Serial Novel, Chapter One: Amarijuana Park

When I was 35, I married a Russian lady in Jacksonville, Florida.

The picture (left) which started out as me messing around with a chapter in the Photoshop for imbeciles book (and might be evidence of my having not quite mastered the techniques taught therein, especially the "feathering" part) gave me the idea to write this story, because they -the Russian looking girls- reminded me of the year leading up to that grand union, when I was Photoshopped into the Karakov family.

It was the joining, in matrimony, of the half sister of a Russian oligarch, with ties to the Golden ADA jewelry store in San Francisco, which fenced diamonds and gold from the Soviet National Treasury for Boris Yeltsin and, um, me.

And, after much fretting over the decision, I have chosen to back the story up about a year and tell it from there.

1996

In 1996, I was living in a trailer, in a park on the west side of Jacksonville.

Americana Mobile Home Park, on Townsend Road.

"We call it A-marijuana Mobile Home Park, cause everyone in here, just about, smokes, it," said Brett, the 14 year old son of Mr. Goetzinger, a man who "had a trade" and was thus able to support a wife and 4 other children, besides Brett, in a pretty decent double-wide that had two bathrooms.

I was in a pretty nice 1984 model single-wide, which had, as its only visible damage, at the time it was shown to me, a slight wrinkle in the contour of the ceiling of "the master bedroom," as if some heavy person had stood on the roof of the dwelling above that spot and jumped up and down.

After a year of trailer park life, it seems to me very likely that it was something like that which happened.

In fact, I can picture it.

The girlfriend of a guy from another trailer wasn't home when he came home early from the bar after the pool tournament had been cancelled because someone dumped a whole pitcher of beer on it, during a scuffle (with a woman! mind you, who held her own, surprisingly) and they had to keep a fan blowing on it to dry it, which would not have worked out well for the tournament, because altercations would arise over missed shots being blamed on the fan: "Now you saw that ball heading right for the pocket, before the fan blew it off course, Cletus! Don't try to say otherwise, or I'll break this stick over your head!" type of thing.

So the guy pulls up earlier than usual for a Wednesday night, having only hung around long enough to drink his usual amount of Busch beer, just without them having been spaced out over the duration of a pool tournament, and so he is drunk, as is usual, but more drunk than usual.

When he gets to his trailer, his girlfriend isn't there.

He begins to strongly suspect that she is with the guy who used to live in the trailer that I was being shown (before he defaulted on the payments, due to the ludicrous terms of his rent-to-own contract, but more on that later).
He is soon wailing on the front door with his fists, yelling something like "I know you're in there, Linda! I know you're in there 'cause you f***ed up when you left your boots by our front door! If you were going to your mom's in the other park like you said you might, you would 'a wore your boots, 'cause o' that snake you saw that one time, remember the snake, Linda !?! I know you didn't go far 'cause you left your boots, now come outta there, right now!!"


Then, after pounding on the door produced no Linda, it would have been perfectly normal Americana Mobile Home Park behavior for him to have climbed up on the roof of the thing, and then jumped up and down over where the master bed was.
In case Linda hadn't heard him at the front door.

I would have figured that out immediately upon seeing the creases in the ceiling, had I already lived in the park for the year and a half that I eventually would. It would have made perfect sense.


Linda trying to shush, let's call him Ed, who had been giggling right along with her under the covers, trying not to laugh aloud as Cletus was battering the front door, but who was now ready to jump up and yell: "Hey, get off my roof, or I'll come out there and shoot you off with my 12 gauge!"

"Shush, Ed!"

"He's f*** up my roof, Linda! I can't afford to pay no one to fix it!"

"He'll kill me if he finds out I'm in here, Ed!"

"Damn, I wish you wore your boots, Linda!"

Yes, it's easy for me to imagine, now. Cletus was f***ing up my roof, it turns out...

But, I had never lived in a trailer park, nor had I ever bought a trailer before.


I would wind up wondering who was worse, some of the people who live in trailers, or the shysters who sell trailers. I can't really say that I would never do it again, but, I had been pretty happy living in my '84 Corolla, which I had paid $1,400 cash for, not thinking that it would ever become a status symbol for me. 


