When we were living in Havre, Montana, we bought a brand new mobile home.   (Today’s PC description is “Manufactured Home.”)  The home was delivered to us by a dealer in the Mid-West.  He brought it up to Montana with his pick up.  He was determined to do some fishing in the Rocky Mountains after delivery.

We lived in that home at five different locations and, presently, it sits on our property as a storage unit.  The first location we parked it in was a mobile court.  Previous to taking delivery on the new home, we had lived in a small 27 foot trailer in a very narrow mobile home space.  (The space was so narrow that when our windows and the neighbor’s windows were open at the same time, they nearly touched.)  When we opened our windows on a hot summer day, we could communicate with our neighbors face to face.  It was almost like living in the same dwelling.

We had our dining tables in the same area of our respective homes, with adjoining windows.  It served to put a new meaning on the term “dinner table conversation.”  If our son would murmur during the night, then neighbor husband would call out; “I have to get up at 4 A.M.  Can’t you keep that kid quiet?”

The neighbor and his wife were from Kansas and they were following the harvest.  The couple had a son named Eugene.  Their son was about 4 years old at the time.  The mother was quite impatient with the son, and would call him “YO-Geene.”

One morning Eugene spilled his milk.  The mother gave “YO-Gene” a good lecture saying now she had to clean up the mess.  She complained to her husband; “Aint ya gonna hepp me?”

He replied: “What’cha way-ant me to do?  Hold your hay-and?”

When the family left the mobile court, they did so in a very mobile manner.  They left in the middle of the night without paying their current rent charges.  That’s called a skip.

That experience convinced me that we needed to park our home on private property.  Eventually that private property was our own.

Besides eventually owning my own business, I must have worked for nigh onto 30 different contractors.  While we lived in Glasgow and Havre, Montana there were no electrical supply houses locally.  Supplies had to come from Billings or Great Falls.

One of the contractors would take one of his trucks and drive the 100 miles to Great Falls with his list of supplies once a month.  He would buy his month’s worth of supplies, cash on the barrelhead.  He never had a charge account.  He was the only contractor I ever knew who would do that.

I thought; “Now that’s the way to go.”