Deb,

You better believe I was grinning from ear to ear!  I've been saying for years
that it should be a requirement for anyone wishing to be licensed as an
architect to have to live in a mobile home/trailer for a period of at least six
months.  Not only is it a great "character-building excercise", it really does
encourage reflection on form following function, sustainability, class, and a
whole host of other issues.

My trailer living sojourn was also a lot of fun, despite the lack of amenities
like heat and indoor plumbing. . .  I spent most of 1979 living in a 7x30
trailer on a 3,000 acre cattle ranch north of Boulder, CO.  The trailer looked a
lot like some of Deb's late 1930s examples, with curved plywood paneling and
ceilings, an ingeniously compact galley and icebox, and really cool built-in
furnishings.  It reminded me of the gypsy caravans in saw traveling with my
parents in France at age 6.  The trailer was cased up the window sills with
local sandstone, with was a good thing considering the Chinook winds in excess
of 80mph that sometimes came through in the spring.  My neighbors were a family
of semi-itinerant loggers that inhabited a collection of derelict school buses.
The four brothers that owned the ranch, ran a horse livery and dude operation.
During the winter, they turned the horses out in the pasture where my trailer
was located, and the horses liked to take shelter from the wind on the lee side
of my trailer.  One of my best excuses ever for being late to work was when one
of the horses fell asleep leaning up against my single (outward opening) door,
and refused to budge for several hours one morning.

Lisa


>I didn't know who lisa sasser WAS  ;)
>I was just wildly encouraged by the fact that she kept
>grinning from ear to ear and nodding   ;)