So a funny thing happened on the way through the trailer park...

So my wife and I live in a really nice house, and I love where I live, but the other day I was giving my buddy directions to my house and I said these words:

"Get off 101. You'll see a Wal-mart. Turn left. Our house is right across from the trailer home park."

Not the kind of thing that results in massive gentrification, usually. But San Jose is a strange bird, and even homes located next to 50-year-old rusted out pieces of junk are worth most of the way toward a million dollars these days.

So last evening, my wife and I took Justus through the trailer park on a walk. The walk turned out to be very revealing, for a number of reasons. First off, I learned that the park is called "Magical Sands." Strangely, I located nothing even remotely "sandy" about the place.

I also learned during the walk that my mother-in-law actually called up to see how much it would cost for her to move the mobile home she just bought for her youngest daughter in Michigan out to California, so that she could retire near her daughter and Justus.

The number of things that frighten me about that last sentence are almost too many to count.

But anyway...the good news is it's too much. They don't allow transfers, and there's no open spots. Plus, mobile homes in Michigan cost 10K for a double-wide. Here, they're more like 70-90K. The reason I know this is because my wife, unbeknownest to me, actually went to the sales office of Magical Sands to find this information out for her mother. I think she was curious, too. How much does it cost to buy a mobile home in San Jose? How much does the land cost?

Anyway, to make a long story short, my wife was telling me that the woman in charge of sales for Magical Sands gave her a business card. But underneath the woman's name, something had been blackened out with a black permanent marker. Sometimes, people do this with old, defunct telephone numbers. But Nicole noticed that it wasn't a telephone number: it was the motto, written in italics, under the name "Magical Sands."

Want to know what it said? The old motto, currently blacked out by marker was

Magical Sands
The Baghdad of Mobile Home Parks

Okay, when were these cards made? And when, and under what circumstances was that motto considered a good one? Isn't that like saying: Ben And Jerry's - The West Nile Virus of Ice Cream Stores.

Sheesh.