Frank the Trailer Park Guy

When I was ten years old our family purchased a 28 foot RV with scratchy red curtains and we headed west. Winding up in Tucson, AZ, we settled on a pleasant little place called Town & Country Mobile Estates, out on Benson Highway on the south end of town. We were the only RV in the trailer park, to the best of my memory, but that's the way the Roncari family rolled.

I remember stopping by a few RV parks on our way out there, and most of them were too expensive for long-term stay. I guess my dad was either too poor or too dumb to just rent an apartment or a house for the duration of our stay there. So we somehow hit on the idea of a trailer park- it had all the hookups, a nice little driveway, and even some sort of scraggly tree in the tiny yard.

Best of all, it had plenty of other kids to play with, something we'd never had out on the forty acres in rural Tustin. I remember that the park was split in two sections- the 'family' side, and the old people side. Dad found a lot that he liked better on the old people side, but Frank, the property manager, was adamant that we stay on the family side because we were, after all, a family. With three kids. I still don't know how my dad thinks he can get away with crap like this. Megalomania, I suppose.

I remember being very grateful to Frank at that point in my life. You see, I had never had many friends, and on the family side of the trailer park I saw many friendly faces peering out from various windows. Frank stayed and chatted with us for a while, and I developed an uncanny liking for the guy. He was big- tall and heavy, with massive arms and long, flowing blond hair. In fact, he had the prettiest hair that I had ever seen on a man. Although we had spent half a year in Quartzite, northern Arizona, southern Tucson was new to us then. The sunlight, which never really goes away until August, glinted off Frank's hair and made it look like gold.

After Frank and my dad got all of the hookups done (requiring a couple of trips to the hardware store for various water and septic adapters) Frank bustled off in his little golf cart and my dad and mom were giggling about something. I didn't have much time to stick around being curious, because there were already several children hanging around outside my door. I suppose I must have been the freak- the kid whose family moved into the park in a giant recreational vehicle instead of a regular single wide like everyone else- but I never lacked for friends in those few months.

Frank came by a few days later to see how we were settling in. His hair was different that day- more curly, more blond- and something else was different about him this time. His nails were long and- well, pretty. They were a soft, shimmering shell pink. I was in awe. I had never seen a man with pink nails. He didn't have rough, cracked cuticles like my dad had, no chips on the ends like mine, not short and utilitarian like my moms... just soft, shiny, pretty.

My ten-year old mind didn't really take in what was the situation at the time. I had been raised pretty sheltered. Sure, by that fall we had participated in three seasons of the Michigan Renaissance Faire, so I'd seen a good portion of blue spiked hair and excessive cleavage; but I had never, ever seen a man with pink nails.

Frank chatted a bit with my parents and walkeda round the side of the camper to check a connection of something. My mom and dad exchanged looks, and my dad giggled again. I had no idea, honestly, what they found so funny about Frank.

Life went on- my dad opened his first mall kiosk- a little pewter and silver sales booth in the food court of the El Con mall. That is where I fell in love with horchata- the creamy white rice drink from Mexico, and tacquitos. I attended most of my fifth grade year at Gallegos Elementary school and learned a few Spanish words. Frank stopped by every now and then- to collect rent, let us know of some announcement about the park, or gently chide us kids for riding our bikes through the 'old people' side of the park (there's a strict no-kids policy on that side, except for Christmas caroling). Every time he stopped by his hair was magnificent and his nails were gorgeous.

There was a pool in the center of the trailer park, but I do not ever remember being allowed to go there. My parents were very anti-fun in those days, but I had a feeling also that we were not encouraged to hang out around Frank all that much. It took me another five years before I figured out just what kind of a person that he was, and we were long gone by then. He was always, always a very kind man, almost too chatty. I think now, looking back, that he was lonely. Whatever he was- transgender, transvestite, or just gay- it was still the 80s and things like that were not mainstream yet.

I do think it was kind of appropriate, in some strange way, that the crazy family from the backwoods of Michigan, living in the RV, wound up in a park run by the man that was also somewhat of a societal freak. But at the time I didn't know that we were freaks, and I didn't know that Frank was weird in any way.

