Trailer Trash: an '80s Memoir

Trailer-park owners never use the word “trailer” and certainly not the term “trailer park.” At some point in time, even the Mobile Home Park Owners Association (MHPOA for short) realized that the word “trailer” had a negative connotation. When was the last time you saw a “trailer park community” advertised on TV? “Trailer park” has come to represent, in the minds of most Americans, men in stained work shirts dotted with drippings of food fat and car excrement returning home to take out life’s shortcomings on the innocents in their lives—the ol’ lady, the dog, and the coffee table. This image—which, I can tell you, is a partially true cliche in our society—vaguely explains why my parents and my grandparents decided to rent to tenants without children or pets. Well, birds and rodents were deemed acceptable but not guinea pigs. Guinea pigs, due to size and temperament, were completely unacceptable. My name is Angie Cavallari, and this is my story about growing up as an ’80s child in the shitty, impoverished, modern-age ghettos known as trailer parks.