Galloping Bungalows: The Rise and Demise of the American House Trailer by David A. Thornburg

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 169 romanticized, biographies that look only at the most dramatic events. The two volumes also contain important detail about Alaska’s social and economic history. Altogether, they are a mine of valuable infor­ mation on early aviation history and deserve to be in any library concerned with the subject and in every library of Alaskana. Morgan Sherwood Dr. Sherwood is professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, and has written and edited several books of Alaskan history. Many years ago he logged two hours of solo flight time but gave up flying as too costly, given the modest emolument of an apprentice historian. Galloping Bungalows: The Rise and Demise of the American House Trailer. By David A. Thornburg. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books (Shoe String Press), 1991. Pp. 197; illustrations, bibliography, index. $25.00. The parallel development of trailers for tourists and itinerant workers was a slow revolution that began in the 19th century and accelerated with the arrival of the automobile. Enclosed, animaldrawn vehicles provided nighttime shelter for many itinerants, from Gypsies to show people, photographers, sheepherders, and plains settlers. The pseudo-Gypsy wagon or “caravan” fad began in England in the 1880s, and by the early 20th century caravans were increasingly being used by itinerant British workers and by sightseers seeking temporary escape from the modern world. Trailer living in the United States awaited the automobile, and both the American trailer vehicle and its owners changed rapidly as motoring tourists and workers began living on the road in increasing numbers. By the 1930s big, lumbering cottages on wheels, either manufac­ tured or homemade, were occupied part-time or full-time by tens of thousands of vacationers, retirees, and itinerant job seekers— “carpenters, . . . artists, industrial workers, WPA employees, . . . construction workers and oilfield workers,” and many others whom David Thornburg mentions in his book. Forming a floating village that descended without adequate preparation on the fringes of many towns and cities, trailers stirred fears that a mutant, second-class way of life was emerging, and they provoked local governments to regulate this strange new type of community. These were disillusion­ ing experiences for a nation that supposedly prized mobility, and they suggested that the innocent leisure and business travel of motoring’s early days had evolved into a disturbing, even undesirable mixture of mobility and homelessness. Thornburg has added to the small body of trailer literature an informal study of American house trailers and trailer parks in the 1930s and 1940s. GallopingBungalows combines Thornburg’s personal 170 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE recollections of trailers with summary material that he derived from contemporary books and articles. Though less than a thorough analysis of the subject, it provides some useful insights into the social history of trailer owners and summaries of the principal people and companies involved in trailer manufacturing. Aside from these nug­ gets, the book’s academic value is limited by its haphazard organiza­ tion and a jaunty, colloquial style of writing which adds to the book’s informality and dilutes its scholarly impact. The real-life characters in the story may seem more three-dimensional because of the author’s endless anecdotes and witticisms, but the overall result is a set of literary postcards rather than a well-plotted study. Most abundant are Thornburg’s insights into the social history of “trailering” and the minutiae of life in trailer camps. Throughout most of the book he does not write in the first person, but in the middle he reveals that his interest in trailers was inspired by his own upbringing and that parts of the book are based on his personal recollections of life on the road. Between about 1940 and 1955, his parents lived in a trailer during certain months of the year when his father worked as an itinerant construction worker. The author was born in 1942, and at appropriate points he provides a kid’s-eye view of trailers and trailer camps. The experience of growing up in a trailer inspired a research project later in life, and objective descrip­ tions of the atmosphere, customs, habits, and etiquette of trailer life seep through the pores of his narrative. The research...