I just thought he had pretty nails.
And I've never gotten mine to grow out that nice.

A Mafia Trifecta

A story of rampant human imagination... & unusual friendship.

The year was 1994. Our family lived in Tucson and ran a jewelry store in the Foothills Mall, on La Cholla Blvd. At the time, The Foothills Mall was a beautiful and classy boutique affair, although bereft of the heavy traffic that makes a mall profitable. It has since been turned into a more traditional commercial area, and I've heard the lovely copper fountain and handpainted ceiling are gone, replaced by primary colors and chain stores. Sigh.

Our store was in the old Fox Jewelers location, a beautiful center court walk-through that had gone by the wayside when the huge corporation began to buckle under its own weight. They had left the cases and safes intact, giving our always-on-a-budget family an easy opportunity to just put our inventory in the showroom and open up. My dad did, however, splurge on a beautiful sign. Individual gold and white letters a foot and a half high spelled out the family name: R-O-N-C-A-R-I. We had it installed and opened for business in 1992.

By '94 we had established ourselves somewhat, and we three girls had found a church home across the street. At the time, Casas Adobes Baptist Church occupied that corner of La Cholla and Ina. They have since moved somewhere further northwest in Tucson, having outgrown their property boundaries back in the mid-nineties. I have no idea what the church is like today, but when I went, there were three or four packed services every weekend, and the high school youth group alone counted around 200 kids per Sunday.

Of these 200 kids, I suppose we could estimate that about a quarter of them were freshmen. I am not sure why- possibly because as a homeschooler I didn't have a graduating year- I got stuck with a group of them for some study sessions.

Bored, and daydreaming of the guitarist in our youth band, I had pretty much zoned out on the conversation in our little group. We were preparing for a Spring Break mission trip to Mexicali, and the freshmen seemed to need more instruction than I did in some of the basics. Voices went on softly around my head, until I heard one mention my place of employment,

"The entire Foothills Mall must be a Mafia front." came the young voice from across me. I snapped my head up to stare at the source, and it continued, "I mean, just look at center court- you have Sbarro Pizza, Gelato Classico, and that Roncari Jewelry place..."

I may have cocked an eyebrow at him at this point, I have never been sure. The child speaking was very fair-haired, with big, innocent-looking blue eyes and perfect preppy clothes: penny loafers, belted khaki shorts, tucked in oxford shirt. Who did he think he was, assuming a random placing of ethnic names constituted mob rule?

"There's that European Bakery across from them, too," he went on "I'm not sure yet if they're in on it. But all you have to do is look at that guy who runs the jewelry store to know he's Mafia- I bet he breaks people's kneecaps and everything!"

I felt that now would be a good time to speak up,
"Yeah, that guy... that's my dad."

Preppy kid's mouth dropped open and he blushed so furiously that I could see his scalp through his tow-colored hair.

"Uh," he said.
Some of his friends began to giggle, and I sat there relishing his discomfort, while acutely amused at the thought of my dad busting someones' knees with a baseball bat. Not that he wasn't a violent person- the baseball bat just seemed too planned, too organized for dad's tastes.

Despite this odd beginning, the preppy kid and I became rather good friends. His name was Wesley, (I can't remember the last name,) and I think he was rather in love with my younger sister Emily. We kept a running joke about wooden vs aluminum baseball bats. I taught him that not only were Sbarro and Gelato corporate fronts for American companies, but that persons originating from Northern Italy are rarely involved in what is primarily a Sicilian operation. For some reason, my father never found that amusing, although I always have.

That store closed down in 1995, we moved back to Michigan, and I never saw that church or its members again. The beautiful Roncari letters sat abandoned in boxes until this winter, when we had to let them go to a better home, with memories of Tucson flooding back.

Someday I shall visit, although I am sure most of my old friends have moved on by now.

Wherever you are, Wesley, I hope that you are still a conspiracy theorist, and I hope that you still wear penny loafers without socks. Not everything is what it seems, but sometimes stupid assumptions will surprise you with happy results.