H&H

We lived in a couple different places before moving to the H&H Mobile Home Park. When I was a baby, we lived in "the house on 888," as my parents call it. I have no idea where that is except to think it must be down near Beeville. Then we lived in an apartment for about a year, I think, before getting the trailer.

The trailer is the first home I ever remember living in. We moved in when I was about three, I think. When I was a kid, I never understood why trailers and mobile home parks were such a punchline and so looked down on. Now, having seen more "typical" trailer parks, I do understand. H&H was very special.

Both H's stood for "Henderson." Mr. Henderson passed away. . . I don't know if it was before we moved in or some time while we lived there. Mrs. Henderson and then her son took over. They were very strict about the park. No junky yards here, and there was a lot of space between the trailers--good-sized lots. We had one of the biggest, too. Of all my friends when I was growing up, we had the biggest yard.

H&H was set up like a big U. We lived down at the curve in Lot 18. I guess that means there were probably 36 to 40 trailers total in the park. A lot of big oak trees, both in our yard and in the park in general. We had a weeping willow, too, that stood by our mailbox at the end of our driveway. It wept sap on the car, though, unless you pulled up almost to the deck. But the willow also attracted a ton of Monarch butterflies each year as they migrated. That was pretty awesome.

Down one side of the U that was H&H, there ran what we called "the back road." I think it was technically called Railroad Street because train tracks ran parallel to the road on the opposite side from the park. Didn't get many trains, though, just the occasional hauler bringing limestone through town. There weren't passenger trains in our town.

In second and third grade I could walk to school by going down the back road and taking a left turn. I would walk with Chad and Ryan usually. Didn't take more than 10or 15 minutes. And the back road never had much traffic.

There was a spot we'd always look for, a place where a skunk's skeleton had been driven into the pavement. It had been there so long, you almost couldn't see it any more. You had to know it was there and really be looking for it.

The back road could be dangerous, though, because the few cars that did use it often went too fast. My best friend's cocker spaniel Goldie was run over there. I'm glad none of our cats were ever hit.

The trailer itself: it was aluminum (some in the park were wood, but not ours), white with brown trim. A big deck led up to the door, and we had stairs on both sides of our deck, so you could go down to the driveway or else down to the strip of cement that ran the rest of the length of the trailer before giving way to the big yard. Dad kept his barbecue pit back on that side. There was a huge oak tree overhanging part of the deck and the trailer, which gave much-needed shade come the hot Texas summers.

We had a back door, too, but no deck going up to it, so if I ever went out that way, I opened the door, sat down and dropped into the neighbor's yard. (That was where my best friend lived.)

The front of the trailer pointed just slightly off from west. We had a big bay window there, and that was the room the kitchen table was in because a bar counter separated the kitchen from that room. It was also the room where the record player was kept and all the records because one wall was a bunch of built-in cabinets. The phone--it was tan with gray buttons--hung over the bar counter. Back then you could dial just the last four numbers if you were calling someone in town. Our digits were 8488.

We had a separate living room where the TV was. That was also the room with the window air conditioner. I would watch Saturday morning cartoons there. And do my homework at the coffee table when I came home from school. I was one of those kids who wore their house key on a chain around their necks; I'd get home from school, get a snack, and do my homework in front of the TV. Almost always I put in an old tape of Young Sherlock Holmes and let it play while I did my math and history, etc.

The trailer was two bedroom, one bath. Worked fine for our little family. Laundry was in a hall closet.

