Motels From Hell!!!
Dec 02 '04
The Bottom Line After giving you a little spiel to keep you current with me, I'm going to share a dozen doozies from my experiences with motels!
INTRODUCTION:
Here I am!
Home for a little bit before getting back to putting the finishing touches on being away.
Lately, my Muse has really been biting me/shooting arrows at me/whatever it is that a Muse is supposed to do to you to inspire you.
Anyway, my latest bit of inspiration got shot at me after reading The Palace, Myrtle Beach - still stately but her crown is tilted a little (written by SurgRN911)
.
Although I wasn't inspired to write something absolutely brand-new, I was inspired to share the main portion of something I'd already written somewhere else--and what comes after this introduction is what I was inspired to share.
Even though Di didn't write about a motel-from-hell, you might say that there were at least a few traces of purgatory in an otherwise very satisfactory situation (think: discovery in a dresser drawer!).
Anyway, my own list of motels-from-hell (I selected a dozen) weren't necessarily total hell. Some of the experiences were actually bits of hell or purgatory in an otherwise Heavenly setting. Of course, others were mostly hell with, perhaps, a glimpse of purgatory--or even Heaven--from time to time.
But, before I get on with sharing those notorious motel experiences with you, I want to share a little list.
As I said, I've been pretty inspired lately and have turned out what I see to be items that you just might find to be interesting to read.
Because I don't want them getting lost in the shuffle, I've listed them here in the order written:
A Christmas Gift For All Of You: The Sharing Of Three Special Stories
Christmas Newsletter Online (The Sequel)
This Isn't The First Place I've Shared This Rant--And It Won't Be The Last!!!
The Infamous Cole Porter Crime Of 1985
Ask Insane Questions--Get Insane Answers!
Recently, I've found out that the target-equals-blank html trick works on this site at least part of the time, so I've started including it.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, this is what allows you to remain with this main article while visiting the other places in separate windows.
Having said this, I'd like to make a special request to the Brisbane Brass (Is Brisbane still headquarters? If not, at least my way of identifying them has nice alliteration, so I'm sticking with it!) that live links could also start being created for non-site places people writing here might want us to visit.
If this would be too complicated to do, I understand--however, one of my mottoes is: "There's no harm in asking!"
Anyway, let's get on with the motels...
1. A------'s BOOM-BOOM!!!
The two-room unit was actually pretty nice, even if somewhat overpriced for that time (February of 1964).
There was a double bed in each room, along with other furniture, and the room at the back also contained a small kitchenette.
There was a bath that contained a toilet, sink, and shower stall that was also in the back part of the unit.
It would have been really nice--more than meeting our needs at the time (even if it WERE somewhat overpriced)--had it not been for a couple of things:
There were no curtains on the windows!
and
That goofy space-heater!
Because there were no curtains on the windows and a door going out to the back, any plans I had of having my bed all to myself that night went out the window with my mom insisting on sleeping with me--and here I was wanting to experience having my very own room in a motel, which was, at that time, something I'd never had before, as most rooms contained two double beds with my folks in one bed and me in the other.
It wasn't too likely that there were any kidnappers down there between Cunot and Poland, but you could never be too careful!
If my folks had a dozen kids, they still would have been very careful with us, because that's just the way that they are--but I still think that only children do get an extra amount of overprotection from their folks. That's just a fact of life!
Anyway, it was the weekend of my folks' wedding anniversary (their 17th), and we had gone to spend not just one day but two with Uncle George.
But we knew that Uncle George didn't have his place ready for overnight company, so we had planned from the very first to stay in a motel that was a couple of miles or so from his place.
It was, at that time, the only motel that we knew of within 20 or 25 miles from there.
We had never stayed there before.
It had three units in one tile box of a building and was generally used by people wanting to spend several days in the area of Cataract Lake. As a whole, it was used in the summer, but each unit was equipped with a space-heater just in case someone wanted to be there during a cooler time (e.g. to hunt).
It had a really pretty name, but I ended up dubbing it A____'s BOOM! BOOM! because it was owned by the A____ family. Actually, the one who owned and operated it at the time was the widow of the person who started this business section consisting of a general store, gas station, and, eventually, a motel.
