Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

Acacia Imperial Mobile Park. Right now, January 1997, Acacia’s time bubble goes for $385 a month — that’s rent for a 30-year-old one-bedroom trailer.

A woman’s voice, loud and complaining, carries over the redwood fence that separates me from a city block of budget apartments. “Listen, you big-ass bitch, don’t you never come around here again.”

Ed Chrisman: "I got out to the Euclid trolley station at midnight. I was going to use the phone — "

A second woman’s voice, this one three octaves lower than the first, replies, “Fuck you, motherfucker, don’t you bitch motherfucking me!” Actually, the last “motherfucker” was partially smothered by a commercial jet airplane on approach to Lindbergh Field. I’m reconstructing the word from hearing its first syllable. The jet roar reminds me that it must be ten o’clock. Planes seem to stack up and strafe the neighborhood every night at this time.

The park is home to 240 people who live in 93 trailers. The surrounding community is African-American, but the park has no black residents.

Here, by the way, is Acacia Imperial Mobile Park. Drive to Imperial and Kudid, go east on Imperial three blocks, turn left on 34th, and 100 yards later, just before the dead end, is the park’s entrance.

Acacia Imperial Mobile Park has been here since Harry Truman was president. The surrounding topography has changed from country to ghetto. San Diego has gone from 334,000 residents to 1,183,000, California from 10,600,000 to 31,900,000, the nation from Ozzie and Harriet Nelson to crack cocaine. But this place is different. One of the first things you learn in Acacia Imperial Mobile Park is that the place lives a life of its own. It exists inside its own time bubble. Right now, January 1997, Acacia’s time bubble goes for S385 a month — that’s rent for a 30-year-old one-bedroom trailer.

“I clean the area, get the trash and garbage, walk around and check people’s yards, make sure they don’t have too much crap in them. You can’t store things outside; it has to be in a shed."

The park is home to 240 people who live in 93 trailers. The surrounding community is African-American, but the park has no black residents. Hispanics, Asians, and Caucasians live on a five-acre asphalt island set in the midst of a sea of ebony.

“I heard the women yelling in Spanish. I figured it was their kids or a domestic problem."

Jim Larson is the manager and has been working here since December 1995. Larson, 44, stands six feet two inches but seems taller because of his lanky torso. He has surfer-blond hair, green eyes, no beard or mustache, and Celtic-fair skin. You can often find him in the one-story, cinderblock office building located just inside the entrance gate. This morning the metal office door is open, although the wrought-iron screen door is locked shut. I knock. Larson gets up from behind a gray metal desk and invites me in.

Larson has been working since first light. A tenant reported a prowler in the park, cops were summoned, and Larson has been walking the parapets. I ask how often this occurs.

“Infrequent, this is the third time since I’ve been here.” Larson’s manner is confident. He has no accent; his wide smile, if not spontaneous, is acceptably reassuring. Still, it’s hard to believe this is only the third time the outside world has seeped in here, but then again, the trailer court does seem safe, maybe because it has the feel of a fort. I pass the thought on.

“It used to be a lot worse. It was like the outside,” Larson nods toward 54th Street. “People from outside were coming in here and feeding off the tenants in the park. This used to be a senior park. That’s when they really had problems with outsiders going through a roof vent, dropping down on residents, and robbing them. They tried to clean it up with security guards, and that helped a little bit, but that doesn’t work for the long run.”

“Because?”

“People aren’t intimidated by them. You get a security guard who’s great for a week, and then the second week he’s sleeping all night.”

I consider the absurd lock on my trailer. Infants, tiny tots, little girls taking a break from making mud pies could break that lock in less than a minute, Larson continues, “This used to be a family park, which seemed to help because you had...”

“...younger men?”

“Yeah. More of a Neighborhood Watch kind of thing. When I got here it was pretty bad. In fact, it was bad. We had drug dealers hanging out by the phone [there’s a pay phone next to the office] and prostitutes doing their business behind the maintenance building. It wasn’t every night, but weekends you could find that problem. The laundry room, they never locked it, the doors were torn off, and people who didn’t live here were hanging out, loitering. I’d find drugs, crack pipes, and syringes.”

I have a vision of a beloved woman returning home after a foraging trip to Vons. I call out from our trailer, “I’ll get the groceries, dear. Watch that syringe on your way in!” I swallow air and push on. “What did you think when you realized what was going on?”

“Too many problems. Every night I’d walk around until two or three in the morning. I’d chase strangers out, tell them, ‘You have to leave now.’ I had one big problem, I think it was April or May. A Hispanic lady moved into the space next to me. There was the mother and a daughter, plus a female relative was helping them move in. This guy started talking to them in the yard and left. He came back a half-hour later and broke into their house, jimmied the back door, and went in. The ladies didn’t know what was going on, they got panicked. The guy left, but then he came back again and said, ‘I know there are no men here.’

