RAPID CITY - There's a nice set of end tables in Dee Eastman's living room, and she's willing to sell them for a fraction of what they cost.

Aside from a couple of chairs and a computer desk, they're about the only furniture left in the room. Dee and her husband, Everett Eastman, are selling everything they can, trying to come up with the $7,000 they need to move their double-wide mobile home out of Eastbrooke Mobile Home Park.

"We even had to sell our bed," said Dee Eastman, who fought to keep from crying as she talked about it Tuesday. "It's so horrible it's funny. It's like a tragic comedy."

Eastbrooke's 60-plus tenants have been given until Dec. 1 to vacate the park, which is near the intersection of La Crosse and Omaha streets.

Eastman broke the news to most of the park's residents. She was raking leaves on Monday, Oct. 8, when a friend stopped to ask how she was doing. The man had learned from a co-worker who owns rental property in Eastbrooke that the trailer park was being sold.

"I thought it was just a rumor," she said, but Eastbrooke owner Mark Mollers confirmed the sale the next day. Eastman spent the evening knocking on every door in the park, telling her neighbors what they would officially hear in a letter from Mollers' attorney later that week.

"He was waiting because he wanted to make sure he got all his rent checks for October," said Chuck Rice, whose family has lived in the trailer court for two years. "Nobody's paying for November, I know that."

Mollers declined to comment on the matter Tuesday.

For many families in Eastbrooke, seven weeks is short notice, especially with Christmas coming. Lots of them live from paycheck to paycheck, making it hard to come up with the $1,500 to $2,500 it usually costs to move a mobile home.

And because most mobile homes in the park are older models, it's hard to find a place to go, even with the money to get there.

"The (other) lots won't take anything older than 1995, usually," Rice said. He didn't pay much for his 1971 trailer but put money into fixing up the inside, he said. Now, he's trying to sell it.

Rice is on short-term leave from his job as a welder because of health problems. His wife, Tamara King, works at a preschool. They have two children, Gavin, who's almost 4, and Tessa, 1. They plan to move into a new low-income apartment in mid-November.

"We're just lucky we can actually do something," Rice said. "A lot of people don't have that luck … ."

The Eastmans' situation is worse than most. Theirs is the only double-wide mobile home in the court. It also has a stick-built addition. Because of the way the 1977 trailer was built, without axles, it requires a house mover. That costs considerably more than moving a regular trailer.

"We're trying to raise the money," Dee said, adding that they wouldn't have spent $2,000 replacing the roof last summer if they had known this was coming.

The Eastmans have asked Mollers for an extension or other assistance. "If he would help us move, we would pay him back," Dee said. "We're not asking for a handout."

If they can't raise the money to move it, Dee fears they'll lose their home of four years. They still owe almost $3,000 on the house and can't afford payments on a new home, she said.

Everett Eastman is an over-the-road truck driver. Dee works part-time at Bella Vista Nursing Home.

"We are paycheck to paycheck," Dee said. "It took everything to move into here."

The Eastmans, Rice and King all said they wished they had been notified sooner. Residents were also unhappy with the way they received the news.

Jeanette Christensen, who has managed Eastbrooke for the past three years, learned about the park's closing at about the same time residents did.

"Nobody knew it. Even the owner didn't know this was going to happen," she said. Christensen said she thought a buyer had approached Mollers about the property.

Moller declined to comment Tuesday about whether the land was already sold.

Ross McKie, an owner with McKie Automotive Group, denied rumors that McKie Buick Pontiac GMC was told to vacate the land next to the trailer park. The McKie company, which bought the former Rapid Motors dealership at 414 E. Omaha St. a few years ago, bought the land where it sits in September, McKie said.

McKie said the dealership is not moving. He also said his company did not buy the trailer-park property.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Dependable Mobile Home Transport said his company and others would do everything possible to help Eastbrooke residents move.

King wishes more people understood their plight.

"I know that some people will say that it's just business to buy and sell, but when you're involved with buying and selling homes, it's different," she said. "A home is a life."

Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com