I can't remember if the general store were still in operation at the time, and one of the sons had built another gas station across the way (same side of road as motel but across from house that had also once housed a general store and had gas pumps in front of it).
I think that the old lady simply rented out rooms in the motel at that time.
Anyway, this is how we came to stay there.
She put us up in one unit, and the space-heater didn't work, so she put us into the one next to it, and it did--and that's an understatement!!!
We went on to Uncle George's and cooked a big supper for him and his best friend, Cooksey, who had followed him home from The Cloverdale Garage (which Uncle George owned and where Cooksey and a handful of other guys hung out when they had time to do so, visiting with Uncle George while he worked on cars and welded farm machinery) in anticipation of my mom's great home cookin'. We cooked enough for us, too, of course--any anyone else who might drop in that evening.
Anyway, we had a great time and stayed pretty late, telling Uncle George that we would see him for awhile the next day before starting for home.
When we got back to the motel, the room was nice and warm, and the space-heater (set into the wall between the two bedrooms made a nice, peaceful sound that was a sort of pitter-patter with a blower background.
Then, it went into another cycle where it went:
"Bim!" which was followed by a sort of rapid "deedledeedledeedledeedle" sound, followed by the sound like a teakettle that had just reached its whistling point--and then "ssssssssssssss. . .BOOM-BOOM!"
All through the night, this cycle was repeated over and over and over--until about morning when this underused space-heater finally got its kinks worked out so that it was no longer exploding.
By then, it was check-out time, and we had gotten precious little sleep.
When we told Uncle George about it, he said something on the order of, "Why hell!!! If I had a damn heater like that, I would throw it over in the holler!!!"
I had a picture in my mind of this appliance over in Uncle George's holler still going "Bim!. . .deedledeedledeedledeedle. . . whoooooooooooooossssssssssssssBOOM-BOOM!" over and over again, and it really cracked me up.
For a long time after that, my folks were driven up the wall by my going around and doing imitations of that heater--and they told me that the room must not have been that bad, because I'd certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of it!!!
And, of course, that was true--after the fact!!!
When I was trying to get some sleep that night, it was a motel room from hell!!!
2. The Porky & Cher Joint
Allow me to introduce you to A_____'s BOOM-BOOM, Texas-style. Or you might say: The experience of staying in a lone-star motel in The Lone-Star State!!!
For reasons you'll learn a little later, this chicken house of a motel might have well been named The "Thank Heavens!" Inn.
It was 1966, and my folks and I were on our way to El Paso, where we would be joined by Uncle Finley & Aunt Marce for a road-trip through Mexico .
We had left the night before, visiting with Uncle George until pretty late and then staying in the Springfield, IL area in a nice, cozy motel that had been named in honor of Abraham Lincoln--but we hadn't stayed anywhere else until we were into Texas a ways.
It was now pretty late when we stopped at this place that looked like a chicken house, and my dad went to see about getting us a room.
I heard this sound that sounded like repeated deep-coughing (like the croup), and I thought that it was the lady who owned the motel, which made me feel sorry for her.
What the sound turned out to be was a truckload of pigs.
As we got out and went to our room, the air had a sort of piggy smell to it, and it was one of those nights when the air just hung around and was stagnant.
Our room was right by where the pig truck was parked.
We went into the room, and it was stuffy.
There was no air-conditioning, but there was a fan situated in this back window beside the twin-sized bed.
Oh good! I would get to sleep with the breeze of the fan blowing right over me!
However, the fan wasn't working.
We were hungry and decided to see if there were anything open where we could get something to eat.
The only thing we found open was some sort of convenience store where we were able to get sandwiches, potato chips, and drinks.
We weren't anxious to return to the room too soon.
Then, we saw the pig truck pull away from the motel and go down the highway, giving us a nice, piggy breeze as it went past and out of sight.
This is when my mom exclaimed, "Thank Heavens!"
After we were finished eating, we returned to the motel room, wishing that the fan had been working but just glad that we wouldn't be smelling pigs all night.
When we got into the room, we had found that the fan had started working, and my mom exclaimed, "Thank Heavens!!"
She strongly suggested that I not kneel on the floor to say my prayers that night but just say them in bed, because the floor didn't look too clean to her. It didn't look too clean to me, either.
As I was getting ready to settle down for a good night's sleep with my wonderful fan blowing over me, I soon became very aware that this fan was anything but wonderful.