“I heard the women yelling in Spanish. I figured it was their kids or a domestic problem. I thought, ‘Oh man,’ put on my shoes, and ran over. The guy was already gone. The woman didn’t speak good English. One daughter spoke a little and said, ‘Oh, he broke in, he broke in!’ So I dialed 911. The cops got here, and they looked around, but they didn’t look too hard, and left. There was a miscommunication. The cops didn’t realize that the guy had actually strong-armed into the house, which would be a different offense than trespassing.

“Two hours later I was walking around and the same guy was in front of their house. I yelled ‘Stop!’ He was, like, ‘Who the hell are you to give me problems?’ By then I’d gotten my gun was carrying a revolver in my pocket, which I do if I think I’m going to have problems. He went, ‘I ain’t stopping. I’m not doing nothing.’ He was tweaked out. He wouldn’t stop. Then he turned around and started getting aggressive with me. So, I pulled out my gun and said, ‘Stop or I’ll blow your fucking brains out. I'm not a cop. I don’t have to say certain things. This is it.’

“He stopped. I had him put his hands up and all that He’d gotten to the front of the park, so I walked him backwards to the house and laid him down flat on the ground. The women came out and identified him. I said, ‘Okay, call 911 again.’ The police came right away with the helicopter and all that stuff. They busted the guy. But I think they let him go because there was something about the report. It was the screwiest thing I’d ever seen. The first time they came out, they didn’t realize he actually entered the house. So now they were saying, ‘Well, you didn’t tell us.’ Then they wanted to know why I had a gun on the guy. I said, ‘This is private property. I’m protecting it.’ They didn’t say too much about the gun after that, but I had the feeling they just let the creep go.”

His story reminds me of Steel’s, a rock ’n’ roll bar in Eugene, Oregon. I worked there as a bouncer a long time ago. Before I took the job, I told the owner that I would look tall and even threatening if the occasion called for it, but if he thought I was going to get into a fight for five bucks an hour he was nuts. I relay the story to Larson and add, “Drawing down on burglars is way beyond managing a trailer park. Doesn’t that feel above and beyond the call of duty?”

“That’s isolated. Since then there hasn’t been many people like that, because they know. I chase strangers out all the time. We lock the laundry room and I patrol every night. I always check three or four times, the whole park, the front entrance, around here,” Larson points to the north side of the park, “all over.”

“Jim, why go through all that? When you first arrived, weren’t there big neon lights blinking on and off in your head imparting the message, ‘This is trouble’?”

Larson dips his big head. “I thought, ‘My gosh, what am I getting into?’ This place is just...this...is...the...barrio. You know, it’s terrible. It’s a little bit better now, but it was real dirty, and the neighborhood is, and was, terrible. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I wanted to start a career in residential management — apartments, RV parks, something like that. You have to get started somewhere, so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll get started here.’

“Plus my dad had a motor home. He was in LA. and had been through a heart transplant. He didn’t think he was going to live, so he spent all his money on the motor home. Well, he lived. He’s on a fixed income. He can’t afford to buy medication that the state won’t pay for. They only pay for three prescriptions a month or something. Someone who’s had a heart transplant has at least ten different medications that they have to take every day.

“He couldn’t afford everything. I thought, ‘Well, if I get the job here I could move him down and he’d have free or little rent.’ The space in L.A. was costing him $500 a month. I couldn’t afford to cover that.”

I survey the barren office, made more austere by the single four-drawer filing cabinet, a giveaway calendar on the wall, and withered linoleum on the floor. Larson seems to be reading my mind, reassures “It didn’t take long to straighten this park out. When I first started, I did have a few threats, but it was usually from the people in here. There were three or four trailers that were part of the problem, the people in them were selling drugs. That brought druggies in and then they hung out. I had the police bust one of the residents; I kept threatening the others until they left.

“Once the drug dealers and their friends were gone, it calmed down. Like today, some kid prowling through to see what he can steal. We get that occasionally, but for the most part it’s a lot different than across the street,” Larson waves a hand toward the park’s entrance. “We’ve got a fence, and they know somebody is watching.”

A young girl, maybe 14, shoulder-length blond hair, arrives at the office screen door. Larson unlocks and opens the door while asking the child why she isn’t in school. The visitor announces that she wrote a poem and asks if he would like to read it. Larson declares he would. The girl hands him a torn piece of typewriter paper and leaves walking a little straighter. I wait a moment, then ask, “Tell me about your normal workday. You get up, and then what do you do?”

“Clean the area, get the trash and garbage, walk around and check people’s yards, make sure they don’t have too much crap in them. That happens a lot. The city has a special civil code for mobile parks. You can’t store things outside; it has to be in a shed. We get a lot of that, people bringing in wood because they’re going to build something. They’ll stack lumber outside, and you can’t do that. I’ll give notices to clean up their space. If they don’t do it, then I give them an eviction notice.”

I think to myself, Where did this guy come from? then ask, “Where did you come from?”

“Born in Chicago, moved to California when I was ten, grew up in Los Angeles. I was one of six kids, upper-middle-class family. I did a couple years of college, never finished. Instead, I went to Alaska and worked on the pipeline for eight, nine years. I came back to LA. and opened a business, sold electronic components in the early ’80s. Did okay with that. Then I ran nightclubs, large nightclubs in Los Angeles.”

