March 4, 2019

Oh, my goodness it is so very dreary yet again today.  Actually it is better than it was the past 3 days as it is not raining.  It is below freezing still at noon.  That temperature is very much out of the ordinary for our itty bitty part of the planet.  More gloomy is the death count across the southern states that were hit by tornadoes over the weekend.  One tornado was officially about 1/2 mile, .8 km, wide.  Entire families were killed.  The homes were mainly manufactured housing.  Also know as trailer in some areas. 

For many people manufactured housing is the only affordable option to having homes.  An opinion article in The New York Times email I receive daily was about the Dream Home built by The National Association of Homebuilders for 2018.  That link has a list of the sizes of the homes presented since 1980.  The 1980 home was about 1800 sq. ft.   That was about the size of two of the homes we had owned over the course of our marriage.   The third home was about 1500 sq. ft.  Our homes were considered starter homes by the upwardly mobile crowd.

Over the course of the years of home ownership we huddled in basements, bathrooms and utility rooms as tornadoes danced around our homes.  Neighbors joined us in our basement a couple of times.  None of our homes sustained a direct hit by a storm.  We did have hail damage bad enough to two different homes to require roof replacements.  We had debris from a friends home that lived 20 miles away land in our yard.   I kept that in a scrapbook.  We had insulation and corrugated panels land in our yards.  The latter barely missing our house as it slammed into the backyard. 

Manufactured homes cannot withstand tornado winds.  People are told to leave their homes and seek shelter else where.  And yet I never see a developer of the manufactured home parks build a storm shelter.  Or maybe the homeowners could work to build their own shelters.  Storm cellars as they were called when I was a kid were near almost every home.  Some folks used their root cellars.  I stood with my Granny Chandler at the top steps of the concrete cellar watching the 1958 'McKinney' tornado move along the rail road tracks about 1/4 mile from us.  You learn early that if you see the funnel moving chances are you are ok.  No movement, seek shelter cause it may be coming straight toward you.

Is there a point to all this writing I am doing today?  I just found it ironic that I read an article questioning TNAH building bigger and bigger homes.  Asking if maybe focusing on a condo version for smaller footprints.  The condo will certainly work for folks like me.  I live in an apartment of 880 sq. ft.  But not all are suited to condo's.  Not all areas of the country have public transportation.  Some folks just need their own space.  Guess the point of my writing is trying to process what is it within each of us that drives the need for 10,000 sq ft of living space.  For the record, I always thought that 2200 sq. ft. would have been just right for me.  See I am one that wanted more, too.

Take care.  And if you live in tornado prone areas. get yourself a hidie hole, storm celler or something.

Janice, aka petra domina