It was a cool and cloudy morning when I arose from my bed this Sundays past, the scent wandering in from the open windows was an old favorite of mine, ozone. For those of you who haven't a clue what that smell is, ozone is a highly unstable triatomic molecule, it is sometimes called the purest form of oxygen. It's the fresh smell after an electric storm or the crispness in the air around large electric motors. Everyone should know what I mean by now. For those of you who still are confused, never mind. Ah, the limitations of a modern education, keepin it real as you kids call it. Anyway, this has little to do with this story, so I get out of bed and wander outside, pick up the newspaper which landed in front of my car, wave high to my landlady and head back inside. I then go back to the bedroom throw on some boxers, plop back down on the bed and begin reading this mornings headlines. Deadly tornado rips through trailer park, 4 dead and dozens homeless.

Now you hear about this all the time, trailer parks getting totaled by tornados every year, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean let's face it, we all have a crazy uncle or cousin who lives in one of these places, and would it be so bad if a little cyclone stopped by his house every once in a while? The phrase trailer park trash didn't come from Otto the garbage man complaining about excessive bags of garbage left out on the curb near their homes. No, it came from poor white people who were taught by there parents, or more likely, parent, before them, that a life of not working or bathing and lots of alcohol is the American dream. These tornados help to put an end to the ongoing cycle of these types of people reproducing and teaching them there ways of life and the cycle continues. I am not saying all trailer park inhabitants are bad people, I mean you have the whole "retired" community trailer parkies, which are lovely people. True they are slow and dangerous behind the wheel, but they can still serve a purpose. But it's the 50 and under demographic that you mainly see on episodes of COPS, the TV show. You know the guy with the bent cigarette and a beer, stammering behind a screen door with half the screen missing, a broken light fixture on the wall, and ofcourse, he has no shirt on. I think it may be a law that you can't make an arrest on that show if the guy has a shirt on.

Anyway they always take the guy away in cuffs after he swings at his girlfriend wearing their daughters dirty T-shirt with no bra, or teeth for that matter, and than enter and search the home. Sometimes you get one of those so-called "rich" drunks that own a double wide trailer, but not to often. Once inside the home you always see garbage and clothing piled as high as the ceiling along with a sink filled with last years dirty dishes, not to mention the 17 cats climbing all over the place. There is always some weird collection of items that were not really marketed as a collectable but nevertheless are, I don't know.....like, colorful shoelaces hung on the wall, or squirrel tails, empty bottles of honey, peels of fruit, things like that. As filthy as these homes are on the show there is always one clean area, the bed. Gumby will be the first to tell you being a rabbit owner, animals, when confined to small living spaces, will never defecate in the area where they sleep. It's true, and perhaps a natural instinct that all species inherit.

Hold it, I am getting way off track, I started this story to help establish the correlation between tornado and trailer home, so let's get back to it.

I have lived in this area for 29+ years now and have never seen a tornado, nor have I ever lived in a trailer home, but word gets back from those who have that this is a common occurrence in their parks. I for one, would love to see a tornado in person, in fact it is on my list of 3 things I must do before I die. For those of you interested in the other 2 things, it is in my book, "Half Way There but for You" which is also available on tape.

So you see it on the news all the time that a tornado hit 15 miles away at this park or 20 miles at this park, but never in the residential "homes" that are made of brick and wood. Which leads me to my theory, tornados have some type of an electrical attraction to ALUMINUM. There really is no other explanation, why haven't they ever hit regular houses in our area? I mean if I had a nickel for every time a trailer home opened up like my 1970s Under Dog lunch box and thermos combo, I would have about a dollar three eighty.

Well, that is my conclusion to this months thesis, please feel free to email me with any other questions that I may have a scientific answer for.

Mark Metzel, Ph.D.