“Which ones?”

“A couple of adult night-clubs and then rock ’n’ roll night-dubs. I ran one in Malibu for five years. We had top bands. Artists would stop in and play, people like Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton. Another one was Bangers Restaurant. It was a full-service restaurant and nightclub.”

“That’s a long, long way from 54th Street in San Diego.”

“Oh yeah."

“Why did you take the trip?”

“Got tired of the restaurant and nightclub business. I was a heavy drinker, and when I stopped drinking, I wanted to change my hours. I didn’t like working late nights, plus being around booze all the time, although I did it for years.” Larson reveals a sorrowful smile. “I wanted a change, so I changed and got into this. This is a management of a business,” Larson tries another laugh, then more seriously adds, “Businesses are businesses, basically. It’s not hard work that I have to do. I do a little cleaning here and there, but I’ve got somebody that cleans and Rick does the repairs. The job is basically people. Over an average day, 15 or 20 people come to me with some kind of a question or dilemma.”

“Like what?”

“ ‘Why is my electric so high?’ is a common one. ‘My neighbor’s dog harks.’ ‘My neighbor made some noise at 12 o’clock last night.’ I’ll ask, What kind of noise did he make?’ ‘They were outside making noise with their car.’

“Well, the people were coming home. They’re entitled to get into their house. If they make a little noise, that’s no problem. Or a tenant will say, ‘My neighbors were outside talking all night.’ For that, I’d have to go over and say something. You have to figure out what you should act on and when you say to people, ‘Well, have you talked to your neighbor about him coming home late at night and slamming his car door?’ ”

Larson gazes out the door toward a row of trailers and says, more to himself than to me, “We have people on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) or welfare or on fixed incomes, and they don’t really have enough money to live on. Unfortunately, I end up paying out of my pocket for propane or food for the kids. It seems like everybody gets a check on the first and it lasts a couple weeks, and then for the final two weeks of the month you have people who can’t afford to do anything or feed themselves. I’ll tell them where they can go to get food, like to a food bank.”

We have cop, we have child-care worker, we have sympathetic reader, we have complaint negotiator and welfare facilitator. Can I get an industrial engineer? “Are there any special hassles moving trailers in here?”

Larson considers the subject, replies, “Everything is on wheels. All the mobile homes and trailers in here are pretty easily moved. They all have a hitch, they all have tires, unlike a mobile home park where you take the tires off and put skirting on. Anyway, most of them have been here since they were new.”

“People have lived here steadily for 10, 15, 20 years?" I am incredulous.

“Oh yes. We have tenants that have been here since the ’50s....”

My mouth drops.

“They’ve seen some changes. In the ’50s this area was different, very unpopulated. The park and the trailers were all new. They had activities, they had the clubhouse, they had public showers and restrooms. Can’t have that anymore. We can’t leave the clubhouse unlocked because of vandalism, or worse, people getting hurt. It’s a place where somebody could take somebody. The world has changed. You can’t have that kind of access in this age.”

It’s astonishing how quickly humans figure a hierarchy. It took one day for me to appreciate the nuances of my space. Space 88.I am, for instance, at the south end of the park, so there are no trailers across the lane from me—a big, big bonus. The trailer on my west side is empty; the trailer on the east has been abandoned. Therefore, I enjoy a profound drop in noise pollution. I am spared constant human grunts, groans, and idiot chatter, not to mention the howl of television, radio, and stereo. So, instantly I think, “Oh, my space is better than ugly Space 58. That wretch is surrounded by trailers on four sides, and two of them have small children. Wouldn’t want to live there.”

Of course, hierarchies work two ways. I walk by Space 113, admire the living room’s birch-wood paneling, the tiny but well-built wooden porch, the mature elm tree out front, and sadly admit, “Yup, this is better than my space.”

People have decorated their tiny worlds. Space 119 has a new green indoor-outdoor carpet tacked to the staircase that leads to a double-wide sliding glass door. Space 123 has a new metal fence guarding its treasures. Over on Space 81, there’s a patch of mowed grass, a bed of bachelor’s buttons, and a new out door barbecue. The trailer park is like an internment camp where prisoners have been given an 8-by 16-foot outdoor plot to decorate, to call their own, and they have proceeded to implant themselves and their fantasies with the vengeance of a scorned postal worker.

There is something about poverty and the color brown. Go into any Goodwill, Salvation Army, or St. Vincent’s thrift store to purchase a chair or couch and you’ll find 80 percent of the offered items are brown. The brown ranges from hideous brownish yellow to blackish chocolate.

My trailer is no different. The trailer’s curtains are generic dark brown. Beneath two front windows rests a ripped, teddy bear-brown couch with a yellow-stained chunk of foam showing through. Three feet from the sofa is the kitchen. There is a refrigerator on the west side, sink and cinnamon-colored counter opposite. Take two more steps and enter the boudoir. The bedroom features a worn, chestnut-colored mg 12 inches wide. On either side of the mg are two built-in single beds. At the far end of the trailer is the bathroom with a plastic toilet and midget shower. All the trailer walls, closets, and drawers are constructed from the cheapest possible composite wood finished with a weak brown veneer of imitation oak.