A Year In A Car

It was a car that I had lived in for about a year, delivering pizza with it, while accumulating what would become the down payment on the trailer, which sat squarely in the middle of lot #60, surrounded only by scorched grass.

A lot of the other lots had had been landscaped with such things as awnings over driveways, plastic replicas of pelicans and/or flamingos sticking up from lawns which were not scorched, shrubs around the trailer, above ground pools in the back, maybe a hot tub, trees to provide shade from the scorching sun, and details such as welcome mats.

Trailer number 60 was just sitting there with not so much as a plastic flamingo, as if it had just been abandoned there to fend for itself.

I had gotten the misconception that I just had to get into some kind of place and get out of living in my car, as soon as possible. I hadn't been homeless enough to realize that, in a lot of ways, it is preferable to bearing the burden of keeping "a roof" over one's head. I had been swayed by idiots who had roofs over their heads by such arguments as: "You can't just live in your car; don't you want a place to call your own?"
I should have given that question more careful consideration before I responded to an ad in the paper for a "Trailer in nice west side park, rent to own, $375/mo."

It is exactly those members of society, brainwashed by such notions as "you can't just live in your car" who become victimized by the "investors" of the world.

Life in the Corolla, had meant that, after I was done delivering pizza, I could roll around to the back of the store and park the thing in a nice dark spot, where I would sleep like a baby, knowing that I would wake up with my entire wages, plus tips still in my pocket, and that I wouldn't have to write any checks for almost a grand every month, payable to any such "investor."

Me sleeping behind the Dominos where I worked provided the owner with an additional measure of security, for free, which made him happy.

And the manager had, always on call, a driver who could be woken up or interrupted in playing his guitar along with a Grateful Dead CD, whenever some other driver couldn't make it in, and who could be in uniform and ready to go, maybe after washing up in one of the huge stainless steel sinks in the back of the store.

Other drivers, who might have been high school kids, working a few hours so they could dispose of their income any way they wanted, because they were still freeloading off their parents, who were full of rosy hued expectations of how grand life was going to be once they graduated from college, might have shaken their heads at the sight of me toweling my hair off in the back of the store. Certainly, I had gone wrong somewhere...


But, the almost thousand dollars a month which I was not paying to a landlord tended to accumulate in my wallet, as my only expenses were those of keeping a car on the road, which entails more than the future graduate might realize.


The $400, or so, that I was making each week went towards a gym membership, where I would go upon waking in the late mornings, to get in a good workout, while consuming high calorie, high protein, high energy, multi vitamin drinks that were a hell of a lot better for me than anything I might have nuked in a microwave in a dwelling.

After a hot shower, that came with the membership, I would shave and put on clean clothes and hit the streets cleaner than a lot of people who lived in houses.
Especially those who were conserving hot water, trying to keep their energy bills down, so they might be able to make their mortgage payment that month.

I would clean and vacuum out the car at least once a week, so it wouldn't look lived in, and it had a state of the art stereo system in it, all paid for with money that wasn't going to an investor (investing in my stupidity).

My standard of living was high. It was common for me to have over a thousand dollars in my pocket, at any given time, maybe because I had gotten so busy with work and sleep that I hadn't had time to spend it.

It was a fallacy, the notion that I needed to be on the lookout for some kind of place that I could afford. Why, so I could avoid the derision of high school kids without a clue about life, who probably had rude awakenings coming after they graduated with degrees in "computer science" around the year 2000?

"Wouldn't it be nice to sleep in a bed, and be able to get up and go to the refrigerator anytime you're hungry, and to have a couch to sit on and watch TV and...?" was a common thing I would be asked.

It would be nice to have a music studio, I might admit to them.

If I had that to do over again, I probably would have continued to sleep in my car and to work until I had enough to put at least 50% down on a house with land. Then I would become somewhat of an investor, myself.

The rent to own thing had been a mistake. Or at least the way it went down had been.

I didn't figure out until it was too late that the business model of the guy who "sold" it to me was designed for me to fail.