I wasn't sure how it was doing it, but it was making a bumping noise of some sort.
Maybe, it was sucking a shutter or a loose piece of wood against the side of the motel repeatedly. I'm not sure.
But, frequently, it would make a dull-but-loud "THUD! THUD!! THUD!!!"
Then, other times, it would go "BOOM! BOOM!! BOOM!!!"
But it soon got to going "CRASH! CRASH!! CRASH!!!"
Never before had I known a simple window fan to make that much racket--and, to this day, I haven't figured out why it did.
There was this song out by Sonny & Cher at the time (actually, a solo all the way through by Cher) called Bang-Bang! and I started making up a song in my head with the same melody only it was about a fan going "Bang-Bang!"
I was tempted to ask my dad if he wanted to trade beds with me, but I knew that wouldn't be very nice, because he didn't deserve to listen to all of that racket, either.
When I thought that this was the best bed in the house, I'd pounced on it--so, the way I saw it, fair was fair. As the old saying goes: "I'd made my bed and would have to lie in it!"
I put the pillow over my head, but the racket came right through it..
If the room had been my own, I would have simply shut off the fan, because I thought I would be able to sleep better in a room that might be a little stuffy rather than one that was extremely noisy. Besides, with the fan having blown in there for awhile and the pigs off to wherever, we could have done without the fan.
But I didn't want to deprive my folks of whatever air the fan might be providing, so I continued hoping that it would shut up and let us sleep in peace for at least a little bit before it was time to get up.
It not only shut up but it shut off.
I don't know if my mom thought that I had gotten enough of the noise and had turned off the fan or whether she realized at the time that it had shut off on its own, but she exclaimed, "Thank Heavens!!!"
A minute or so later, the fan (or whatever) gave one last "THUD!!!" then all was quiet for the night.
Maybe, there was a horse or mule back there (even though we didn't hear any whinnying) who was spooked by something about the fan (perhaps, it might have cast moving shadows around his stall) and was kicking the sides of the stall in protest--a stall that might have been connected to the motel room.
I guess we'll never know what had caused all of the racket and its connection with the fan.
Perhaps, the owner was trying to save on the electric bill and thought we would associate a noise like that with the fan (which we did) and was producing it herself in hopes that we would respond by turning off the fan. When we didn't, she shut it off herself by pulling a fuse out of the fusebox or something.
It's a mystery--that's all I can say!!!
My mom got a look at the bathroom the following morning and asked me if I really had to go or if I could wait until we got somewhere down the road. She'd already said that we wouldn't be taking baths there.
When I went in the bathroom, I could see why.
The shower was all cruddy-looking, and there was a cigarette butt in the toilet.
I decided that I could definitely wait.
That night, we stayed in a wonderful motel in El Paso.
It was a sort of landmark place that was built Spanish-style, and it had a swimming pool as well, which I took advantage of. And, of course, the bathroom was sparkling clean and the room didn't have any racket-making appliances in it--that is, unless you weren't a Beatle fan.
But that didn't apply to my folks and me, and we enjoyed watching The Beatles sing their latest hit, Paperback Writer, on some variety show (Can't remember which one it was, but I think it was Ed Sullivan).
The next day, we were all off to Mexico!
3. The Royal Treatment
In the summer of 1967 (shortly after I graduated from eighth grade), my folks and I took a road-trip that took in several of the northwestern states and parts of Canada.
We would later drive down the Pacific Coast to visit with Uncle Finley and Aunt Marce in San Francisco before heading home through the middle of the country.
While in Canada, we stopped at this motel to eat. It wasn't really that late, but there was a convention going on in the area, and we didn't want to end up without a room for the night, so we decided to turn in early instead of driving on towards our next destination.
Besides, we were going to be put into something called The Queen Elizabeth Suite and would get to stay there for a little more than the price of a regular motel room, so that seemed just too good to pass up. Besides, it was about the only room big enough for a family of three that was left in the motel (or so we were told).
After seeing this so-called suite, I would hate to have seen their regular motel rooms.
It had a double bed and a hide-a-bed--and it and the other pieces of furniture were all crammed together.
It was stuffy and smelled musty.
It looked as if it hadn't been painted since the birth of Henry VIII.