’Tis another day, noon. I am hungry and too lazy to fix lunch. I trudge out of the trailer, climb in my truck, drive down to Los Chavos on the corner of Euclid and Imperial. Los Chavos is a taco stand of the primordial, authentic school; that is, when arriving at the gaily painted plywood window one is overcome with the sweet, nauseating odor of rotten meat and burnt grease. I order three beef tacos and black coffee, take a waiting position on the curb. Next to me is a young black man, late 20s, also waiting for his order. Now comes another black male walking toward us on Imperial. My neighbor calls out, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

The second man replies, “Oh, I’ve been back awhile.”

“You finished with that thing?”

“That little thing was done a long time ago.” The second man imparts an ain’t-no-big-deal laugh.

“No more vacation" is the reply.

“You got that right."

As the men prattle, I realize that their topic is the second man’s recent prison term. The last time I heard the phrase “on vacation" when referring to doing time was in South Africa during the state of emergency.

Ed Chrisman, 77, is standing behind his living room window wearing blue-jean bib overalls and sipping a cup of coffee. Chrisman lives in Space 94, two lanes north of me. The park’s manager had told me about him, said he was one of Acacia Imperial’s old-timers. I climb two miniature front steps, knock on his door, am invited in and shown to a seat at the kitchen table.

Chrisman is a man who likes to smile. His smile comes easy and stays long. When smiling, his mouth opens, his jaw drops, the four corners of his lips turn up and reach for his eyebrows. He’s five-foot-nine, 160 pounds, has nearly a full head of light brown hair. His face is ruddy and clean-shaven. His oval head is set off by two large, Vulcan-like ears. But Chrisman’s most pleasing aspect is his turn-of-the-century Midwestern twang. I haven’t heard anything like it since I was a child. Sitting here, watching the well-earned furrows of his lined face crack and twist as he speaks, enjoying the gleam of his black eyes, I feel like I'm sitting in front of an Ashley wood stove in rural South Dakota.

It’s late December on a 20-below-zero afternoon. The time is exactly 3:30 p.m. It’s Saturday. The sun is setting, pink clouds light up the horizon, towering raven-colored cumulus clouds squat overhead. My pard and I have the whiskey bottle out and we’re settling in to tell stories. I ask, “Do you remember when you moved here?”

“Nineteen eighty. February.”

“What was it like?”

“It used to be an adult park, a lot of elderly then, and it was a lot better too.”

I delight at the sound of his voice; his intonation brings up images of sod houses and nickel beer. “What was the neighborhood like 17 years ago?”

“Pretty much the same.”

“Did they have grocery stores and such?”

“The liquor store is about the only thing that is still here. The liquor store lady told me, ‘Be careful. Just get on the bus and don’t walk around.’ So, I was careful for a while, and then I got to where I went where I wanted to. Along Groveland, that street up here,” Chrisman motions toward the park’s entrance, ‘people would stop and ask if you had any change or money. I’d say, ‘No,’ and go on. When she told me that, I was afraid to walk outside of the trailer park.”

“Does it seem safer now?”

“I don’t know if I’m used to it of not, but I’m not restricted anymore. I just go ahead and go.”

“Do you walk around at night?”

“I walk over to the trolley (the Euclid Avenue trolley station). I was figuring on buying a motorcycle. The police in EI Cajon had these classes, to give you some motorcycle training. I went to the class and didn’t get out of there until after 11 o’clock. I got out to the Euclid trolley station at midnight. I was going to use the phone — usually when I was late like that, I’d call a cab from the trolley station. Or, I’ll call from where I was leaving and have the taxi meet me at the station. Anyway, this time there was three guys hanging around the phone booth.”

Chrisman chuckles. “I thought, ‘I’ll just walk on home this time. “Cause hell, I didn’t trust them either. So, I got about a block and here’s another guy come across the street, and he says, ‘Hey, just a minute. I want a dollar.’ It was, 'I want a dollar.’ So, I reached in my pocket and I had some change and I hand him the change. He said, ‘No, I want a dollar.’ I thought, ‘Well, if I take my billfold out, he’ll grab it and run probably.’ So, I got my billfold and said, ‘Well, I’ll give you the billfold, but I want my cards and my ID.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ I had a railroad pass in there. He kept looking at it and asked, ‘What you got in there?’ I told him, ‘Just a pass.’ ”

“How much money did he get?”

“Seven dollars. He took it and walked off, stopped, turned around, and said, ‘I didn’t intend to rob ya.’” Chrisman warms the cabin with a genuine guffaw.

“Did he return your money?”

“Oh no. I thought, ‘Hell, I got a few more blocks to go. I hope somebody else don’t come up. I don’t have nothing. I’m in bad shape.’ Since I’ve been in San Diego, that was the first time — well, once I had too much to drink and got in a car with the wrong guy and he stripped me. I kind of asked for it that time.”

