Adventures with Beards

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A Lesson in Mississippi Real Estate

4/18/2012

People are always bringing up the words "trailer park" and "sweet potato" when talking about the south. Sweet potatoes are awesome but people are usually bringing up trailer parks to talk about less than awesome things. As a born Mississippian, I would like to clear a few things up because none of you seem to the know the first thing about trailers and trailer parks and how things work there.

In Mississippi, there are no trailer parks because that would imply there's actually separate divisions of homes that are not trailers. Not so. It's all trailers. The governor's mansion was actually the first "mega-trailer" to be constructed in the United States. The first one in the world was constructed in Antarctica, then destroyed by some ancient alien horror frozen in the ice. Wait, no that was that porno with Kurt Russell in it. The mega-trailer is still in use by sciencey type people and other weirdos today, my bad.

The goal of Mississippi Real Estating is to keep other people from building trailers on your trailer. Ever since the Wright Bros. discovered you could build a trailer on a trailer (they discovered this before they invented the airplane, they considered it their worst invention and for a while it left them so discouraged they almost decided to stop inventing) people have been trying to build their trailer on another trailer. The problem is that the South is a really good environment for trailers, and so they spread very quickly if they are allowed to, ever since the first trailer was brought to the South from Asia, or some other planet with an "A" name I really can't remember. Trailers are very difficult to remove from an area once they've taken root, and can only be removed permanently by uprooting and destroying the "core" trailer from which most nearby trailers grew. So far tornadoes are the best method we have of removing trailer overgrowth. Trailers are a very prolific flora, though, so even all the global warming we've been trying to do to increase the number of tornados is not enough to quell the unchecked spread of trailers. As such, we've developed other techniques to keep people from building a trailer on your trailer.

In Mississippi, the only pets are coyotes, and junkyard cats. Unlike junkyard cats, which can sometimes loosely fulfill the requirements for being classified as "domesticated" junkyard coyotes are never domesticated. If a human appears to be "keeping" one what they are really doing is bartering food with the beasts to avoid being subjected to a daily mauling. Coyotes are kept in the yard and trained to seek out human blood by being fed the weaker of our young, usually the ones who keep drinking out of puddles by the gas stations. Junkyard cats protect junkyards from being salvaged for trailer parts by mauling the heels of the nightly looters, usually causing them to trip and impale themselves on a rusty antenna. The friendlier ones just rub on their ankles unexpectedly at key moments, also providing them with a one-way ticket to Impale City.

Outhouses will usually act as deterrent for trailer building with about a 20 foot radius, even in the Deep South. Since the "poophole" (that's the technical term in the sanitation industry for an outhouse's turd repository) for the Jackson City public outhouse was ruptured in 1959 numerous laws have been passed regarding construction near poopholes, which are now so engrained in the culture that they've become social mores. Those few deviants who are reckless enough to build their trailer within close proximity to the outhouse usually perish of inbreeding within a generation, and their trailers are ultimately re-absorbed into neighboring trailers by the cannibalization of their parts.

A well maintained but sufficiently rusted barbed wire fence offers a good deterrent to show that you are vigilant and willing to take initiative to defend your trailer's lot against encroaching trailers. These became popular during the Great Depression, when roving bands of hog-riders troubled the outskirts of the capitol city and many smaller towns. Their cavalry of wild, moonshine-drunk boar/pigs was no match for a well made barbed wire fence, and ultimately led to the extinction of such criminals gangs in the South.

Contrary to popular belief, the strange ornaments that adorn yards are not because of a poor taste in decoration. Most of them are totems of a superstitious cult known as the "Baptists" and are planted in the yard to earn the favor of their primitive gods, such as the more insecure and homophobic one known as the "Lawd" and some totems are also believed to possess malevolent powers against trespassers; among these are pink plastic flamingos and wooden cowboy silhouettes. Other common yard adornments like the ruined remains of landscaping and agricultural machinery, and partially disassembled vehicles, serve a more effective purpose of providing sharp, metal, obstacles to stymie some assailants, and can even force a hole in the line of a charging mob of crackheads.

Other popular practices include the digging of holes in the yard and filling them with nails and bacon grease, resulting in a sort of slow-effect land mine; the victim's feet and legs become severely mutilated and slathered with grease, usually resulting in a fatal infection within days. This was the primary method my parents employed to defend our trailer from invaders, and remains successful to this day.  And, after only a few play sessions in the backyard and the greasy injuries sustained, I came through the ensuing staph infections and crippling fevers with a superior immune system and only minor brain damage. I only wish I could say the same for my other 16 siblings, but the Lawd was not with them.

Below are actual blueprints used in the building of a Southern home, or trailer, as it is called elsewhere in the world. Many such trailers used similar blueprints in their construction.

Trailer Defense