Rural Renewal, Part II

There are a lot of trailers in Point Roberts.  There used to be 3 trailer parks; now there are only two, I think, as Whalen's closed down a year or so ago.  But there are lots of lone trailers behind houses, and lots of mobile home trailers that are permanently grounded on a lot: that are more like houses than trailers in their function.  A lot of them are not lived in or are seldom lived in and are a lot more like abandoned houses than they are like anything else.  Because they are mobile home trailers, they are built to move around the rounds, even if they are not doing it, more than sitting unattended in a damp, cold climate.

When I was making the abandoned house quilts, I had a number of trailers to choose from, but I picked the one at the corner of APA and South Beach, because it was so available to public view and because it seemed quite typical of all the other abandoned trailers I'd seen around on my walks.

Here's what it looked like the first time I saw it, in 2003. 

It was probably around February when I took this picture.  Ivy was growing up into the house; there was no sign that anybody was living there.  I took pictures through the windows of the front door and it looked like an earthquake had shaken all the contents around.






I completed the trailer quilt later in the year, but only after I had rephotographed it some time during the summer, when it was of a sudden draped with tarps, and I combined the winter/spring pictures for that quilt.

I have continued to photograph this trailer over the years.  It gets attended to; it gets abandoned all over again.  It's covered with tarps, and then they're all gone and a little table and chair are set outside; it gets a coat of paint, and then the grey runs return..  And the cycle repeats.  Thus, this trailer, the trailer representative for the Point, is a little more problematic in its renewal.  Unlike the APA house from the last post, the trailer mostly gets cosmetic improvements, and then it slides back into abandonment.

Here it is this past week, 8 years after the original picture: its tarps are all gone again; its paint is looking pretty good, the leaves are raked off the yard and it almost looks as if the grass may have been mowed.  Even more important, it now has a little car parking area with fresh bark chips marked out in front.  It's Its apple tree is blooming, because apple trees, all over the Point, continue to bud and bloom and fruit whether anyone cares for them or not.  That's one of the differences between houses and apple trees.