My face aches from smiling. “Are you retired?”

“Oh yeah. Railroad. Missouri Pacific. That guy stole my railroad pass. I was just thinking about it this morning. I’ve been trying six months to get a duplicate pass. I should call them again. Why, hell, I only used it once, but I want it anyway.”

“Did you haul this trailer into the park?”

“No, no. I was going with a lady that got cancer. We were going to get married. We went to the Philippines together to find a cure. This was her trailer. I took care of her for three months and she died, fumed out she had put my name on the title. I was living in a little trailer over on number-one row when I moved here in 1980.I rented it from the guy that was married to this lady. They lived here. He owned the trailer that I rented. I lived in his trailer until ’93 when I come over here to take care of her.”

Sure. What the hell. Why not? I put another log in the stove and dissolve a little more into my chair. “What happened to the husband?”

“He divorced her. She started going downhill after that. She really loved that guy. He retired and went to Minnesota to build a cabin. He complained about paying too much income tax, because they were married but living separately. It bothered him and he asked her for a divorce. He said, ‘When you finish there’ — she was working for the school district — ‘well, you come back with me and we’ll marry again or something. But,’ he says, ‘right now I want a divorce so I don’t have to pay this tax.’

“I was friends with both of them for a king time. I remember when I come here to rent his trailer. I saw it advertised in the paper. He filled out the lease right in this room. It rained today, and that reminds me of that time, the second of February 1980. It was cold and rained like hell.”

I’d better pour another sip of whiskey for us. It’s as dark as an arctic night outside and, beyond a six-foot radius from this wood stove, colder than a mail ought to fed indoors. “What brought you to Acacia Imperial in the first place?”

“I wanted to go across the border and learn Spanish. I got acquainted with a taxi driver over there. I told him, I says, ‘Alfredo, you find me a place, a family that has children, and get me a room in their house. If you can find that for me, I’ll give you a hundred dollars.’ He said, ‘Okay.’

“I’d go over to Tijuana once a week or so. One day he told me, ‘Well, I found your place.’ God dang, I was 55 years old. He found me a place all right. It was with a lady who worked at the Capri. I paid $300 a month, stayed there four weeks.” Chrisman delivers another guffaw. “Whiskey, whatever I wanted was available. One day I said to the woman, ‘Hey, I get lonesome in the afternoon.’ She says, ‘My sister lives across the hall.’” Chrisman roars. “She was 26 and the sister was 30. Oh God, then I give that up.

“I wanted to go to Honduras, but Honduras started having all that trouble. I had friends there in the Peace Corps. I used to talk to them on the short wave. Then I lost track. I still go to Tijuana once in a while. I have a friend, she’s a Mexican, illegal, and she goes with me.”

I put my feet up on the Ashley’s chrome rail, tip my chair back, remark, “So, after a month in Tijuana, you said, This isn’t going to work,’ and you came back to San Diego. Is that how you found this trailer court?”

“I drove back. I had my old car. I stopped in a joint and had too much to drink. I got a DUI.” Chrisman rolls around the inside of a laugh on himself. “So, then I didn’t drink for ten years. I didn’t even drive; hell, I just got rid of everything. I give up the idea of living in Mexico. I don’t know, I kind of got scared of Tijuana. Now I feel safer over there than I do here.”

“Did you find this place in the paper?”

“No, I had a friend that I was living with. I met her in Colorado when I was still working for the railroad. I retired in 1976.I first went to work in ’41, when I was 21 years old. Anyway, I came out here and happened onto her. I don’t remember how I met her. I had put myself in a voluntary for alcoholics...”

“A rehab program?”

“Yeah, in a state hospital. She was there for some reason. We lived together for a while. She was in and out of board-and-care homes. I didn’t really know what the hell was wrong with her, but after I lived with her for a while I discovered she had seizures.

So, I put her in a hospital and that’s when I came here. She had a cat, and she could have stayed anywhere, but she wanted that damn cat.

“The only place she found that would take a cat was over here on Oxford. So, she went there, and I looked for a place dose by where I could visit her once in a while and kind of look after her. I saw this place in the paper and I come right over and rented a little trailer on row one.” Chrisman moves his head up and down agreeing with himself.

Night has arrived in wintertime South Dakota. Good thing those kerosene lamps are lit. I always liked the glow of a kerosene lamp, the small circle it illuminates, the mystery that lies beyond its feeble reach. “So,” I say, “in the beginning, living here was temporary, and suddenly, it’s 17 years later.”

“Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I always think about getting away. I had this trailer on the market for over a year, but hell, I only had three or four people stop by. I turned it over to a real estate company. I wouldn’t take less than $4000 for the thing. One guy wanted it pretty bad, but he insisted on making payments. So, I give up on trying to sell it.”

I do believe we should have another touch of whiskey. “Do you know many people in the park?’’

“I know Dixon over here,” Chrisman motions to a trailer across the lane and two doors down.

