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.

Disappearing Names and Objects

The All Point Bulletin brought us the news this month that the Whalen camp site over on the northeast side of Point Roberts has been sold to someone who needed a lot of land for an estate and all the people who have had trailers there over the years were given a month to get out. Not friendly, but it’s business, you know? And the needs of and for estates are considerable.

I’ve been thinking the last few days about this. It seems like a loss. Well, it is a loss of trailer space and part of the mystique of the Point is all these families, generations of whom have been coming here for years in the summer for a few weeks, a couple of months even, to partake of the local amenities. For some, it’s a tradition that should be not only acknowledged but honored and maybe even made sacrosanct (and give us back our trailer park!). And maybe that’s true. Like going to the same summer camp every year. On the other hand, maybe it’s just an inexpensive vacation place for Canadians and not a part of national (international?) cultural values. I don’t know.

The Whalen trailer park also has some economic value for the Point, I assume, so its shuttering will mean some economic loss. Those summer visitors are people who won’t be here buying food and hardware goods and beer and tourist objects, or going to restaurants and bars. And there are a decreasing number of trailer facilities here (although for many people who are full-time residents, that would be considered a feature, not a bug). So, it’s something of a mixed bag, I suppose. Change; never easy.

One significant loss involved, I think, will be the historical loss. Whalen is one of those names on the Point that is to be reckoned with, which is to say, old time resident. When we were constructing the outbuilding where I work on my quilts, we hired a nice guy named Gary who also ran the Whalen trailer park to work on the framing. I can’t remember his last name now, but I do remember how people would say to me, “Oh, sure, Gary. He’s married to the Whalen girl.” Who was, of course, no longer a girl, and hadn’t been one for many a year, but that’s how it is with the old families. They sold the trailer park a couple of years ago to someone from California who was going to run it as it had always been, but then the Californians ran into some family illness and that was the end of their plan. (Another instance of Point Roberts being a place where dreams go to die, I’d say.)

After Gary and the Whalen girl sold the trailer park to the Californians, they moved away, I think, and I don’t know if there are even any Whalens left here now. But there are still Whalen artifacts. About five years ago, somebody gave me a heavy window frame with glass intact because I was, at the time, putting some of the abandoned house quilts into window frames. “It’s from the old Whalen house,” I was told. Nothing more needed to be said. So I take care of that frame because in some not quite explicable way, it is a piece of Point Roberts history that is now my burden.

The Whalens are gone, the Whalen Trailer Park is gone, but the Whalen window frame is available for viewing upon request.