Little Ely, Nevada has a proud boast: it is 200 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart, or as the locals like to say, 398 miles round trip. That's a seven hour drive to get cheap Chinese-made applicances. It's actually a rather nice place, 6500 feet above sea level and with 4000 residents, the vast majority of whom live in manufactured houses. Though the "mobile home," as these are mistakenly named, have a trashy reputation in the US, when they are properly kept up, there is something nice about seeing them framed against a mountain. They seem to say, "Look, I'm only here for a while, don't worry."
By contrast, when you build a tract home, you first haul in bulldozers and scrape a square mile of land flat, eliminating all the natural contours and vegetation. Then you ludicrously bring in a pile of new dirt and construct new hills and new ponds. And in a final act of riony , you give it a natural-sounding name like "Forest Hills" or "Crystal Lake."
The double wide manufactured home, perched precariously on its house jacks, is less intrusive and more comforting.
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