Trailer Trash, With A Girl’s Name

Named Stacey when his mother mistook the delivery room nurse’s name of Sheila, writer Stacey Roberts has clearly grown up with a terrific sense of humor because, well, is there really any choice in the matter? As he notes, in another time he “could have had a career as a rapper or a 1920’s gangster.” Instead he has become a witty author. Books as well as banks should consider themselves lucky.

Roberts takes the reader through a rollicking description of his life and family, a family where the women are crazy and the men die young. The actual trailer does not enter into the story until Roberts’ mother’s second husband Ted the Drug Dealer (originally Ted the Lightbulb Salesman) moves them into a Winnebago for five years.

There is a delightful Jewish flair to Trailer Trash With a Girl’s Name, from the edict that playing golf with goyim is a bad idea (that caused one of the deaths), right through to a recipe for chicken soup. Naturally, this is the only recipe for chicken soup you’ll ever see that has no actual chicken in it, just a handful of bones. There are other recipes too and some initially sound tempting, such as the one for cream cheese sandwiches … until Roberts describes them as tasting of ‘the absence of hope.’ Thanks. I think I’ll stick to the peanut butter.

On the whole, Trailer Trash With a Girl’s Name is great fun, even if Roberts’ own life has been something less than that. Still, as someone or other once said, comedy is tragedy deferred. Stacey Roberts has both an excellent ear for dialogue, and a fine and professional sense of timing in knowing where to end a chunk of dialogue and get on with the exposition. Great fun, with an out-loud laugh or at least several smiles on every page. Well worth a few hours’ read.