“Was there ever much socializing here?”

“Oh yeah, yeah. This little girl, Gloria, she’d have a party. They had a hall on the hack Hide of the park, and there was a guy playing the piano and dancing and they’d have food. They had meetings, you know, talk about their complaints and everything. But hell, that’s all passed. Now, gosh dammit, I don’t know any of them, except Dixon. Hell, he’s been here longer than I have. He and I get together outside once in a while. If he sees me out in the yard he’ll come over, but he’s the only one I know except for the manager, Jim.”

“What’s your day like?”

“I go eat breakfast.”

“Where?”

“Lemon Grove. I have friends over there. I usually eat at McDonald’s. Then I go downtown, I go to the bank, I go to the library, go to the post office. I usually eat lunch downtown. You know where the trolley turns on 12th, that Chinese place right there? That’s where I eat. Then I catch the trolley and come home and that’s about it. I’ll read, turn the TV on for the afternoon.”

“How about dinner?”

“I have something at home.”

“Are you a cook?”

“No, hell no. Cottage cheese. Usually in the evening I have apples and bananas and such. I have popcorn all the time. I had a broken jaw and, God, I was so starved for popcorn. It's funny that I still like cottage cheese, because that’s all I could eat."

“Then you turn in early, eight, nine o’clock?”

“Yeah.”

Time for another log. I’ll take the Aspen; that one will burn hot. I stand up, take a stretch. “This place has treated you well. You found it while you were with one lady, then you connected with another woman and wound up owning her trailer, all in this trailer court.”

“I had partners before that. I only came here because it was close to the nursing home.”

“By the way, what did you do with the railroad?”

“Conductor, but I like being retired better. It’s the best job I ever had. I told Dixon, ‘I just get up early so I’ll have more time to loaf.’ ”

“Is this going to be it, or do you ever think about moving?”

“I think about it. I wanted to go to Arizona, probably Phoenix. I saw it on TV where they have this retirement home. I don’t know where it is, but I wanted to find out. I like to swim. I used to go to the Y, but I don’t know anymore, what with the dressing and undressing. But they have this place in Arizona. They have an inside pool, everything, medication, whatever you need. I was going to inquire about that. It’s kind of in the back of my mind.”

“How much does it cost?”

“I don’t know. I saw it on TV. I wasn’t paying a hell of a lot of attention. I thought about getting ahold of the chamber of commerce or something back there. They’d probably tell me. But I’m not sure about it. Goddamn, it’s so hot over there in Phoenix,” Chrisman whistles.

“Were you ever married?”

“Yeah, five times.”

“How many kids?”

“Two. I was 18 years with this lady, the mother of my two boys. The damn railroad. I was always on call. One afternoon she was talking about fixing a duck for dinner. I said I wasn’t sure whether I liked duck. So, she went and got one and put it in the stove. Goddamn, before the thing got done I had to go to work. She was sitting there crying when I left. That railroad caused me a lot of trouble.”

I nod, stare into the wavy curtains of heat coming off the Ashley stove top. “Eighteen years is a pretty good run.”

“Yeah. Eighteen years, ten years, ah, the last one was nine months.” Chrisman laughs. “I had a trailer then too. I told her, ‘You stick with me till I can retire and you can have this.’ But right away she wanted more than that, so hell, I knew it wasn’t going to last. But I lived with a couple of them since then.”

“Are those days pretty much over? Think you’ll find another woman?”

“Oh, I always have one.”

“How about your kids? Where are they and what are they doing?”

“One is in Ontario. I think he’s with the correctional department, working for the California prison. And the other one works in I.as Vegas. I’ve kind of abandoned them. I haven’t kept close contact. I have a grandson, he’s the only one I miss.”

“Do they ever visit you?”

“Oh no.” Pause. “I’m curious about my father. I haven’t talked to him either. He’ll be a hundred years old in ’98, but I’m not sure he’s living.”

“Where was he living the last time you checked?”

“Colorado. (Canyon City. He and I were pretty close.” Chrisman grins. “I don’t know how many times that guy has been married. I called him one time and he was telling me about this lady he was seeing. I said, ‘Hell, give me her phone number and I’ll call.’ He thought I meant I’d call for her. He says, ‘Hell, I ain’t giving you her phone number. She’s only 60 years old.’ ” Chrisman cackles as he reaches back and brings that moment to life.

I belch and pass the whiskey bottle. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“Oh gosh. I had a friend that came through here awhile back. He’s dead now. He said my dad was doing all right. Said he still drinks his glass of vodka every morning. He used to drink a water glass full of vodka.”

“Did he drink all day long?”

“No, that was it. He was a railroader too. Different railroad. He worked for the Rio Grande. I was Missouri Pacific. He was in the car department. When I was putting in an application, they come damn near to hiring me at the Rio Grande, but they had those damn big jacks. Now they’re hydraulic and they’re not so heavy. Hell, this guy says, ‘Can you carry one of these damn jacks?’ ” Chrisman makes the sound of three people laughing. “ ‘Oh, God,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ So, I went on the road with the Missouri Pacific. I liked that prairie run. That damn Rio Grande was all mountain; I didn’t want any part of it.”

