WORDS LISA MORA
PHOTOS LISA MORA & DAVID NORTHCRAFT
My sister Amy says that she
blames me for her vintage
trailer obsession. Her first
purchase was a 1957
Westerner that she found sitting around
the corner from their house in Oakland,
Oregon with a “For sale” sign in the window,
but it was this 1957 Scotsman Highlander
that truly captured her heart.
“It was buried under blackberry bushes
and had not moved from that location for
about forty-five years!” Amy recalls.
“I’d had a few vintage trailers before this
one, because I love the idea of rescuing
something that might otherwise be left
to disintegrate in a field somewhere, but
Ngaire has a special meaning to us as we
found her on the piece of the property we
inherited from my husband’s parents”.
Amy’s husband’s father sadly passed
away a few years later, but Amy says that
she feels like the trailer carries a little bit
of Papa’s spirit with it.
Inside the Scotsman was in a sorry state
and was completely rotted out and parts of
the outer skin were peeling off. Inside the
cupboards Amy found an assortment of old
candy wrappers along with rodent-chewed
Sears catalogs from the sixties. The stickers
on the license plates were from 1965 but
Amy was not sure of the year the trailer
had been built, so she called the DMV with
the plate number and they told her it was
a 1957. Amy was also fortunate that the
previous owners of the property helped
her go through the process of getting a
replacement title from the previous owners’
children, as it had been a deceased estate.
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