Angie Cavallari is an assiduous writer that has been hammering away at the craft for over 20 years. She has authored thousands of blogs and articles with some of her work featured in Huffington Post, Healthline, The Reset, SF Bay Reader, among others. A transplant to a plethora of U.S cities including her current home, Denver, Angie grew up in Florida, then moved to NYC where she picked up her husband in a bar. In spite of her propensity for wanderlust, she managed to settle down long enough to have two extraordinary kids and build a solid life with her husband of 16 years. Angie Cavallari her pen/maiden name and Angie Walker her married name as co-founder of Retro Publishing, LLC. She joined forces with a fellow book nerd and Gen X’er that had always wanted to be an indie publisher.
Jonathan Lowe: What made you want to write TRAILER TRASH and open up stories about your life in a memoir?
Angie Cavallari: Let me start by saying that I have always been a writer but the idea of making any money—even a pittance—as a writer was not something I was encouraged to do at any age. Instead, I would read, then write, rinse and repeat with a measure of spirits thrown in for courage. I have boxes of unfinished manuscripts and embarrassing journals dating back
to when I was nine-years-old, but what I confess prompted me to write and complete my first book was that I longed to live through the stories of my youth again. To revisit these stories and memories be it good or bad. I am estranged from my family and many of those in my book like so many that we have lost in our lives are magnified like a rear-view mirror when they are gone. It’s my belief that this truth is at the heart of every author that has ever written a memoir.
JL: What was it like growing up in a trailer park and attending private schools with friends that lived in normal or typical neighborhoods?
AC: It was befogging. I remember always being aware of the social divide even from a very young age. My friends didn’t have neighbors that were openly intoxicated before noon or homes with dark, particle board walls and a roach problem. One thing I can tell you about living in a trailer—no matter how much you weigh or your age, when someone is walking down the hall it sounds like a herd of elephants approaching you. However, even as inhospitable as it sounds, I have a deep appreciation for the community that I lived in and the people that lived there. Unlike a typical suburb (which I live in today), these people are as real as it gets—they don’t put on airs and are working too hard or living too hard to bother.
JL: Do you have a favorite tenant or neighbor from your childhood?
AC: They were all so colorful but I would say, Florence. In fact, my favorite chapter to write and share during a reading is Chapter 3: The Tenants. Here is an excerpt from Trailer Trash: an ’80s Memoir.
“Perhaps the most memorable tenant I knew was Florence. And we were warned never to call her “Flo” or risk a backhand to the head. Her lot sat smack dab on the south side of our yard, and, during the eight years that she lived there, I never saw her sober. She always seemed to be coming and going from her many trips to and from the liquor store or the local watering holes, much to my father’s chagrin. You may have not heard her leave, but you always heard her return because she would take out the metal trash cans and stray cats with her 1970s pale-blue, rusted- out Cadillac. On many occasions, my father decided to perform a more subtle intervention by filling her gas tank with water while she slept off the Colt 45. Florence held a strange fascination for me and my sister. For starters, I could never figure out her age. She may have been in only her early sixties, but I would place her around seventy-eight in booze years. And she wasn’t the kind of sweet old lady who wanted to connect with children or keep butterscotch candies in a faux crystal jar for younger guests. Most days Florence would proudly sport a halter top sans a brassiere and briskly march across her yard in crudely trimmed cut-off jeans—her cheap flip flops flailing off her feet and her sagging breasts bouncing in cadence to her determination to find escape through a good time.”
JL: Do you listen to audiobooks?
AC: I prefer to listen most books on audio, but classics such as Pride and Prejudice I prefer to read in print. Currently, I am recording my book from the privacy of my closet and an expensive microphone. I hope to have it finished in the next two months but it will need finessing by a professional so stay tuned!
JL: I have an upcoming story collection, including scifi and satire based on The Rockford Files. Do you think your book will reach a wide audience?
AC: That is my hope as an author. But even if a reader cannot relate to trailer park living, or even spending sticky summers in Florida, they can certainly connect to ’80s nostalgia. Believe it or not, I have many millennials that love learning about the ’80s and are fascinated by a time when they were not tethered to technology—I think we are all longing for that time as well.
JL: Indeed. It’s all about money, now, maybe even to Eminem. Thanks, Angie.
