People make fun of them, calling them tornado magnets. They come in all shapes and sizes, just like humans, including double-wide. But if you claim to be a Southerner and you can honestly say you don't like the smell of a new mobile home, or if you have never sniffed one up close and personal, you may need to move up north and cash in your Southern heritage because there's something running in your veins and it ain’t grits.
When I was a kid living in Montgomery, Alabama, for fun and cheap entertainment, we'd visit the local mobile home sales lot on the Mobile Highway. And we weren't alone. Don’t laugh and look at me like that. A lot of people did this. I always thought it ironic that mobile homes were sold on the Mobile Highway. When I was eight, I asked my mom if Mobile, Alabama, was named after the many mobile homes down there.
From the metal step to the paneling and perfect-fitting appliances, this dwelling built for speed, to my way of thinking, had to be the perfect invention – totally self-contained and with wheels. Does it get any better than that?
I loved the idea of living in a trailer. My personal favorite was a Fleetwwood. I admired them inside and out, and even designed one with a jet engine for quick getaways. I designed one for space. I designed one as a submarine. I drew Johnny Quest and Space Ghost living in mobile homes. I was fixated on the darned things - which is how I know for certain that I am truly Southern.
Some mobile homes had entire walls that were mirrors to fool you into thinking the thing was bigger than the width of a highway lane. Some had amazing kitchens and bathrooms, and a few even had vaulted ceilings. But it was the Magic-Marker-ish smell of a new mobile home interior that lured me in as if I had a hook in my snout. Like a new car, a new mobile home smelled like nothing else. It was a unique smell that said, "Hook me up, brother, I'm ready to haul some rednecks and their furniture."
There are many smells that I associate with my seriously Deep South upbringing. The smell of a new pickup truck and the aroma of hot-out-of-the-oven sweet potato pie come to mind. The smell of pork barbecue and pinesap and turnips cooking all ring bells in my brain that curl my tongue into a y'all. The smell of English Leather and Brut and Old Spice aftershave instantly adjusts my memory knobs to a certain time and place down home, likely the Fendley Drive-In popcorn or the Covington County Fair that somehow mixed the aromas of cotton candy, manure and vomit into nasal gumbo.
The smell of rain quilting into the cooling humidity of an afternoon thunderstorm fills my head with wiregrass and magnolias and images of lower Alabama, as does a new baseball glove and mothballs and pork link sausage and the salty smell of the Gulf of Mexico and coconut suntan oil and fresh-cut grass.
You can taste Southern smells too: cat-head biscuits and hoecake cornbread and watermelons, percolator coffee, fried chicken and homemade peach ice cream. Fig tarts coming out of a fryer or salty ham coming out of a smokehouse will quickly yank my mind back to a time when my accent was twice as pronounced as now. A Baptist hymnal has a smell like nothing else in the entire world and one whiff connects your vocal cords to the Good Lord's ear. Maybe the South is more a smell than a region.
Still, when all the Southern smells are tallied and organized and ranked, the smell of a new mobile home stands out as the one smell that says, “You are now officially below the Mason-Dixon line.” New carpet and fresh plywood and mind-bending glue and aluminum cooking in the sweet Southern heat and humidity will conjure up a head-full of Lynyrd Skynyrd cranking “Ewwww, that smell!”
If this admission causes you to look down your nose at my trailer trashy olfactory glands, then maybe you need to ride over to the local mobile home sales office and test your own pedigree. You might find out just how Southern you really are.
-- T-Bone
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