What A Mobile Home Fire Taught Me About Life: A CB Student's Perspective

A mobile home fire Thursday evening in Bucks County led to a “moment of clarity” for one local teen, who penned a blog post in defense of her neighborhood.

The post, Dear Kids of CB East, Bucks County, America, and Society, was written Friday by Central Bucks East student Stacey Keba.

Here is an excerpt:

Tonight, in just a couple of minutes, a house the next street over from me went up in a red plume of smoke. It was the house of a childhood friend. It was the house right next to my Uncle’s, a house next to my father’s colleague. And in just a few seconds of seeing a trailer destroyed, in just a few seconds of seeing a neighborhood friend put it out with the help of his fire company, and in just a few seconds of seeing the kindness, the helpfulness, the caring…I felt so angry—not at what I was seeing, but at your biased misconceptions of us.

I want to address that.

I want to extend an apology to some of you. I am sorry to those of you who find the existence of my neighborhood an embarrassment and disgrace to even exist. I am sorry that you find a mobile home (aka trailer park) nasty and grimy, unaesthetically pleasing, and filled with people you view as trash that are unfit to walk among you, share classes with you, cover a work shift for you, ride the same school bus at you…

Keba, in an email to Patch, said she was inspired to write the post “because I had a moment of clarity where I realized how great this neighborhood is (I never appreciated it for what it was worth), and how quickly it can be tarnished in a physical sense (a fire taking someone’s home) and in terms of reputation.”

No one was injured in the fire, the Courier Times reported. But the blaze did destroy Keba’s neighbor’s trailer.

As Keba addresses in her post, the fire was a real-life lesson in how fleeting material goods are:

Just like a lot of kids I know who grew up in Valley View, I find happiness in non-material goods, and in accepting that everyone has their own free will. I look for happiness inside myself, because at the end of the day, if my home were to burn down in 2 minutes…burn all my belongings…burn all my money…I know I would be alright. As long as my dad, my three dogs, and I went unscathed, I know I would be happy, and most importantly, thankful.

Read Keba’s full blog post here.