Trailer Trash tells the story of Angie Cavallari, your typical girl growing up in the 1980s who finds herself cradled in an arm of a society that would be considered anything but your paradigmatic suburban neighborhood. In 1980, Angie and her two siblings are dropped into a world of the poorest tenements during a decade where material wealth was worshipped. But these are not your usual run-of-the-mill Florida retirement occupants—these are tenants with issues that Angie soon realizes are the same that can happen anywhere—even under her own roof. Her place in society is further confused by the fact that she doesn’t live in a trailer but nonetheless, shares a postage-sized backyard with a less-desired community by societal standards and attends a prestigious private school more than 45 minutes from her cinderblock castle. After spending a decade living in a world of indiscernible differences, Angie’s family decides it’s time to pull up stakes, sell the trailer park and buy a double-wide trailer of their own in the Carnie Capital of World, Gibsonton, Florida. Funny at times, nostalgic throughout, Trailer Trash hits on some serious notes and undertones about societal differences and the trials of surviving childhood in any decade and any environment.
Read the story below and answer three questions at the end. You will then be graded. Good luck..Tycoon Otto Rolfing once owned three sweatshops in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Newark (New Jersey). His thousand employees worked around the clock manufacturing and stockpiling micro mini-skirts in anticipation of their sweeping return to fashion. Sweatshop workers were paid ten dollars a day for sixteen hours, plus meals {which consisted of rice with fish heads.} Otto’s general manager was Klaus Brunner, reputed cousin of Adolf Hitler. One day over a bucket of Extra Crispy Chicken with Otto, Klaus claimed that his cousin was still alive, and a fisherman in Argentina, but had totally forgotten his past life in Germany, being quite senile. “It’s hard enough,” Klaus confessed, “for him to bait a hook.” Naturally, documentaries didn’t raise an eyebrow.
.Soon afterward Otto ran out of money. First to be cut off were the telephones, which really didn’t matter as the phones never rang much anyway, except in New Jersey, where Immigration officials called, hoping someone answered with a Mexican accent. Next to go was the gas. Again, even in New Jersey this didn’t matter except on three or four days in mid winter when inside temperatures fell far enough to trip the thermostat, which was permanently set at 41 degrees. It was only when the power company delivered a threatening note to Otto’s trailer with the euphemistically worded phrase “an interruption of service” that the end became apparent. It would have been nearly impossible to operate sewing machines in total darkness. After all, the warehouses were windowless to maintain secrecy in the event that Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren found out what they were up to. (Even the sign outside read: Otto’s Buttondown Shirts to throw off the media elites.)
So Otto suspended operations, offering each of his employees, both male and female, a mini-skirt as severance pay. He could afford to be generous as he had manufactured, by then, enough micro mini-skirts for everyone east of the Mississippi, with a few left over for the west coast as well. What he needed now was a vacation.
After selling their respective trailers, Otto and Klaus hopped a cruise ship bound for the ominously Virgin Islands. As if on cue the ship then mysteriously sank somewhere between New York and Miami. To make matters worse a terrorist, swearing he was from Iran despite his blond hair, blew holes in all the life boats but one, and with a compact grenade launcher he’d managed to smuggle on board because ship’s security had mistaken it for a lifesize Miley Cyrus doll.
In the water now Klaus and Otto worked frantically to lash together the few remaining ping pong tables into a kind of raft. These, however, were quickly seized by the ship’s captain, performer Andrew “Dice” Clay, and Jimmy Kimmel. Then, as Klaus began complaining about circling sharks, Otto lapsed inextricably into a numb recitation of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Luckily, about then a Ouija board floated nearby, and their spirits improved immeasurably. Unfortunately, it was noon and they couldn’t distinguish east from west, and so paddled their Ouija board in the wrong direction. Soon the two crossed the 200 mile boundary into international waters {not seeing the buoys}, and were instantly picked up by a surfacing Soviet sub. Not just an ordinary day to day Soviet sub either, but a Typhoon-class model carrying 140 warheads capable of obliterating any country within 5000 miles.
The sub’s captain, an amiable if slightly nervous chap of 19, understood English well, having been kicked out of several Welsh boarding schools. Ultimately he succumbed to Otto’s tale of misfortune, embellished with opinions on how the overweight citizens of the United States would probably die of heart attacks as soon as the DOW collapsed again anyway. Remembering all the fast food ads he’d seen, the young captain agreed and ordered the sub be taken to Argentina where, according to Klaus, life was simpler and the fishing was still good. He then permitted Klaus to use the deck cannon to scare Dice and Jimmy a bit.
.The trio now lives with Adolf in a little fishing village south of Mar Del Plata, while the sub, piloted by a 20 year old female, glides aimlessly in and out of Cape Cod, looking through the periscope for sights of a Kennedy heir. Adolf himself has undergone an operation, and now resembles Mother Teresa . . . in a micro mini-skirt..
Quiz: 1} Do you believe this story?2} Do you finally perceive real life as boring, yet you’re too afraid to take the red pill or join a book club, and instead prefer ESPN and TMZ?3} Do you watch Entertainment Tonight religiously?.If you answered yes to any of these questions, ET will be contacting you with an offer you may soon be unable to refuse. LOL.
Jonathan Lowe 