Helpful Score: 1
The text is a personal essay written to accompany the photos, the latter being the reason the book was published. All photos (often of people in place, inside their trailer home) are from Montgomery County, Virginia, 1983-1990. This is a literary book, a sociological book, not a book about the technology, the development of trailers from the 1930s into the mobile homes of the early sixties and beyond, etc. I read a third of it on the bus and was going to read more, but find little value for me in it. The book is thin and light, but I am not sure I will bother carrying it out to the old soldiers' home; we have few readers anyway, although the literary items I bring in do find a reader sometimes (last month the complete poems of Emily Dickinson disappeared after a week). There are many readers that check the offerings in the lobby of the VA Hospital, so I may take it directly there, rather than keep it eight weeks on the shelf at the nursing home.
Dad was recalled to serve as a navigator in the Korean War and we sold our house in Portland and rented briefly in Houston and San Antonio, buying a used 35 foot Travelite that was much more cozy than the available rentals in San Antonio. We took it to Tucson, and to Hawthorne, Nevada, when he returned home, working there for a the best part of the year to improve our finances and where we paid off the trailer. Departing for Las Vegas, we stayed there a month while he looked for work, but Mom did not want him connected with the mob-controlled casino business. We went to San Bernardino for less then a month, and sold the trailer there for the wherewithal to establish ourselves in Los Angeles. Dad was a good saleman, appreciated trailers/mobile homes, and provided well for his family.
Unlike our story, that could be fleshed out considerably, Mr. Rigsbee's text is suitable for English majors. Opening the book a random, a sample paragraph follows:
"The fact of the matter is that the need arises constantly. It has arisen many times over, and it stands to rise again. More precisely, this need, like the concept to which it refers (the fantasy of flight),stays aloft within the conciousness the way dust raised behind a truck maintains its virtual levitation long after the truck has driven away. One wonders what prevents the dust from following, except that it is part earth, part air, part light, and darkness, nothing of its own. Always borrowing, expanding, depending, devoid of anhy essence, it constitutes a perfect dreaming range, not the property of anyone in particular, so the air can nver be said to be really clear of it. In the dust, in which we recognize the shape and dream of our need, we also recognize the image of ourselves. As the Bible asserts, without audible objection, we are dust. So are our creations, including structures both 'mobile' and earth-bound, for indeed, since we make them from our own inadequacies, why should they fare better than we? (44)"
No index.
Dad was recalled to serve as a navigator in the Korean War and we sold our house in Portland and rented briefly in Houston and San Antonio, buying a used 35 foot Travelite that was much more cozy than the available rentals in San Antonio. We took it to Tucson, and to Hawthorne, Nevada, when he returned home, working there for a the best part of the year to improve our finances and where we paid off the trailer. Departing for Las Vegas, we stayed there a month while he looked for work, but Mom did not want him connected with the mob-controlled casino business. We went to San Bernardino for less then a month, and sold the trailer there for the wherewithal to establish ourselves in Los Angeles. Dad was a good saleman, appreciated trailers/mobile homes, and provided well for his family.
Unlike our story, that could be fleshed out considerably, Mr. Rigsbee's text is suitable for English majors. Opening the book a random, a sample paragraph follows:
"The fact of the matter is that the need arises constantly. It has arisen many times over, and it stands to rise again. More precisely, this need, like the concept to which it refers (the fantasy of flight),stays aloft within the conciousness the way dust raised behind a truck maintains its virtual levitation long after the truck has driven away. One wonders what prevents the dust from following, except that it is part earth, part air, part light, and darkness, nothing of its own. Always borrowing, expanding, depending, devoid of anhy essence, it constitutes a perfect dreaming range, not the property of anyone in particular, so the air can nver be said to be really clear of it. In the dust, in which we recognize the shape and dream of our need, we also recognize the image of ourselves. As the Bible asserts, without audible objection, we are dust. So are our creations, including structures both 'mobile' and earth-bound, for indeed, since we make them from our own inadequacies, why should they fare better than we? (44)"
No index.