My room was the first one, door on the left as you exited the living room and stepped into the hall. My mother went on a wild tear and decorated my room at one point, I don't know why. My room was the only one she decorated. She put in navy blue carpet; I guess she figured with a child, darker was safer. Painted the walls lemon yellow. Put in navy blue mini-blinds and a "fiesta red" ruffled valance. ("Fiesta red" was code for "rust-colored.") Then Dad built me a bunk bed. The platform was painted yellow like the room, and the ladder was navy. Instead of a lower bunk, though, they put my long, low chest of drawers under my bed and a little television of my own sat on top of it. I would watch You Can't Do That on Television and Dangermouse every evening in my room. Also on my dresser: an old, apple-green alarm clock that really did the trick in waking me up in the mornings. (I never was, never have been, a morning person.) It was one of those with a little hammer that rapidly bounces itself between two bells, and boy howdy it was loud! Hated that thing. The foot of my bed was all shelves for my numerous board games and stuffed friends. A Belle doll, a Minnie Mouse in green checks, a Smurfette. The E.T. board game, Strawberry Shortcake bingo, Colorforms of various sorts: Holly Hobby, Pound Puppies, and Charlie Brown. An Etch-a-Sketch, a Spirograph.

My parents had the room at the back of the trailer. Their closet doors were all mirrors, that's what I most remember. And that they had a blue-and-white striped coverlet on their bed that had flowers on it. . . I would sometimes go in their room to lay on the bed and read because they got good light in that room. (My room had the oak tree right outside the window, the one that shaded the deck.)

The bathroom was right next to their room, a "California bath" that had two doors: one going into the master bedroom and one to the hall. There was this picture hanging over our toilet--a puppy with its head tilted to one side. When I was a kid, I thought it was a picture of the Pokey Little Puppy, although when I look back now, it was a slightly different color than Pokey.

I remember little things, like how I couldn't fall asleep unless I could hear that the TV was on in the living room, and I usually also had to have the door cracked open so I could see the flicker of light generated by the television, too (Dad watched TV with the lights off). I remember this picture hanging in my room of Jesus on the cross, how the ground was open at the foot of the cross and a skull was there--that's Golgotha for you. And my Statue of Liberty calendar, too, hanging on my wall. I had a fierce devotion to Lady Liberty, was both excited when they decided to fix her up and dismayed to find they were planning to change her torch.

H&H had a lot of nice people living in it, at least at our end of the park; I remember thinking people at the far end were not as nice, mostly because some bratty kids came from that end. There were two speed bumps in H&H, and that's how we calculated distance, like getting permission to ride our bikes either "past the first speed bump" (the one closest to us) or "to the second speed bump," which was down near the mouth of the park. But I almost never went down there. Even Chad and Ryan lived only a few trailers past the first speed bump, so what reason did I have to go further?

Miss Hannah was an elderly woman who lived about four trailers to the right of ours. She had the nicest yard in the whole park, was totally devoted to her grass and flowers. Boy, she'd let you have it if she found you on her lawn without permission! But she could also be really nice, and sometimes she made cookies and we could go in and see her parrot. This was back when you didn't have to worry all the time, when whole neighborhoods were responsible for watching the young'uns. . . You weren't worried whether your parents would see anything, but you sure worried that the neighbors might catch you and tell your parents!

There were also two sources of candy near H&H. The closest and easiest to get to was Gus's Drugstore. Also, the cheapest candy was there; fireballs and gobstoppers for just five cents each. But if you wanted the good stuff, and could afford it, you made the trek up to the Jiffy Mart. That's where Bubble Tape and Jolly Ranchers could be had.

But most of us saved our money for the SnoCone man. His green truck would come jangling through the park, and lucky for me we lived at the bend in the U, so I could hear him in time to go get my money! On really good days I had enough to add "cream" to the flavoring. He also sold packs of Now and Laters for a dime.

The postman, too, was really nice. He'd bring blank butcher paper--I guess the post office kept it for packing--and give it to us to draw on.

I read recently, in Stephen King's Duma Key, that "memory stacks the deck." Or something to that effect. Probably true. My childhood sounds idyllic here, and when I look back, I think it was pretty wonderful. My mother likes to tell me there are lots of times when I was terribly unhappy, and I can remember a handful of embarrassing moments, and ones that I'm really not proud of, but for the most part. . . Life was good.

We lived at H&H until the summer of 1987, when my father was transferred by his job.