“What’s the rent here?”

“I pay $270 with the electric.”

“Cheap.”

“Oh, I can’t live anywhere else cheaper. Most of these trailers, you can’t see out of them. Like the trailer I had on row one — hell, I could just see a damn apartment building out the window'. This here is a pretty good spot. The problem is, God, I hate to move. Oh God! When I had this place for sale and this guy was real interested in it, he was going to come back that afternoon. And while he was gone, I was thinking, ‘Goddamn, do I want to sell this or not?’ ” A sly smile reaches across Chrisman’s face. “He didn’t come hack. I was relieved. I took the sign down.”

Today marks Day Nine without the use of my phone. PacBell tells me it’s because of the storm. I say, “It wasn’t a typhoon. It was a half-inch of rain. It happens every year at this time. It’s been going on, very regularly, for the last three million years. Why does a half-inch of rain catch you by surprise?” The beast-with-no-face repeats, “It’s because of the storm.”

Rick the handyman arrives at 9:00 a.m. to fix the water pipe. It broke last night. Should add that alleged water pipe is actually a garden hose that runs from an outside faucet to a water tank strategically placed underneath the bed I sleep on. The break in the aforementioned garden hose occurred underneath my lied, so I have no water this morning, or make that, all the water is King on the trailer floor. Rick has no parts to fix water hose. He hovers by the trailer door lamenting the lack of parts. Also, the kitchen sink is stopped up. I ask Rick if he has any Drano. Rick retrieves empty and rusted can of Drano from his truck, places trophy in my welcoming hand. I beam.

The Cox Cable man is here demanding $244 for the cable TV bill. I tell him I’ve just moved in and to see the manager. He sluggishly withdraws, not believing a word I’ve said. Sam, my Australian shepherd, is psychotic, barking first at Rick, then at the Cox guy, and then reaches for a new octave as the San Diego Union Tribune man pulls in with the paper, which hasn’t been delivered for two days. Because of the storm.

At 2:20 in the afternoon my water line explodes again. I hear a loud POP as the line breaks and then a hurricane-like rain sound as water gushes upwards and strikes the bottom of the bed frame. I realize Rick is gone for the day and scurry down to whine at Jim. Larson, ever the good man, replaces the broken garden hose with a more sturdy hose from a car engine. Works good. Yum, yum.

Later, I carry my garbage down the trailer court lane to a cluster of large refuse bins, greet an elderly Mexican lady who is scrupulously going through the trash looking for treats. I gently place my black plastic bags on top of the pile so she can get a good angle on them.

Rush, rush, rush. So much activity today.

In the evening, around nine o’clock, I walk Sam out of the park for our constitutional. We cross 54th onto Groveland and continue west. It is difficult to see in the dark since most of the overhead streetlights are broken. I don’t observe one person on the roadway, on the sidewalks, or in the yards. Even the houses are dark. Only an occasional lamp shines from within. Every home has a fenced yard, and most sport metal bars on the windows. There are no cars moving, no music to be heard, not a single television set is playing.

But that does not mean that we are alone. Groveland sounds like the savanna of Africa during mating season. There is a hideous and constant roar of yelps, yaps, grunts, woofs, and howls. Every house has a guard dog, or two, or three, or four. Dobermans, pit bulls, German shepherds bound out from the darkness, throw themselves against their masters’ fences, fall down, get up, throw themselves against the fences again, fall down, get up, and on and on. Sam and I walk along Groveland while death-threat shrieks trail behind us like the wake of a great oceangoing ship.

“Did you buy this trailer or did you haul it in?”

“I bought it from my landlord, the nicest guy you’d ever want to know. He never asked me for a rent increase. One day he said, ‘Would you like to buy it?’ So we talked it over and I gave him some money.”

Speaking is Richard Dixon, Space 83. Dixon is 59, clean-shaven, has dose-cropped brown hair and a wide, almost trout mouth set above a burly frame. He wears clear-framed glasses, a checkered wool shirt that is unbuttoned and too short for him. Underneath his open shirt is a white T-shirt. Think Southern redneck without the accent.

I am sitting inside his trailer next to the front door. The kitchen is on my left, living room to the right. Dixon takes a position on the couch. The entire space is filled with electrician’s tools, radio parts, open boxes crammed with stuff and pieces of stuff. “You said you moved here in 1973. Why here?”

“I lived out in Lakeside. I told one of the barmaids I was getting divorced — I think it was the Tumbleweed. You know about that place?” Dixon attempts a male leer. “She said to call up Mrs. Radier, who was the manager here. So, I called her up and came down and happened to meet Mr. Herman, who owned this trailer. He said he was looking for a renter. His trailer was bigger than what I was living in at the time, so I moved here. I rented for 17 years.”

“This is a pretty good distance from Lakeside.”

“Yeah, but my work was down here anyway.”

“What were you doing?”

“I worked for the telephone company.”

