Trashing the Trailer Parks

Clearly, a letter-writing campaign was underhoof.

Every e-mail began the same way: "Deer Miss Schultz, we got a bunch of humans out here on Brenda Lee Drive losin' what's left of their minds."

E-mail after e-mail, they laid out their case. They all had the same last name, too: Whitetail. Hmm. Mighty suspicious.

It didn't take long to figure out what had their hoofs in a huff. My colleague, John Horton, calls it the "Battle of Brenda Lee," in a little town south of Cleveland.

Turns out that most of the owners on a cul-de-sac of $300,000 houses in Walton Hills, Ohio, were fuming because they hit a dead end trying to change their street's name. They think Brenda Lee Drive sounds like something you'd find next to "Slim Whitman Hollow," to quote one of the residents.

And what is wrong with that? Have they never heard that man yodel ?

Nevertheless, 11 of the 12 households on Brenda Lee Drive want to rename their street Whitetail Run.

Some nerve , say the deer. Plow over their woods and fields, throw up a dozen houses and then name it after the homeless.

A little history: About a decade ago, developer Ken Pund named the street after his wife, Brenda Lee. It's a little love pat just for her on her daily drive through the neighborhood, and you can see how that sort of thing could improve a mood. Personally, I'd be a changed woman if I started my day on Connie's Corner, say, or Schultz Shoreway, but I've been assured there will be no such lobbying efforts on my behalf. Not ever.

Others on Brenda Lee Drive aren't so enamored of Pund's amore. It makes their neighborhood sound like a trailer park, grumbled resident Pat Hrabak.

Now, that hurt.

Two of my grandmothers lived in trailers at the end of their lives, and they always called those aluminum boxes their homes. I'm not saying it's a romantic life, and not all trailer home residents are ideal citizens, but a lot of them are just as decent as my grandmothers. And home is still a home even it only takes you three steps to go from the kitchen to the back bedroom.

My grandmother Ada taught me to cook and sew in her trailer.

My grandmother Vivian gave me an early lesson in unconditional love by tending to my mentally retarded uncle in those cramped quarters until Alzheimer's rendered her incapable of remembering his name. The woman who mended my father's broken heart in the years after my mother died lives in a trailer park, too.

In fact, some of the kindest people I've met on the job live in trailer parks. People such as Marjie Scuvotti, a young mother of four who painted her little boy's face red, white and blue for a parade honoring emergency workers on the anniversary of Sept. 11. And Katherine Cole, who knew me less than 10 minutes on a sunny spring day in 2005 before inviting me to come back in August for tomatoes from her little patch of garden.

Brenda Lee Drive sounds like a trailer park? Folks should be so lucky.

A while back, the Village Council voted to give the residents their way, but Pund, smitten husband that he is, gathered enough signatures to challenge them with a ballot issue.

The Battle of Brenda Lee was fierce. Ken Pund posted signs and mailed fliers. George Hrabak, Pat's husband, countered with his own letter to residents, insisting that the name of their street was nothing less than "an issue of civil rights as Americans."

Village residents apparently decided there were a few issues a tad more pressing in today's world and stuck up for Brenda Lee, defeating the measure 628-381.

So far, Old Glory's still flying.

As for that single household that wanted to keep the name in the first place? That house belongs to Kenneth and Mary Harbaugh, who've been married for 42 years. Rumor had it that they have a daughter named Brenda. That's true, but it's not why they want to keep the street name.

"It was an honor for that man to name a street after his wife," Kenneth said. "We just thought it was very nice."

Sounds like trailer talk to me.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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