A True Tale


My name is Suzin.  I live in a trailer park in North Alabama. . . and I am going to tell you a story.

I'm not from around these parts.. and although I've only lived in one other trailer, it was never as wierd as what I'm about to tell you. 

I love watching the bizare life that surrounds me, unsuccessfully trying to smother me or suck me into it's traditions & lifestyles.  People are (really, really) strange... Thank you, Jim Morrison.

You see, there is this small family that lives in front of us.  There's Daddy, Mamma, a three year old boy and a 16 month old Girl.  I don't believe these people have proper names, simply because they really do call each other "Daddy, Mamma, Boy & Girl".  (?)  I've witnessed the little girl, standing in the middle of the circular red-clay driveway, wearing only a saggy Pamper, yodeling at her older brother, "Boyeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... Heyyyy Boyeeeeeeeeeee.  Come H E R E Boooyyyeeeeeee!  Now, that's not so wierd, but what IS wierd is when "Daddy" is yelling "Mamma" at the top of his lungs... and he's talking to his wife. 

It's like a bad dream, I tell you.

To give you an idea of daily life, I'd like to present this shining example. 

New Year's Eve, 1998 - I'll admit, we didn't go party and ended up going to bed around 11pm.  We woke up to a world that had turned (almost literally) upside down.

Rus woke me up around 7am with the words "I don't believe this...I simply don't believe this."   He was tugging at my hand telling me to get up and "Come see this mess". 

I couldn't imagine what on earth he was talking about, so I got up and stumbled behind him to the front door.  Heck, I thought it had snowed or something.  I peered through the front door and took in the early morning winter quietness that seems to prevail around here.  My initial scan revealed very little and I started to ask Rus what it was he couldn't believe... when I noticed that the windows in the neighbors living room were all broken.  Not only were they broken, the frames were hanging from the metal and there was glass EVERYWHERE.

"Good googly mooglies..." I muttered "that must have been a terrible fight."  I then noticed that their kid's trampoline was on its side and jammed up against the end of their trailer... and was also embedded in the front end of "Daddy's" pick up truck.

"Wow," I said to Rus. We stepped out to the front porch to peer around the end of their trailer..we didn't have to look too far.  Their front door was laying at the end of their trailer along with about 3/4 of the door-frame and about 8'' of the wall. We found out later that Mr. Daddy had taken a double edged ax and cut the door completely off.

"Shheeeshhh," I said.  We grabbed our jackets and wet to perform all the neighborly duties, like looking for bodies.  As the situation presented itself to me, the wierdness meter registered very, very high.  Mr. Daddy's rifle was laying on the roof of their trailer and the double edged ax was burried in the side of the trailer about 3 feet from the gaping front door-hole.

ALL of the windows were broken out.  BOTH of the doors were ripped off.  There was furniture everywhere!  The vacuum cleaner lay silently in the road like a dead soldier waiting for his purple heart.  Debris, junk, a pretty nice lamp, food, clothes, glass everywhere.  We slept through this, mind you.

The wierdometer maxed out when I saw where Mr. Daddy had taken the ax and tried to cut the trailer in half.  He said Mamma wanted half, he was by-gollie gonna give it to her.

I sit here shaking my head and laughing at the situation.  The family has since reunited because Daddy gave into Mamma.  She told him that if he wanted her back, he was going to have to buy her a NEW trailer.  He did and they are back together.  She won't speak to me anymore. 

This is a very true story.. I wonder if I should send it to Living In Alabama Magazine?  I don't think they'd see the humor in it.

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