We came to the conclusion that Queen Elizabeth had actually never stayed there--and, likely, wouldn't, because surely she would put the owner/manager of the motel into The Tower Of London for not providing any better accommodations than that for her!!!
4. The Patti Page Suite
It was November of 1986, and my folks, Uncle George, and I drove down to Texas to first visit with Uncle Finley & Aunt Marce (who now had a home in El Paso) and, later, to go to Lubbock to visit with Uncle Kermit.
That was a really neat trip, and, someday, I'm going to have to tell you more about it, but I'm going to zero in on stopping at a motel in Arkansas on the way back.
We were shown this room, and, to me, it smelled as if a wet, mangy hound dog that hadn't had a bath in years had occupied the room (thus, why I've called this experience by the name I did, because Patti Page had done that cute, little song about the doggie in the window back in the 1950s).
My mom looked at the room, and the room looked pretty okay--it just had that "SO" obvious smell to it. She told the lady that the room wasn't quite what we had in mind.
This was such a polite understatement that it cracked me up to where I was snickering and snorting--all the while trying to control myself and be polite as well.
It was one of those times when rooms all over were filled, since it was still the Thanksgiving weekend, but we knew that we didn't want to stay in that room, even if it meant driving through the night to Kentucky or even all the way home.
As it turned out, the woman had an apartment-style suite--and, since it was the only room besides the one that we were in, she only charged us what she would charge us for a regular room.
The apartment smelled nice and fresh, and it was a joy to stay in that night after a long day on the road.
5. The Mickey Baines Johnson Motel
The first time we had visited New York City as a family back in the summer of 1963, we stayed at what we thought was called Motel City. It was probably actually called City Motel, but it had one of those signs where the two words crossed and shared a "t" so it could be either phrase.
That year, we were on the same floor as the swimming pool area and could go right out the sliding patio door that served as the second exit/entrance for our room (main entry/exit from/to the hallway). This was just perfect.
The next year, we went back to the same place, which had become a TraveLodge. Although we were unable to get a room on the same floor as the pool this time around, it was still a nice room with a window that simply overlooked whatever street it was on. This was the year that we were there for the 1964 World's Fair, so there wasn't a lot of time for swimming anyway.
In 1968, we returned to The Big Apple and stayed at the same motel (still a TraveLodge), but we must have gotten a room in the oldest part of the building.
This room was very small and stuffy, and it had a train track running along beside of it--I mean right beside of it. If you wanted to, you could open the window, reach out, and shake hands with the passengers--except that the trains went by too fast.
The trains passed by our window constantly--which wasn't really all that bad of a thing except something about them (perhaps, the fact that they were electric trains) made the TV go nuts.
It wasn't a very good TV, anyway.
It looked kinda dented up and had written along the side of it "Stolen from TraveLodge."
I thought that was pretty funny, because it didn't seem to me as if there would be any great loss if it were stolen.
But, whenever a train got anywhere near to the room, the voices on this rather small black & white set sounded like the adult voices in a Peanuts cartoon while the picture got all wavy and, sometimes, became a bunch of swirls.
Well, good ol' LBJ came on there one day with one of his stupid and irritating "heavy heart" speeches--you know, the ones where he would start out: "Mah fellow Americans. . .Ah come to you with a haivy heart. . ." after which he would tell us that he was going to have to send more troops over to Vietnam.
This is no reflection on the young men who were fighting that war, but I hated that war that just seemed to go on and on.
Back then, there was a draft--meaning that even guys who would rather be going to college than going to war were being forced to go over there and fight.
And so many of them were getting killed over there--and for what!?!
Well! Here was LBJ again--and about to start another address with those same tired words.
Just then, a train went by--and it sounded as if he were saying, "Blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah-blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah-blah blah. . ."
Somehow, that just cracked me up!
"Listen to ol' LBJ!!!" I exclaimed. "He sounds like Mickey Mouse!!!"
Guess that lousy TV in that run-down room was good for something!!!
6. The Room With A View--Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah!
When we were vacationing out east in 1968, we went to Massachusetts and spent several days in Hyannasport--but we also took a side-trip to Provincetown at the end of Cape Cod.
I thought that it was so "quaint" that I wanted to spend the night there, and I saw this motel with some sort of charming name like Bayview or Seaview.
