The first nine years of my life were spent growing up in a mobile home adjacent to a horse and cattle pasture. Two sides of the back yard were lined with electric fence. Grandma and Grandpa Country lived to the east of our little lot and our front yard faced the south. In the lot to the southwest diagonal, Dad built the two-story colonial home I spent the rest of my childhood in.
The mobile home was made by Great Lakes and I believe it was a 1959 model. The trailer was 10×50, with a very small bedroom in the middle of the unit and the “master” bedroom (that could barely hold a double bed) at the end opposite the kitchen, which was on the east end of the trailer.
I can vividly remember my dad, grandfather, and uncle building the 8×40 addition on the side facing south, which included a new “master” bedroom, a living room, and a laundry room just wide enough for the dryer. The washer continued to live in the bathroom. The old living room windows allowed us to look into the new living room. Mom kept the curtains in place.
Just out of curiosity I did a search and found a promotional photo taken in a 1960 model of a Great Lakes mobile home, and it’s the exact layout I remember from our trailer. In the back of the photo is a wall next to the small hallway; I believe we had a mirror on that wall.
Our stove and refrigerator were both a turquoise blue, with a small broom closet just to the right of the gas stove, and then the Hotpoint refrigerator. The broom closet had a can opener mounted inside. The stove was one that had a pilot light; no “click click” ignition system when you turned it on. In the photo above, the original main entry door is behind the young, handsome man; when dad built the addition that door led down two steps into the new living room. There were notches in the molding around the door noting the growth of my sister and me.
It’s funny that I can remember growing up in that mobile home like it was yesterday, and the sound of rain on the metal roof, the noise of snowstorms coming in off Lake Ontario in the winter and the amazing thunderstorms in the summer.