I think he wanted people to rent his trailers, and make payments thinking that they would own the place one day, and then mess up. That way he could reset the principle back to the original amount, then look for another sucker to put in the place.

I don't want to make this post about shysters in the real estate game, but this guy, who had a huge ass, like you see on some black women, was a scoundrel.

The first time I met him, at the trailer, after seeing his ad in the paper, which made the place look very affordable at $375 per month, I had $2,000 in my pocket as a potential down payment.

His price, to buy the trailer outright was $7,500.

Or a sucker could start paying $385 per month, and wind up owning the thing in something like 5 years. Or, more likely, not.

By then, its book value would probably be about $4,000. Nothing seems to depreciate like last year's model of mobile home. But, lard butt wouldn't have mentioned that to me.

The math worked out to the sucker paying off the $7,500 principle over the course of 5 years.
I would imagine that his interest rate was as high as whatever was allowed by Florida law.


I met him at the trailer with the $2,000 in my pocket.

I had done my own math and determined that, putting two grand down would leave a principle balance of $5,500, which I further determined that I could knock out in more like 3 and a half years, with considerably less interest accruing.

He walked like a steamboat. One with an ultra wide keel. With the chugging of the paddles being his steps and him carrying his head like it was a bust of it in some museum. He resembled to me, Billy Casper, who played pro golf back in the 70's

I told the guy that I had $2,000 to put down.

"OK," he said.

Then, he produced, from a briefcase, an amortization table which had already been tabulated based upon a person putting 2 thousand down. ...had I mentioned that amount when I first called him...I don't think so...

It had the selling price of the trailer (that he would supposedly sell outright for $7,500) at $10,800 with the 2 thousand down and the monthly payments all figured in.

I balked.

"You mean, putting 2 thousand down makes the price of the trailer go up $3,300?"

I started to tell him that, I had figured that I could knock the balance down to $5,500 and that I also figured that I would be able to afford the thing, based upon that.

The guy seemed to become irritated.

"I know this might be your first time purchasing something like this, so let me tell you how it works..."

He then went on to explain how "money over time" is worth more than cash in hand.

And that, since he could conceivably get $7,500 for the trailer the next day, should a buyer come along, but he would have to wait 5  years for my payments to come trickling in, take the risk of relying upon me to make regular payments, then, yeah, the trailer was now worth $3,300 more.

To this day, I haven't actually researched to see how much of that was bullshit.

But, I was a fool, and, knowing that it was my first time purchasing such a thing, he had laid out a trap for such a fool; but this is all in hindsight, of course.

I told him that I would need time to reconsider the deal, since I hadn't known about "money over time."

Then, I learned another life lesson.

He became more irritated.

He said: "Listen, I drove all the way over here from the beach (25 miles) and turned on the air conditioning an hour before your arrival, so it would be comfortable in here, because I thought you were serious about us doing business here!

Now you're telling me that I wasted my time and my gas and you were just pulling my chain!!" or words to the effect of the chain part...

His ass was almost 3 feet wide inside his designer shorts, to go with his XXXX Polo shirt.

He was dressed like a pro golfer on the "Champions" tour (the only group of senior citizens that the sports world inexplicably cares about). He had driven his Lexus all the way from the beach, where some of the most expensive homes in Jacksonville are.

In my mind, to this day, in my weaker moments, I go back in time and re write the scene to have me saying something to the effect of: I thought the real estate business involved a lot of showing properties to people, and very little selling.
Don't you pop a champagne cork and take the wife out to dinner to celebrate after you close a deal?

Had I said that, though, he would probably try the low ball comeback of saying that it wasn't a quarter million dollar home we were talking about, but a trailer in a west side Jacksonville park.

But, the guy kind of convinced me that that was just how the rent to own business worked, and that he wasn't a ripoff. And I had half a mind to believe him. I should have at least talked to some of the other people in the park, who might have given me some insight; even if it meant that lard butt would have to make another whole drive all the way from his beach side home to turn the air conditioner on early.

I really wanted the trailer at that point, because I was starting to envision a music studio, where I could record stuff, after coming home from work, until the sun came up.

