town threatened to
enforce campground law
Resident: Mobile home
park owner lent a hand
Came through when
town threatened to
enforce campground law
BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer
Dwight Burge
JACKSON — If Shady Oak mobile home park is not quite paradise, neither is it purgatory, according to resident Dwight Burge.
For Burge, 49, who lives there in a trailer with Rhonda, his wife of 23 years, Shady Oak is a haven.
"I stayed in the Maple Lake Campground up until a year ago," Burge said. "I got tired of camping and I never knew when (the township) might evict us. The campground isn’t supposed to be open year round. There were going to be a ton of people out of there with no place to go. That’s why I left."
Burge said that last fall, when Township Committeeman Michael Broderick was mayor, the township took a more rigid stance toward campers such as himself. Under Broderick’s administration, Burge said, campground owners were told that the law limiting the time campers could reside on their properties would be enforced.
One week after Broderick confirmed to a reporter from the Tri-Town News that the campers would have to leave, the mandate was rescinded. However, the uncertainty of campers such as Burge created an exodus out of the campgrounds that for many ended at the entrance to Shady Oak.
Burge, who works at a gasoline station, said he pays $550 a month in rent to live there. In return, he said owner Earl Terhune allows him to store the couple’s belongings in the camper they used when living at Maple Lake.
The green and white trailer he rents from Terhune sits several feet back from Route 571, behind the camper. On a recent Sunday afternoon, his van truck stood parked on the sparse grass next to the two-lane road’s shoulder. In front of the van and next to the camper, he had installed an array of used television sets for sale.
"My truck had a problem and I couldn’t get to the flea market today, so I set it up here," Burge said.
No one had pulled off the busy county highway in front of the park to purchase any of them, he said.
Despite the lack of business, Burge continued his vigil for customers, but took time out to speak to a reporter in the sweltering humidity of an Indian summer day. He defended the hardscrabble lifestyle he and other residents of Shady Oak share.
"I know a lot of the people that live here and they’re decent people," Burge said. "They just don’t have a lot of money and they can’t afford a house. (Broderick) didn’t understand."
Speaking on behalf of the township, Robert Ryley, aide to the mayor and the Township Committee, denied that the township took a more aggressive stance against the campgrounds or the trailer parks under Broderick’s stewardship as mayor.
"The township applied its ordinances [equally] to all," he said.
That adherence to the letter of the law was also applied to Shady Oak, where Burge had moved.
Burge said he understood why it had taken Terhune so long to comply with the township, and that the park owner did take care of the property.
"Whenever the town told Earl to do things, he did them," Burge said. "You can see that he’s paved some of the roads and he’s still working on them. He cuts the grass, paints things; it’s not like he can do everything at once. He’s trying to make the park decent."
Burge also concedes that township officials are trying to advocate for the residents of Shady Oak by their insistence that Terhune make repairs to the park. However, his first loyalty is to the landlord who gave him a place to stay after the township told him to leave his previous home.
"I have no problem with the guy," Burge said. "The guy gave me a place to live."