Charles’ 
Slide of the Week: May 25th, 2006
Trailer in Flames, Southern California, 1956
A canned ham trailer goes out in a blaze of glory. It’s quite a show! Unfortunately there aren’t more people around to see it. The whipped cream colored 1954 Ford patrol car, just sits there. The red light on the roof is like a maraschino cherry on top of a delicious hot fudge sundae.
Speaking of trailers last Saturday I had an Americana experience of the highest order. I went to the annual Vintage-Vacations Trailer Show and open house at Newport Dunes. The display was quite simply heaven on earth. Yes, I often wept inwardly (and occasionally outwardly) as I stuck my fat head into what seemed to be an endless display Airstreams, Silver Streaks and Shastas. There were other brands too. They lined up one after another.
My Southern California pride rose to record levels when I discovered that many of the trailers were labeled logos that often had the name of the town were manufactured in, such as Whittier, El Monte, Glendora, Van Nuys, Lynwood, San Fernando, and Upland. I had no idea that so many trailers were made here.
Beyond the charm of the shiny, shapely exteriors, inside the trailers are a study of warm and friendly honey blond wood paneling and oh-so smart space planning. The junior-scale stoves and refrigerators were, well for lack of a better word, adorable. Some trailers even had bathrooms. I thought all trailers had bathrooms!
To call these trailer-people generous would be an understatement. And to call them trailer- trash would not only be socially unacceptable it would be a lie. Passing for trailer to trailer I was generously offered everything from martinis to marshmallows and sushi to shish kabobs. And I said yes, thank you to everything! Well, looking at vintage trailers can make one very hungry and thirsty.
At nightfall it was time for my Vintage Trailer Slide Show. This was the opening slide.
Here’s to vintage trailers, the trailer in flames and you!
Charles Phoenix
Los Angeles
May 2006
P.S. The final "Disneyland" Tour of Downtown Los Angeles this weekend is SOLD OUT.
P.S.S. for more on vintage trailers please visit www.vintage-vacations.com
Related External Sites:
Sets this Slide belongs to:
Transportation
18 Comments on “Trailer in Flames, Southern California, 1956”
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May 25th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I love a good car-b-que ;o) this is all very david lynch…
May 25th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
It kind of looks like a trailer I lived in for about three years in the ’70s, a cute little Kit (with no bathroom) that proved too small for two people and ended my relationship with the woman who bought the thing.
May 26th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Was Lucy cooking in the kitchen with disastrous results? And did Desi just drive away?
May 26th, 2006 at 8:38 am
There’s a motel in Wildwood, NJ - the Starlux - that has two great vintage
airstreams used as motel rooms. Very cute.
May 26th, 2006 at 9:03 am
The shape of that mountain in the background definitely indicates our lovely San Gabriel mountain range wilderness. Some one was trying to fry up some tortillas or something driving out to Palmdale while on the road. Do not cook while driving! Charles loved the Disneyland show! WOW can you imagine actually catching real fish off Tom Sawyers island ! Shocking. I went to Hanks Bar last night downtown at the Stillwell Hotel. Listening to Sinatra on the Juke Box and having a Martini with a pretty girl. Ahh I want to live in 1949 !
May 26th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Just think? Two more payments and its ours!
May 26th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Maybe someone just “gettin their kicks on Route 66″
May 26th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Goodness Gracious Great Trailer of Fire!
This roadside inferno has set me in many directions — scurrying to find just the right fit for today’s slide. I have settled on my _Searchlight Homemaking Guide_ (1949), a collection dedicated to solving a “wide range of homemaking problems.” So true! You can improve the mental health of your child while also learning how to finish your floors and exterminate a variety of pests. Helpful, no?