I could plop my 386 computer running DOS, on the rug of an otherwise empty room, making it the computer room, at the opposite end of where I would plop a bare mattress down in another one, making it a bedroom.

I saw it all flash briefly through my mind.


And, I signed on the dotted line; he had turned the air conditioning on an hour before my arrival, after all.

And soon thereafter, up walked Brett Goetzinger, who asked me "Are you moving in?" and that was when he tole me that everybody called the place A-marijuana Mobile Home Park.

The Goetzingers were the upper class of the park.

The van with the company name and logo on it (plumbing, was it?) in the driveway said it all. It seemed to be wearing their satellite dish like an expensive bow if seen from the right angle.

They were a nuclear family which just may have, on its own, made up the entire 7.5% or whatever it was of the park inhabitants whose status was "legally married," and which went to a Catholic church every Sunday, and sent it's 5 kids to Catholic Schools..

When they weren't suspended.

Having a vehicle of any kind (registered and insured and with all your tickets paid off, because the cops on the other side of the bridge will find an excuse to check, in short order) on the west side of Jacksonville, was like having wings to fly where all the ripest, most edible fruit is growing out of the sides of cliffs.

You could basically live real cheap on the west-side and, every day, drive your vehicle across the 3.7 mile Buckman Bridge, where you would be in a world where people lived in big houses and, among the ever expanding variety of businesses, in one of the continuous rows of strip malls could be found a store which dealt only in flags. It was "Flags Unlimited," or something; right next to a scuba gear store.

These were (those) flags that you stick in front of a big house on one side of the walkway to tell the world, usually often which college you graduated from, that seemed to convey a sentiment such as: I went to the University of Kentucky, and look at MY house, maybe next door to a house with one that implied: despite this big house, we are down home, simple and pure people, who believe in God -the One symbolized on the flag, that is....

People would pull up in to that particular store, on that side of the river, in high-end SUVs and go in (after making sure the mortgage had been paid, and that the kids had food to put in their stomachs, I'm assuming) to buy flags. Not just any flags, Flags Unlimited ones, at something like 50 bucks a pop.

They could even buy smaller ones to attach to the sides or tops of those same vehicles to flap along wherever they went.

By contrast, on the west side, a redneck (without a vehicle) would be sweating his way, in holy sneakers, up the imaginatively named 103rd Street to one of the few little run down stores within a mile of his trailer, where the wares would be a lot of cigarettes and beer and lottery tickets, but, sorry, no scuba tank regulators, you'd have to go over the river to get something like that...

But, he can't because he has no car, and they will take you to jail in a heartbeat if they see you walking across the Buckman Bridge, and cops patrol it, sure they do. just like I now patrol the bathroom area of my current residence for roaches that might be attempting to enter via the drain pipes.

And, since he can't get across the bridge, he is relegated to the limited prospects that the west side of Jacksonville had to offer, to someone without a vehicle.

Nothing like the wages that a guy on the other side of the river might make, for sitting in an air conditioned room and saying: "Welcome to Scuba Unlimited!" a few times a day.

As a pizza deliveryman, with a job on the other side of the river, I was doing well,  by trailer park standards.

I'm sure that this aspect of Jacksonville's economy, plays itself out in any other city that has a huge river to conveniently divide the haves and have-nots into easily manageable sections.

Other cities will use railroad tracks, if they have them, as this demarcation.

And any kind of hill will tend to draw the wealthy to the higher elevations, while the less fortunate flounder in the valley.

But, it is also something of a rite of passage, when a man born into humble beginnings, such as a trailer park on the west side, is able to get himself a valid license and a vehicle and maintain that vehicle, without one of the myriad things that can go wrong with such a venture sinking that venture (as if into the St. John's river) can weather the storms, not be dragged down, and can show up every day sober and ready to ply his trade.

This was regarded as if Level One, if you will, in the eyes of a lot of the community.

Level Two would be having done something about the two missing front teeth and being ready for the air conditioned room, I suppose.

So, here, I will pause, with myself having moved into a trailer park in the spring of 1996, and will continue the story, which has already been written, as soon as I decide upon the chronology I want to use. I don't want too many spoilers.

Do I get even with lard butt? You will have to read on....