The place was under-construction, but looked pretty new and clean--even if it were a bit pricey. It wasn't terribly so.
Anyway, my folks didn't find Provincetown to be quite as "quaint" as I did--instead, found it to be a little weird, because they thought that a lot of the people walking around there looked as if they were stoned.
But we decided to stay.
We had a couple of places recommended to us for eating, and the first place was overpriced, didn't look that great, and the customers looked very stoned. So we went to this other place--which looked like a beer joint more than a family restaurant where we had BLTs served on burnt toast (my folks) and a steak sandwich where the steak was as tough as leather (me).
By the time we got back to the motel, it was too late to enjoy a view of the water from our picture window, and the TV didn't work. The room didn't look all that clean, either.
The next day, I opened the drapes to look out at the water--only to find that our wonderful view consisted of looking at a wall and a bunch of trash cans!!!
7. The Bow-Wow Room (As In, It Barked!)
Back when I was 8 1/2 years old (summer of 1961), my folks, Patty (my best friend--and there's a funny story how we met and became friends that had to do with my being a very naughty little girl!), and I took a road-trip out West and visited a lot of states and landmarks on the way to San Francisco to visit Uncle Finley & Aunt Marce for awhile.
We spent some time in the Los Angeles area and, while there, stayed in a motel in the Malibu area (which, in the future, would be considered, for a time, to be in the 29th voting district from which a very unique and neat guy would decide to run for Congress!).
It was a wonderful motel room that was much larger and fancier than your average motel room (or, at least, that's how it seemed to a kid fresh out of second grade) which had a view of the Pacific Ocean, as it sat right across the highway from it.
So, when we went to LA again, I remembered this place being really wonderful and suggested that we stay there again.
What I didn't realize was that the place had gone to seed.
We started to take our bags into the room, and, each time we got to a certain area, this ferocious-sounding dog started barking at us.
On our first trip into the room, the room didn't look quite the same, and the windows were so dingy that the view of the ocean was cloudy at best.
We decided to look for a place to eat, and my mom said, "Yes! Let's go out and do some things--let's do anything but spend time in this horrible room!!!"
We were standing outside the door when she said this, and the dog responded to our presence by barking up a storm again--just as if he were replying to her.
And I thought this was sooooooooooo funny that I doubled over laughing in a rip-snorting way--to which my folks both tried to shush me, because they were afraid that if we made too much noise that this dog might become so agitated that it would break its chain, jump its fence, or whatever else was keeping it from attacking us.
The combination of their shushing sounds and the dog's growling and barking sounds--and with all of this story unfolding around a motel room that had gone from being ritzy to rancid--just made my laughter at this whole comedy of errors out-of-control.
They quickly pulled me into the room and told me to get ahold of myself, because we couldn't go out there until I did, because they were afraid of what this dog would do.
We had no idea where the barking was coming from--it might have been a sound/motion activated recording, even though it sounded really real to us.
Anyway, my mom said something on the order of, "This is certainly a lovely room you picked out for us! Are you sure that this is the same motel?"
I told her that I was--but that I didn't remember it being like this.
Anyway, we freshened up and left to go out to eat--and, of course, the dog barked as we went out and barked again when we went back in.
It also barked the next day as we were checking out and on our way to stay in a wonderful motel (owned by a Japanese family) called The Mikado Inn (or something like that), which was over in the Riverside area.
It didn't have a view of the ocean, but it was certainly more to our liking when it came to a clean and attractive place to stay.
When we went out to eat the evening that we stayed at the crappy motel with the barking dog, we first decided that we were going to eat at this place right on the ocean--but the right-hand side of the menu convinced us that this wasn't that important.
So we ended up at this place called The Malibu Inn and had a really wonderful time. There's a really neat story connected with our meal there, and, when I have more time, I'll tell it to you!
8. The Feels Like Hell Hotel
That same year, Uncle Finley rode back with us to Indiana to spend two or three weeks visiting friends and relatives in the area. While he was here, we (he, my folks, and I) drove down to Lexington to visit with Uncle Kermit who had been teaching at University Of Kentucky and working on his PhD at IU during the summer months. Now, he was ready to move back in the fall and attend school on a part-time-but-year-'round basis until he was finished doing so. But we wanted Uncle Finley to see where he taught before he moved.
