That Trailer Park Smell

There is a particular aroma I have often found in trailer parks. It is a unique odor that seems, to my untrained nose to be one part pets and pet by-products, one part insufficiently cleaned carpet, one part beer one part tobacco, and one part insufficiently cleaned people. Though the scent varies from park to park and even mobile home to mobile home, I have smelled its variants in several places in Moscow, a few places in and about Priest River, and even once in Michigan.

This isn't meant as a slight upon the people who live in trailer parks. From what I understand, the rent in some of them is pretty darn cheap, and inexpensive rent would be a shiny thing for me right about now. But with a very few exceptions, the trailer parks around Moscow area are pretty sketchy, rundown, and oh yes, odoriferous. What's interesting is that this nasal assault is immediately recognizable even outside of its normal context. The other day, while driving the hospital's bus around, I had to take two people home after a surgery. Upon meeting them, I knew by smell that they lived in one of the area's trailer parks. Not which park, mind, but one of them.

No, I am not familiar enough with Moscow's trailer parks to identify them by smell, and God willing, I never will be.