Routine

Tuesday, Tuesday morning, that means it's Assist day. Taking the bus and the train into Salt Lake for an 11 o'clock meeting. Routine. It's good get back into routine. Today's meeting was a long meeting Since we hadn't met for three weeks there is quite a list almost 3 pages. Ramps, furnaces, roof repairs, air-conditioning issues to be fixed (but we do very few) and most of these repairs are for mobile home residents.

This seems to be an invisible population out there people who make their habitat from mobile homes. These are not the big mobile home palaces, the double wide's with multiple bedrooms and even walking bathtubs and showers. These are the little bitty teardrop units that was fairly prevalent in the late 50s and 60s and 70s. These the last of those units living now in trailer parks which are disappearing one by one for trendy Multilevel concrete blocks masquerading as living units, condo apartments. When I was a housing coordinator I rarely had to deal with trailer living issues because very few of them are wheelchair accessible so the problem hardly ever came up except that I sat on a number of other boards similar to Assist, Inc.'s because the folks who live in these parts are always low income surviving as best as they can. And each time the park owner would sell the property would be overnight, with no warning and this teardrop of humanity would be dropped into our laps tried to figure out where they were going to spend the rest of their poor lives. I always find it amazing that this small faction of humanity has found organizations like Assist, Inc., Community Action Program, and the perennial Utah Issues (Tissues) to name a few. Somehow these groups each out just enough money to keep these folks from totally perishing. We fix the roof here, build a ramp there, install a walk-in tub (these seem to be the new in thing) and folks get by. I even noticed patterns develop where the same family has actually applied for assistance over decades not necessarily with or for trailers But for those lucky enough to have freestanding homes that need repair assistance.Today was three weeks of applications which need to be approved by our board. We will not meet again now for another three weeks probably and deal with just as large a number perhaps larger now we're migrating out of the good weather weeks of summer.

David who is the coordinator of our little organization (really don't have a name blessed be the ad hoc coffee clutch made the comment more than once that his involvement with these folks always make him grateful for how good his life is. I have to admit David is right but perhaps even more importantly is the fact that my involvement with the group is important to me because the group gives m e some place to go,and a reason to feel good about myself and perhaps most importantly a pocket full is also currency…