The place where we usually stayed at was filled up, so we decided to stay in the Phoenix Hotel, which was in the heart of downtown. It had several stories to it--and it had bellhops that would come along and help you with anything and everything. I think, if we had allowed them to, they would have even carried something as small as a pack of chewing gum for us--and would, of course, hold out their hands expecting to be tipped.
The cost of staying there was higher than a cat's back during a confrontation, and the rooms seemed stuffy with a musty odor.
As if turned out, something had gone wrong with the air conditioning system throughout the entire motel--and the windows were sealed shut, so there was no way to open the windows and get air that way.
As it was July, our rooms were hotter than firecrackers, so we didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night!
9. This Place Comes With A Caged Lady!
In 1974, we decided to take a quick trip to California by way of Ames, Iowa so that we would be spending Labor Day weekend with Uncle Finley and Aunt Marce before I needed to get back in time to start college again.
Uncle Kermit had already left Ames, but we wanted to drop by to visit Eileen, Morrie, and Allen (people we'd met through Uncle Kermit, who had filled in for Allen at Iowa State University during a sick leave). Allen had gone to Kansas City, MO to visit his folks (and, sadly, to also check into the hospital, as there was evidence that the benign-but-invasive tumors attacking his central nervous system had returned), but we got to stay over in Ames and meet Eileen & Morrie for breakfast before traveling on.
Daddy had this "bright" idea about driving non-stop to Reno where we would play the slots for awhile and then get a motel room to freshen up at and rest some before driving on into San Francisco.
We had to go through the long state of Nebraska and took the interstate through it.
The speed limit on interstates had been lowered to 55 mph nationwide for about a year, but my dad was going about sixty or so.
I told him that he was over the speed limit, and he told me that he was over the speed limit intentionally but, as he was driving safely and no faster than most of the other drivers around him, he didn't want to hear another word about it.
A little later, I noticed that he was driving 75 mph.
Other than in Kansas, there had never been a speed limit set that high for driving on any road--not even interstates.
However, as he had told me that he was the one driving the car and was capable of deciding on his own how fast he could drive safely, I just held my peace--but wasn't surprised to see those flashing, red lights behind him before long.
Turns out, he didn't realize that he had been going any faster than 65 mph, because he hadn't been paying that much attention.
The cop asked for his license and addressed him sarcastically, "Mr. Raymond Phillips of Anderson, Indiana--do you realize that here in Nebraska we have the same 55 mph speed limits on interstates that you do back in Indiana!?!"
"B-b-b-ut officer. . .I wasn't driving that fast. I was just going a little bit over the speed limit. . ."
"And just how fast did you think that you were going, Mr. Raymond Phillips of Anderson, Indiana!?!"
"I dunno. . .about sixty?"
"Don't you go getting smart with me, because you were passing cars that were going about sixty. Mr. Raymond Phillips of Anderson, Indiana, I clocked you going 67 mph! But I'll just write a warning for you this time around. But, if I catch you going over the speed limit here in Nebraska again, you'll have to pay a fine and will be getting points on your driver's license that you can take back to Indiana with you."
After the cop went away, I told him that he had been going 75 mph., and he asked me why I didn't say anything, and I told him that he had said not to.
He said that he'd just meant not to be nagging him when he was just a few miles over the speed limit but that, if he ever got up to something that extreme again and I noticed, I had his permission to tell him.
Also, in order to be on the safe side, he left all future driving in Nebraska up to my mom (who still had a clean record), because he was now afraid that even a mile or two over the speed limit would make him toast in that state!!!
It was getting late when we got to Nevada, and we noticed that a lot of motels had up NO VACANCY signs. When we asked, we were told that a number of conventions were going on in the area.
When we were in Winnamucca, I looked down a side-street and saw a motel advertising a vacancy and suggested that we might want to stay there for the night instead of going on to Reno, because we could always stop by Reno on the way through.
But my dad had made up his stubborn mind that we were going to drive on through to Reno. We hadn't been inside of a motel since leaving Ames more than a day before. In fact, I think we had been taking turns driving for close to two days with just stops in rest parks to take naps in the car.
