From 1966-1982, I lived in a trailer.

 

My family’s first trailer made it all the way from the Peace River country to Estevan Saskatchewan (and many points in between), then doubled back to land in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta.  According to Mom, we were only planning to stay a few months.  Months turned into decades; my parents still live in Rocky Mountain House, and they still live in the trailer I grew up in.  It's on an acreage now, and it has an addition built onto it, and a new roof that makes it look more like a house, but there's still that long hallway down the middle that reminds me of its (and my) origins.

 

In 1972, the Hagens traded up.  It was a big deal.  The version of this event that’s detailed in the play is pretty much exactly how it happened.  Our old trailer, the one that had been pulled across Alberta and Saskatchewan, was pulled out of the trailer court forever.   For years I used to see it parked in a yard along Highway 22.  It seemed impossibly small.

 

A couple of years ago, the landlord of the trailer court that we used to live in called up Dad…someone had left behind a trailer much like the one we used to live in.  He just wanted it off the lot…Dad ended up moving it into the back yard of the acreage and now it’s called “The Summer Home”.  My friends and I spent the night there before we went canoeing down the Clearwater River.

 

Growing up, I thought our trailer court was a pretty idyllic spot.  It wasn't until I moved away that I started to hear things people said about trailer court and their inhabitants.  I realized the trailer court had a sense of the exotic to some, the bizarre to others.  This play is a reaction to that reaction: a defence of growing up in a land where a redder shade of neck meant a whiter shade of trash.

 

Since its debut, Tornado Magnet has been towed across Canada, following some of the same highways that my parents travelled.  The reaction the play has received makes me realize that this play is not just about trailers; it's about class, culture, and growing up on the prairie.  Whether or not you lived in a trailer, you undoubtedly knew someone who did.

 

And trailer or no trailer, growing up white trash is something we all have experience with.