Should the following conditions not be met, exceptions will be reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis.

1. PHOTO IDENTIFICATION

Photographs of each Borrower shall be included in loan file under review, and shall give evidence that supports two out of three of the following requirements:

A. Each Borrower must have a minimum of two tattoos. Said tattoos shall be displayed to best advantage in photograph(s) of Borrower posing in the traditional (what once was white but is now beer stained and/or yellowed with age) wife-beater tee-shirt.

B. Photograph(s) must give evidence of an official mullet haircut. (This appearance assures underwriter that Borrower is all business up front and the party will stay out back). Underwriter may take exception to the mullet requirement should hair otherwise reveal re-growth/dark roots of not less than 1” sprouting from a ratted mass of over-bleached blonde hair, OR a large smattering of wiry grays intermixed with stringy and/or dingy hair.

C. Photograph(s) must give evidence of yellow (brown or black OK) and/or missing teeth, any silver/gold capped front tooth shall be deemed compliant; AND the hardened yellow fingernails that can only be acquired from years of smoking filterless cigarettes. Chewing tobacco stains on scraggly facial hair may replace yellow fingernail requirement with underwriter approval.

2. TRAILER – MOBILE HOME (MH)

A. MH Trailer may be parked on top of blocks, log stumps, old tires, beer kegs or anything recycled from the local dumpster (think green). Level floors are not required, and Borrower is free to design a contoured floor slant that allows beer cans to roll from the icebox to the couch undeterred.

B. MH Trailer may be parked in a facility that has met all pre-fab specified standards and received prior underwriter approval. Otherwise, MH Trailer must have predominant access via dirt road (insured access optional), and should be parked in one of the following ‘Bufu's’: i) ‘Desert Bufu’ will give evidence of sagebrush acreage with tumbleweeds, scrawny cactus, and swirling dust devils; and ii) ‘Bufu in the Woods’ will give evidence of bark beetle and tick infested forests dripping in Spanish moss, and surrounded by swampy pastures and patches of bear grass.

C. MH Trailer shall not be required to have a sanitary-certified water supply, flush toilets, or a functioning septic system. Cesspools and outhouses shall be deemed compliant. Dried up wells on property OK.

D. MH Trailer shall not be required to have a code-approved electrical supply. An electrical line that has been properly hot-wired from the big transformer running through the back of the property or along the gully shall be deemed compliant.

E. MH Trailers (single-wides) built prior to 1969 that have corrugated side panels rippled with asbestos are considered acceptable. All MH Trailers are required to be officially registered with the proper state vehicle licensing department, and must display a personalized vanity plate approved by underwriter. Some examples of previously approved vanity plates are: 
“imahick”, “heehaw”, “tattme”, “Tbagger, “TTtude”, "TSquare".

Enough said.

© by DK King

"T T" defined

“T T”, acronym for “TRAILER TRASH”. n. Archetype.

Popular opinion tends to stereotype those belonging to the “T T” culture with a double-widely accepted description that more or less pigeonholes a fairly diverse group as being comprised of those who “seem well-suited to residential life in a mobile home park and are distinguished by poor hygiene, foul language, slovenly or slutty clothing, and general ignorance. Recreations include drinking malt liquor in lawn chairs under tattered R.V. awnings and teenage pregnancy.” (urbandictionary.com). And “poor white people living in a trailer park in the U.S., especially the South.” (dictionary.com).

While these distinctive characteristics are frequently evident in those who boast the purest of “T T” pedigrees, they can be limiting in scope.

Certainly appearance, behavior, poorness, and location all make uncontestable contributions to the “T T” prototype; however, like those of the “Moldy Old White Bread” persuasion, the determining factor of a true “T T-ite” inherently comes down to mindset. The trailer is merely an accessory.

A “T T” mindset is an inbredded thing, and more than skin deep, or skin color for that matter. You can take the trash out of the trailer park, but you can’t laser off those K-Fed tatts without leaving scars. And no matter how you dress it up, the “T T ‘tude” can’t stay suppressed for long.

Evidence of a “T T” mindset will oftentimes emerge in ordinary conversation when a “T T-ite” unwittingly lapses into the “T T” mother tongue which has over time evolved into a drawling language filled with double negatives and contracted half words; and is something that, well, just can’t be taught in schools.

It’s been suggested that a good portion of the “T T” population traditionally lives and breeds in the South, but anyone who’s seen the "Jersey Shore" would know this to be a misconception. The red states may indeed prove to be fertile territory for “T T” culture cultivation, however, their borders are simply not enough to contain the mindset or keep it from spreading.

And there just ain’t no more to say, except maybe...

Adjectives: T-squared, trailericious, trailerlectible, trailerflashy, T-T-dacious

Synonyms: T-square, white trash, T-P trash, red neck, hillbilly, hick, bumpkin, rube, yokel, inbred, kissin’ cuzin, squealer, T-bagger, Wal-Marter.

© by DK King

The Eyes Have It

Here's me looking at you!

© Copyright by Artist, KAd Collins.

To find out more about the artist, go to ArtistKAdCollins or KAd's Etsy Studio.