The Setting: Dove Meadows

As Brian and I were talking about our wonderful new blog, a mutual friend of ours commented, "I never knew you guys grew up in a trailer park," intending it, I'm sure as a jibe. My response was something along the lines of, "It was more like a farmer's field mowed down for Mexicans to live in; 'park' makes it sound like a nice place."

Dove Meadows, as our neighborhood was known, consisted of two streets off of Power Line Road, White Wing and Mourning Dove, ours being the latter. I never strayed over to White Wing very often, even though it was so close, except to visit the creek where it met Power Line. Mourning Dove was about a quarter to a half a mile long and ended in a cul-de-sac. We saw the place go through a lot of changes. When we first got there it was a dirt road (although I'll need confirmation on this one, seeing as how I wasn't born or was very young when they changed it). Next came gravel and tar, the way I remember it the most. There was typically a smooth part with mostly tar at the center of the road, much more comfortable to run on than the gravel in our constantly bare feet (shoes are for white boys). On a scalding hot day in Fort Bend County, Texas, the black tar, however became incredibly hot (so hot bubbles would form which we would fit each other to pop walking home from school), so we cut irregular paths down the road, running half the time on the smooth but burning hot tar and half the time on the sharper but cooler gravel. By the time we left it was a more respectable asphalt. My most vivid memories of that road were walking to the bus stop in the morning, kicking rocks to each other and dodging slug trails in the fog. We saw people move in and out, but mostly in as more and more trailers (and by the end two honest-to-goodness houses) popped up. Each lot had an acre of land, and we remained the only white people on the street besides a crazy 'Nam vet and his sun fearing family, plus a retired cop with his two ex-police dog German shepherds. Even the name of the road changed to Morning Dove when a sign maker made a mistake. I don't think anybody cared, although some might have been glad that they finally fixed the spelling.

Our neighbors to the left had one of the houses, a nice Mexican family, probably the nicest on the street, but the least fluent in English. On the other side was an incredibly drunk family (they filled multiple trash cans a week with booze cans), and past them were the Delgados, a family with two kids our age, Eric (between me and Craig) and Britney (about my age). Other than that I'll leave the description of the neighbors to those that knew them better.

Thinking back to the old homestead, I think of Brigham Young's words praising the harsh Salt Lake valley as the perfect place to raise righteous Latter-Day Saints. Our own little barrio was filled with crime and poverty and blessed little else besides mud and ditches, rocks and sticks, but I can't imagine a better place to raise a pack of Ruggles...es...ei...Rugglei...