Have I told you about how my dad lived in a trailer in a junk-yard when I was young? A real junk-yard, acres wide. Refrigerators, RVs, and bath-tubs. TVs, bowling balls, and pachinko machines. School desks, dart boards, and diner stools. There was a team of wild cats and kittens, always, their little gold eyes in all the shadows. The edges of the junk-yard turned into a farmer's fields, filled up with fast, green snakes.
I have distinct memories of standing in the middle of it all, balancing on the edge of some broken down car's front bumper, thinking, "Remember this." The pathways and hiding spots I spent years making were mapped out carefully in my mind.
In the middle, up-front, was Larry's little retail shop. He'd gather the more monetarily-promising items and line them up in the old cracked display cases, sometimes setting something aside for me. A money-clip shaped like a dog, maybe, or a tennis ball, fuzzy and new.
Folks would come out, looking for a carburetor or an air conditioning window unit. They'd pick their way through my pathways, unsteady on their feet in the mud. The wives, frowning, arms across their chests, would ask, "Why can't we just buy a new one?" I'd watch, hidden, from an empty trailer window or under awnings ripped from store-fronts and thrown in the dirt for the spiders. Larry would haul out the wheel-barrow and drag their find back to their shiny new station wagon. He'd pocket their folded cash, readjust his hat, and disappear back into the store with the ting-ting of the metal bells on the door.
The city eventually condemned the entire thing for being unsafe. They ruled it toxic and wiped the land clean. We moved away, into a regular trailer park, and I grew-up. I miss it. It was just me and the sky and all those secrets and treasures.
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