c. 2025 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(11-25)
I am Townshend Carr Lincoln, and this is my story.
I am a descendant of our 16th American president, and a member of the community at Evergreen Estates. A rural village of mobile homes, located just south of Lake Erie in the northeast quadrant of Ohio. Despite the fact that many residents of my county are affluent, educated, and successful, people on the streets of this park are generally out-of-the-loop. Not socially connected or visible to the general population. They function on a level of subsistence and hardship, as staples of daily living. Conflicts are settled here in a direct manner, with fists and firearms. Alcohol, CBD products, and cigarettes keep everyone content with their alienation. Mobility comes from the use of vehicles long cast aside by more fortunate citizens. They are typically 15, 20, or even 30 years old, ratty and rusted, and in a constant state of disrepair. Beds, hatches, and body panels may be replaced with pallet wood, or sheets of tin. Duct tape and vinyl siding are also useful in covering these automotive deformities. Whatever works is pressed into service. There is no hesitation to hone survival skills amid the collapsing ecosystem. Inhabitants are not shy or easily offended. They do not care how the outside world views their existence. They do not attempt to justify being dirty and uncultured. But their rough and rude behavior is simply a veneer which hides a simple ethos contained within. One based on honesty of a blunt and brash sort. There are no politicians on the streets of my neighborhood. Only bruised and beaten refugees who have found an oasis in the mud. A junkyard paradise where regular folk may flourish, and raise their children.
Authors of greater renown might provide stories of rich and famous individuals, or adventurers, heroes, and science-fiction voyagers, for their readers. But I have no gifts of that kind to bestow. For your inspection, I have only pages filled with raw, ragged, unadulterated truth. Tales of anguish, poverty, and sacrifice. Of God as conceived by those who live constantly in his shadow. Fed on hopes of betterment and an upward evolution, which of course, never arrives. There is no glory at Evergreen Estates. No celebration of grand things. No one with a PhD, or polished trophies, or blue ribbons, or notoriety on a global scale. There is instead, a teeming horde of trailer-dwellers who are divorced, bankrupt, unschooled, scarred, and slumping on debilitated joints. With broken teeth, bones, and hearts. Coughing and limping along with little more than the promise of a new sunrise to propel them forward. They are righteous in their zeal for being alive. Perhaps even courageous, in that none of them will ever aspire to do anything memorable. They drink light brews, curse and spit and drool, in a succession of biological functions set in motion by need more than endurance. They are here not by choice, but by chance. Each breath taken comes with a struggle against pain and misfortune. Yet their joy in beholding the gray sky overhead is genuine. Their ability to feast on Ramen, bologna, chicken nuggets, and corn chips, while imagining a banquet of prime roast and caviar is laudable. They dance in the rain, and shout to the heavens, no matter the cause or season.
They prove the strength of human spirits, when challenged by an environment which is both unfriendly and inconvenient. Patience may pay a dividend of value for those able to sit and wait. But in this graveyard of souls, victory comes by completing a simple task. Namely, getting through the day.
A popular and relevant quotation on this subject is attributed to the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, first referenced and paraphrased from his essay ‘Old Mortality’ in 1884. Whether historically accurate in full, it speaks directly to the ultimate result of being a sentient creature on this planet. Especially one stripped of the gilded habitat afforded in more civilized districts.
“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
At Evergreen Estates, that meal is always on the table.
During more than two decades on my crumbling avenue, I have seen events that might shock and horrify those in other environs. Death and chaos and mischief, dealt out in generous proportions. Fellow residents pulled from their homes, in handcuffs. Clapboard structures going up in flames. Vehicles spewing smoke, oil, and gasoline, while being used to get from one place to another. With cracked windshields, broken panes of glass, bald tires, and dragging exhausts. There have been fights and confrontations and abandonment. Roaming urchins with no parents offering supervision. Armed invaders seeking opportunity. Tired constables on duty. Repairmen twisting wires and bolts, and digging up buried pipes to fix leaks in the system. Even foolhardy members of the maintenance crew filling potholes with gravel, only to have their labor spoiled by an inevitable worsening of the road surface.
In a sense, participating in the daily routine at my park is akin to the woe of Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology, is forced to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it come tumbling down again. In that example, his agony lasts for all eternity, as punishment. But at least for us, a final exit from the flesh may still bring release from that torment.
Apparently, the property on which my longbox hovel sits was first developed in the 1950s. I cannot imagine why any landowner would have endeavored to build a blue-collar cluster of manufactured huts in a swampy area, not situated conveniently near any municipality. Those of a senior stature here, declare that construction waste and landfill rubbish was employed to stabilize the local geography. If true, this plan was only partially successful, in the long term. There is still a natural ritual of swelling and sinking by the landscape, throughout every year. Timbers sag, roofs go off-kilter, and concrete foundations crack into jagged pieces. Nothing lasts for very long. Therefore, repair projects of an amateur nature are constantly in vogue.
Residents come and go, persistently. Prefab units do the same, towed by diesel rigs. Owners change, managers disappear. Policies are drafted, but then enforced randomly. Only one constant seems able to remain in place. Rent checks are due on the first of every month.
Of that alone, those of us in the community may be certain. Anything else is a mystery to ponder, over a cool beverage and a smoke.
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