Although _The Searchlight Homemaking Guide_ does not include a section on what to do if your trailer breaks into hot hot heat on a family vacation, it does include sections on “Travel Etiquette” and “Motor Trips”. These are apparently discernibly distinct categories that require different kinds of advice. “Travel Etiquette” warns about complaining aloud and being boisterous while on vacation, but “Motor Trips” takes a more nitty gritty approach to travel troubles. Let’s read:
“If you are a nervous person, and are likely to offer advice to the driver, you should decline an invitation to make a motor trip. On the other hand, if you are the driver, you should drive carefully, and not take risks that may result in accidents, or in frightening the other occupants of the car. Another mark of a good driver’s manners is the regard he shows for the rights of other drivers on the road.
If you are an invited guest on a motor trip, you should not offer to pay any of the expenses, but you may provide an occasional meal or refreshments […] It is your obligation to see that you have the correct wraps with you. It is your hostess’s duty to provide motor robes.”
Well, despite the probability that The Devil’s Trailer probably caught on fire all by its lonesome, it appears that a travel host would nonetheless be in trouble for frightening his guests. Of course, an angry guest might have set the trailer ablaze as retribution for insufficient wrap provisions. We might also entertain the idea that an angry hostess had enough of her indelicate guest repeatedly offering to pay expenses. “I’ll set this trailer on fire if you pay for lunch one more time! It’s just a club sandwich, Joan! We are happy to pay for it!”
Well, no matter. We might all simply remember that nervous people need to stay home. Certainly this is a nugget of advice not often followed. Trailers stay cool when Nervous Nellies cool their heels at home.
xoxo!
Miss Sharon
May 26th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Weenies and smores, anyone?????
May 26th, 2006 at 11:35 am
like Zach says above… so very David Lynch. This brings back a memory I have not thought about for quite some time. Before I moved to California in ‘96, I used to commute between my school here in Pasadena and my home in Boulder, Co. I must have driven my 1977 CJ7 the 917 mile trip over 20 times (who says jeeps are not reliable). On one such faitful trip, I had been crossing the lonely high plateau through the I-70 stretch of Utah. I had not seen another vehicle for over an hour, due to my favorite pasttime of burning the midnight oil on the highway. It was probably close to 3 am, when up ahead, in the pitch black night, I began to notice a bit of an orange glow. I did not have a direct view of the highway since I was approaching a bend in the road. As I came closer, I began to feel my heart race as I imagined the worst possible scenario that I was about to behold. As I made the curve, I slowed, the orange glow now bright enough to turn my lights off, and suddenly, there it was, on old ’70s Dodge van, completely engulfed in flames, with a small family of four and a dog, standing in shock and awe as their priced gas-guzzler became their only source of light and heat. I’ll never forget how long we waited for the state patrol (before the wide use of cell phones ya know) and no one really said a word. I felt so helpless, and yet so mesmerized as we watched the shoebox van begin to cave in from the heat. I had never seen anything like it. It was only later, after I left, that the patrol man’s words rang in my ears, “People, get back, that gas tank could blow!”, because we all know, there is nothing like getting close to something engulfed in flames.
May 26th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Charles has unearthed evidence of the long forgotten first portable meth lab. It was the handiwork of a trailblazing maverick who paved the way for generations of amateur chemists throughout the Southland.
May 26th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Trailer slideshow!#$?!! Plleeeeeeeze come to Panama City FL! And bring Miss Sharon with you! Hipgnosis album cover. jwc
May 26th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Please come to the SF Bay Area someday, Mr. Phoenix, to do your show. Pleasepleaseplease.
May 29th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
That’s very sad!!!
May 30th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Mobile meth labs are all the rage these days. These people were ahead of their times.
May 30th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
So, Charles, if you start in LA and go up to SF, then east to Panama City, it’ll be just a short hop down to Tampa, FL where you’ll be appropriately adored (we have WDW close by, you know, and nobody here thinks Disneyland can hold a candle). You can HOLD THAT CANDLE and make them all weep with longing for SoCal. Please come!
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Too bad for the accident.
But I wish I was back in 1956.
The young people don’t know what they missed!
March 5th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Wheres the marshmellows?