“What was the park like 24 years ago?”

“There are more welfare people in here now. There are a lot of people that collect welfare but work on the side for somebody. And there is the dope. It’s all over the place. This guy that used to live next to me was peddling. He used his kids to deliver around the park.”

“What happened to him?”

“I think Jim turned him in, and then I did, and two or three other people did. You could tell. A car would drive up and park for a minute and then take off. All day long, drive up and take off, drive up and take off. Those people weren’t coming to visit.”

This is all...so...dreary. I feel like I have a hangover. I feel like I haven’t seen anything pretty in a month. I throw out a halfhearted “Do you have any plans of ever moving?”

“No,” Dixon snorts. “If you’re married, you move here to there because the wife wants this or that. No way. Living here is not the best, far from it — I mean, when my mama comes I got to clean up my trailer, put everything away — but I don’t like to move.”

My eyes glaze over. I wonder if I have any scotch left in my trailer. It’s pretty late to walk through the neighborhood minefield to the liquor store on Euclid. “What do you like about the trailer park?”

“It’s inexpensive compared to other trailer parks. Of course, it doesn’t have any facilities like other trailer parks have, but that keeps the price down. In the beginning I lived here because I was divorced, and I had a lot of bills to pay. By the time I got everything paid off, I could have probably bought a house, but it would have been a hell of a struggle. I thought, ‘Well, if the rapture does come somewhere around 2000, either after or before, what do I need with anything else?’ I’d like to have a house, of course.”

“Are you retired now?”

“Yes. About a year and a half.”

“How’s it going?”

“Oh, I love it. I love it. I retired because I thought the rapture was going to come somewhere within the next ten years. I don’t know, nobody knows. Also, they offered a retirement deal at the telephone company. So, I thought, ‘Well, if the rapture is going to come, why not?’ ”

All right, I can tell when there’s no escape. My man wants to talk rapture, I can talk rapture. “And the rapture means the country is going to collapse?”

“No, the rapture is when Jesus takes His people out, and then shortly after that, the tribulations come.”

Here we go. “What will happen during the tribulation?”

“The tribulation will last seven years, according to the Bible, and it will be so horrible. I mean, rivers will turn to blood. The Bible talks about droughts and earthquakes. It says, ‘ There will come a time that no stone will be upon another.’ And scientists have already found a crack going all the way around the earth.”

“So, you decided to take early retirement, get some easy years in?”

“Yeah. You may not know this, but the Bible says, ‘If you murder on purpose, your blood will be spilled.’ That old law, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, it would work. But, look at our government and the lawyers. That’s ridiculous.”

“Are you a regular church-goer?” Twenty to one he’s not.

“No, I don’t go to church. There’s a radio program called Through the Bible Radio. He starts from the first page and goes to the back.”

“So, he reads the Bible and discusses it?”

“Oh yeah. And I listen to the guys on TV. But it’s just like anything else. Nobody really turns to God, because they think, ‘Well, hey, I got a car. I got a house.’ We’re not spiritual. We were created with free will, we’re not spiritual. Then, when you have a tragedy in your life, you look around and begin to see that there’s more to it. Somebody had to make all that out there. They went to the moon, see. And the scientists knew absolutely that the moon, over millions of years, had to have two feet of cosmic dust. Well, the little spaceship, the module, only sank six inches. And then they said, ‘Well, you know, the moon might be just eight to ten thousand years old.’ ”

Hell, it’s not that late. I’ll take Sam with me. The liquor store is open until ten.

“I always like to talk to women about being part of the rib, you see. These little feminists don’t like it at all. But the older ladies... ” There’s a soft tap on the door. A small 11 12-year-old Hispanic girl has her nose against the screen door. My host says, “What do you need, kid? I can’t help you right now, kid. Maybe in another hour or so.”

The girl vanishes. I ask, “What did she want?”

“Oh, her parents live across the way. She goes to school and she’s learning English and stuff. Every now and then she comes over to ask about a word or two. I think they’re illegals” — without skipping a syllable Dixon continues—“in the Bible it says, ‘There’s a hole in here.’ ” Dixon points to his chest. “God says, ‘I left this hole for me.’ A thousand people can read the Bible and they come up with a thousand different interpretations. But the Bible must be interpreted by the spirit of God. I’m looking for the rapture. In fact, I’m ready to go right now.”

“When the rapture arrives, how will you know it?”

“He’ll be up there somewhere and He’s going to call everybody’s name who belongs to Him. The Bible says that for every sin there must be a blood sacrifice. Jesus was God Himself, but he was in a man’s body. If you believe those things, hey, you’re saved.”

“So, you’ll be sitting here in your chair...will the heavens open up?”

“He’ll stand up there and call us. And all of a sudden my body is going to be gone and it will be changed into a spirit body.”

Maybe I’ll get some chips with the scotch. Or shall it be cashews? “I see, and then the rest of us who are still down here, we’re going to be in for some hard times?”

“Oh yes, seven years. The Bible says that if the time was shortened there would be no life left. It names exactly what’s going to happen.”