I’ve lived at few different addresses since arriving in Encinitas, CA. A brief stint in the parking lot of the Auto Zone and two weary nights as a guest of the California State Park system… during spring break.  Now, it’s not that I don’t like parks, or frantic, boozy parents who pilot massive RVs feed their teenagers sugar and hot dogs and start drinking massive quantities of vodka & Red-Bull as soon as the sun goes down. It’s just that I don’t want to share a narrow driveway with them.

But that kind of thing is bearable on the right kind of medication. What puts me over the edge is the army of eighty year old, volunteer park rangers armed with GPS enabled golf carts, five pound sudoku books and Mag Lites. It’s a well known fact that if you give a retired person an ounce of authority and a bullhorn, you’ve planted the seeds for the total collapse of western civilization. Seven AM drive-by lectures on how to properly use a restroom, and eight PM warnings, delivered via bullhorn, as to the penalties of violating the “quiet time” that started each night promptly at nine. These people are big fans of The Bush Doctrine.  So, after a few minor infractions and a fifteen point turn in tight quarters in front of an audience, I moved on down the road and found a little slice of heaven.

When I was a kid, I thought Disneyland was actually in God’s back yard. So you can Imagine how my life changed when my parents took me there for the first time.  If man could create such a magical place here on earth, where bears played banjo and life-sized stuffed animals roamed free to grope the children of paying parents, then man could do anything. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that kind of unbridled wonder. That is, until I found Trailer Rancho.

Trailer Rancho is technically a trailer park, but contrary to popular opinion, trailer parks aren’t so much parks as they are communities. Much like prisons or rehab centers are communities. In a trailer park, you don’t need a TV. You only need an open window with an unobstructed view of the woman next door who farms plastic bags by moonlight or the guy who likes to drink in the back seat of his car with his dog. And you certainly don’t need music. You just need a genuine curiosity for the occasional dull thud and a healthy appreciation for the fact that he doesn’t understand that she’s spent the last four weekends at his mother’s place and she needs a &%#$’in break!  (Amen sister.)

To the people here I’m just a t-shirt guy. A t-shirt guy who likes to listen to Foghat and shoot his bb gun at the beer cans he strings on his clothesline that holds no clothes. But little do they know that I’m currently in negotiations with the park manager, Cheryl, to bring Trailer Rancho into the fold of the Destee-Nation family. Things aren’t going so well because she doesn’t use the internet on account of her boyfriend not trusting the government.

I’ll keep trying.