The Trailer Thrash

When I was in my teen years, my parents decided to buy a trailer. It was one of those boxes you can hook behind your car, and when you get it where you want it, you can crank a handle, and voila! A living area folds out of the box! It wasn’t spectacular, and no, we didn’t have to live in it (we weren’t that far down the financial food chain), but it gave them somewhere to spend weekends in the summer.

They put the trailer up at a family trailer park in Wasaga Beach. I’m sure you know the type: people own a trailer and lease a piece of ground, as well as paying for water and electricity to be pumped to the site. At one end of the park, you have your high end modular homes, which have never been hooked to a trailer hitch, and cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of a two-level cottage on a lake somewhere. At the other end, people like my parents – they made it in the park, but sadly their trailers are sadly lacking compared to those fabulous semi-homes.

My parents went up practically every weekend during the summer for a number of years, taking my little brother along, and leaving my sister and I, both partying teenagers, to have the house to ourselves every weekend. But my parents didn’t see the trailer as this tiny little aluminum box, shameful in comparison to those behemoths at the other end of the trailer park. No, they saw themselves on equal footing, and imagine the only thing missing was the time spent upgrading their plot.

At first, it was little things; removing branches and stumps from the site to open it up. Building a permanent fire pit. Adding a wooden sign welcoming visitors to their site, which my father rather short-sightedly called “Jonestown”, and seemed confused when angry neighbours started leaving Kool-Aid packs on top of the sign.

But then my dad wanted to build larger improvements on the site. He removed trees to make a path down to the pond behind the trailer, as well as trying to make the slope more manageable, so anyone could wander down and go fishing. He lay down white stone to form a crude driveway. And he planned on building a deck that encircled the trailer, and extended out from the hill behind the plot, to give a nice view of the pond.

This, as you can imagine, was a larger job than most of the ones he had attempted, and it finally became time to recruit myself and one of my friends, Kurt, into the labour camp. (Ha! Camp! That’s fucking funny!)

Now, I don’t want to give you the idea that I was avoiding my parents, or that I didn’t want to enjoy nature, but honestly, I was the pale, indoor type, who burns easily, attracts mosquitoes, and invariably infuriated my father with my lack of work ethic. More importantly, I’d watched my father do work around the house, and inevitably wound or electrocute himself. I wasn’t very thrilled with the idea of his carpentry skills.

But, he was persistent, and I was obedient at that age. Hence, the next weekend, Kurt and I joined my parents for the trip up north, as well as my father’s friend Rick, who was also going to help out. I should point out that Rick had lost his right hand in an industrial accident when he was 18. I don’t want to point out the handicap to be cruel, but believe me, it features into the story later.

The weekend was hellish from the beginning. Bugs, sun and my family, trying to interest me in outdoorsy pursuits. I had no interest in doing family things. I had recently mastered my surly teenager routine, and was quite happy sitting near the fire with my buddy Kurt, as he, a burgeoning fire bug, spent most of his first little while up there poking and slapping a long stick into the blazing fire my parents kept going pretty much the entire time.

I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable that his poking and prodding would cause what it did. A log that he smacked on one end, obeying the laws of physics, levered up and flew out of the fire pit, landing in my lap. I was annoyed, and ready to tell Kurt off, until I realized the log was still on fire. I spent the next 10 minutes dancing around and beating at my crotch, long after the fire was out, in fear of burning my junk off. It was only teen junk, but I was pretty attached to it.

So you can imagine that I was in an already sour mood before we started the next morning on this epic deck.

My father had planned everything out, with the exception of handing out job assignments. In order to extend a deck out over a gradual drop off, long support posts would have to be pounded in to the dirt with a sledgehammer, with the posts taller and taller as the deck extended. (I know now, after watching a shitload of Mike Holmes, that there should have been some excavation and concrete involved, but hindsight being what it is, blah blah blah…). He had a big sledge, one of those two-handed, 20-pounders. And he directed me to hold the post as he handed the sledge…to Rick.

Yes, you read that right. He handed the two-handed sledgehammer to the one-handed man.

It was only the third swing when Rick missed the post completely, and I took a sledgehammer in the side of the head. I can only assume it was a glancing blow, based on me still being alive. I have since seen cows slaughtered that way, and it made me queasy to think how close I came to being a flank steak.

Everyone quickly gathered around, and asked what I suppose everyone is supposed to ask, as mind-numbingly stupid as it is. “Are you okay?”

Is there any answer you can give at that point that isn’t sarcastic beyond all measure? Either you are not okay, as you’ve been hit by a sledgehammer (and trust me, they heard the thunk as it connected!), or you are dead. There’s no “okay” after being hit by a sledge in the head.

For the remainder of the weekend, I sat in a folding lawn chair, growling at anyone who looked at me for longer than 10 seconds, and was free to bitch as loud as possible about how much I hated the trailer. No, I didn’t go to the hospital. I don’t recall bleeding, although my head swelled up like a mosquito of hawk-size had feasted on it, but there was no talk of an emergency room, or “concussion”.

In retrospect, even my father admitted he might have made a mistake. It took a few weeks, and for Rick to plant a two-handed axe between my fathers net-loafered toes, but he got there eventually.