Tammy and Carl moved into the park in 1963. They were from Oklahoma and both grew up, on opposite sides of Tulsa, dreaming of a life at the beach. They met in their freshman year at Tulsa State, they were both studying to be teachers. They married a year later, had their first child, Earl, a year after that, Tammy dropped out to stay home with him, Carl stayed in school and got his degree. Two days after graduation they got in their wood-paneled station wagon and drove west. When they got to LA, Carl started looking for a job and they started looking for a place to live with a view of the ocean. They looked up and down the coast, from Ojai to Huntington Beach. Carl applied for seventy-four jobs, they couldn’t afford anything that was habitable. They lived out of the wagon for a month, parking in the lots of public beaches, cooking hot dogs on a small hibachi.

The job came first. It was teaching science to eighth graders at a public junior high school in Pacific Palisades, an upscale ocean community that lies between Santa Monica and Malibu. It was a good school, and the pay was good for a teaching job, but it was not enough to live in the Palisades or in Santa Monica or in Malibu. They found the trailer park, which was on the edge of the Palisades. They bought a double-wide for $3,000. They had two more children, a boy named Wayne and a girl named Dawn, and they lived together as a family in the trailer. It was crowded, but the lack of space brought them closer, forced them to live in peace with each other, made the good times better and the bad times shorter. They would walk down the hill to the beach every weekend, and every day during the summer, and they would play in the sand, in the waves, the boys both learned to surf, they continued cooking hot dogs on the hibachi. The kids went to the public schools, which are among the best in the state, all of them did well and went on to college. Carl continued to teach science, and became the football coach, at the junior high for thirty-five years. Once a year at Christmas they went back to Tulsa, where their relatives looked at them like they were aliens. Once a year, at spring break, they drove down to Baja and rented a bungalow on the beach and spent a week eating tacos, playing Frisbee and surfing. The years drifted by simply and easily and wonderfully. Aside from the fact that they lived in a trailer park, the family had a quintessential California beach life.

The kids are gone now, grown and on their own, Earl is an entertainment lawyer in Beverly Hills, Wayne is a college English professor in San Diego, Dawn is married with children in Redondo Beach. Carl is retired and he and Tammy spend their days walking along the beach, sitting on the patio in front of their trailer reading history and mystery books, playing cards with their neighbors. They see at least one of their kids every weekend, usually at the trailer, and their grandchildren, there are seven of them, love visiting them. Earl, who makes an absurd amount of money, has offered to buy them a house but they don’t want to move. They love the park, they love the trailer, they love the life they have led and continue to lead. They want to stay until they’re dead and gone, until they move on to what they believe will be their next life. Tammy and Earl, like hundreds of thousands of people a year, came to Los Angeles to make their dreams come true. Sometimes it happens.