Not many people know this, but, I own a trailer.

It’s a single wide parked behind a big white house and an 8-foot privet hedge down in Dewey Beach. As you might expect, I’ve tarted it up in an attempt to make it look more like a Nantucket cottage than a 1959 Great Lakes with tail lights, a hitch, and wheels. But, no matter how many window boxes I attach or rose bushes I plant, in the end, it’s still a trailer, one of the few remaining in Dewey Beach.

My trailer also has a reputation. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve met in the Starboard who confess to having spent some tawdry times within its metal confines.

The State of Florida was after it for awhile—something about unpaid taxes from back in the 1960s.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m neither maligning trailers nor trailer dwellers. Trailers are trendy. They’re showing up in Napa Valley. Ralph Lauren is decorating Airstreams in the Hamptons. And, I read recently about the El Morro trailer park near Laguna Beach, California, that’s very popular with LA models and OC surfers. Louisiana balladeer Bobby Lounge sings about trailers, as does Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours.

Matthew McConnaughey, the sexiest man in America, owns a trailer outside of Austin, Texas. It’s one of his escapes from Hollywood, a place where he goes to drink beer, play bongo drums in the nude, and do some thinking. I guarantee you that just about every red-blooded homo in this country—no matter how snooty—wouldn’t mind spending some time in that trailer. If the trailer’s rocking, don’t come knocking.

A friend recently purchased a trailer out at Camelot. It’s a ‘72 Fairlane that set him back seven thousand dollars. It needs some work, but, I think he’s up for the challenge. A little fairy dust and some paint and it’ll be hot. Okay, maybe lukewarm?

You often hear Camelot called Rehoboth’s "gay trailer park," and people say it’s anywhere from twenty-five to forty percent gay. I don’t know about percentages, but if you drive around the park you’ll see a lot of rainbow flags and HRC stickers. It’s one of Rehoboth’s earliest official trailer park communities.

Most people don’t think of trailer parks and history. Maybe that’s because a lot of trailers don’t have foundations? Mine doesn’t. It’s slowly sinking into the mud. More likely it’s because by their very nature, trailers don’t seem permanent. But they do have a history, and it’s pretty interesting.

Trailers started off as a hobby for rich industrialists like Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. They’d take to the unpaved roads and explore America in expensive, well-appointed travel trailers. It was a sport. Throughout the 1920s, more and more wealthy, adventuresome men and women took to the road to celebrate nature and individuality and to get away from stale air and the constraints of society. Mass produced cars eventually brought auto camping to the average Americans and a lot of them bought small trailers or built them from inexpensive, do-it-yourself kits.

By the 1930s, people were beginning to set up trailers in summer vacation areas, occupy them in season, then close them down for the rest of the year. Trailers in the 1940s helped meet the nation’s post-war need for inexpensive housing. But, the real explosion began in the 1950s as companies, especially in the Midwest, began manufacturing trailers that looked more like homes on the inside. The industry even began referring to them as "mobile homes" instead of "trailer coaches." The first official mobile home subdivision opened in 1954 in Bradenton, Florida.

Rehoboth never attracted a lot of trailers like you see along the coast in Florida and California. Probably because Delaware isn’t a year round warm weather destination and Rehoboth was developed into lots and neighborhoods before trailers got popular. There were some on the commercially-zoned western edge of town near Shaw Park on the Canal and there used to be some old relics on the Burton property across from the Royal Farms store on Columbia Avenue. Right now, it is an empty field.

Interestingly, there was another kind of wheel estate in Rehoboth. Railroad cars. There’s a famous postcard depicting one in the Pines neighborhood. I’ve been told there were three of them around town.

So what’s the point of all this chatter?

Maybe I’m thinking about trailers because I just got mine ready for the summer rental season. Don’t laugh; it brings in a nice little income. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to spend the summer living in aluminum and chronicling my antics in Dewey Beach.

Maybe I’m thinking about trailers because I see all these multi-million dollar houses around town and when I take a look inside, well, I note they’re quite like any old garden variety trailer—mass produced with very little creativity, trying too hard to be something they’re not. Just off the assembly line, so to speak. Andrea Palladio, the 16th Century Italian architect, must be turning over in his grave at the inappropriate uses of Palladian windows in today’s McMansions. I even saw one in a bathroom. Can you imagine?

Here’s a closing thought: are McMansions today’s new trailers? All that’s missing are the wheels.