Because of suddenly going through stages of having sleep paralysis--even at times when sleeping in the very best of conditions--sleeping in the car was no longer an option for me at that time, so I'd had absolutely NO sleep and had long ago ceased to be the third relief driver for this trip.
My folks didn't yet know about the problem that I was having, but they knew that I hadn't had that much sleep since leaving Ames and just wrote it up to my not wanting to miss anything along the way--which was also true.
Anyway, I was very anxious to get into a motel and sleep on a real bed a.s.a.p.
When we got to Reno, we found out that I had been right about how we should have stopped back where that single motel with a vacancy was.
We didn't play any slots in Reno, because parking was higher than a cat's back when available and was, at the moment, very scarce.
In fact, we found that motels were filled quite a ways into California as well.
We stopped at this diner at about four in the morning and woke up by eating bear claws and coffee (my folks) and hot chocolate (me).
We still wanted to find a motel somewhere between there and San Francisco where we could get some sleep and then freshen up.
Eventually, we would end up at a clean, comfy Motel 6--but let me tell you about a place we checked out but didn't stay in.
We pulled into this chicken house of a motel with a dive-ish looking restaurant/bar attached to it, and my dad went in to see if they had a vacancy and how much it would cost.
My mom came to and looked around saying, "I don't know about this place."
I followed her gaze to this pole that went a ways into the air.
At the top of the pole was this cage and, in the cage, an authentic-looking statue of a topless dancer.
Soon, my dad came back with a key to the room and directions on how to get there.
When we drove around, we saw that the door looked as if it had been kicked in and a window had been smashed with a piece of cardboard patching up the jagged, starburst-shaped hole left behind.
We didn't even have to go in to examine the room to know that we wanted to return the key, get our money back, and hightail out of there!!!
10. The Bates Motel (Comes With Stalkers!)
This experience was one that I had on my own.
I had just spent two wonderful weeks at Ganaraska Writers' Colony--which was, at that time, held at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario back in July of 1987 and had decided to head back to the states by way of Niagara Falls and then drive along Lake Ontario to the Windsor/Detroit border.
My original hope was to find an affordable lakeside cottage that I could afford and spend a couple of days just enjoying being so close to a Great Lake and writing.
Of course, I'd already had the experience of writing with a view of the lake back in Port Hope--but Port Hope WAS a city, and I was thinking of something more secluded and romantic for these last couple of days in Canada.
But I never came across any sort of housekeeping cottages--except for a few shacks with a lot of rift-raft lolling outside of them--so I gave up on that dream and decided simply to get a motel for the night.
There was this Mom & Pop style of motel that was attached to a small store (where the office was also located) and their house.
It was reasonably-priced and looked clean, so I took it.
The owners told me that, in case I was awake before they were, to simply leave the key in my room and lock the door behind me.
It was a place that seemed to mostly cater to sportsmen, and there was a guy and his brother who had come up for the weekend to fish.
Both of them were married.
We got into a conversation about a number of things, and, then, I excused myself to go to bed.
They invited me to come down to their room for awhile and visit some more, but I was tired.
Not only that, but I knew that my folks rested better in knowing that I went along with their suggested policy of visiting people--especially, men--in public places rather than in rooms.
Besides. . .even though these guys were married, they had developed (Was it my imagination!?!) some sort of body-language that told me that they might be dirty young men.
My suspicions were confirmed when I found one of them peeping in my window shortly after I got settled in. When he knew that I'd seen him, he told me that he was just out for a walk and wanted to make sure that I was all right and didn't need anything--and then gave me a sort of leering look.
I politely told him, "No thank you!"--and then proceeded to shove every piece of furniture I could against the door!!!
There was a small window in the bathroom--and I saw a face leering at me through that--and covered the window with a towel.
By this time, the owners had gone to bed--and there was no phone in my room, even if they weren't in bed.
So, wide awake, I just decided to wait it out.
There would be no full night's sleep for me there.
I was going to wait until these characters had finally gone into their room and gone to bed--after which I was going to lock the key in the room and leave before they would be awake and attempt to follow me right out of Canada!
About three-thirty in the morning, I saw that the coast was clear.
I left my room, got into my car as quietly as possible, and--without turning on my headlights until I had cleared the place--got away from there!
WHEW!!!
11. Unprivate Privy Centerpiece Hotel
I was about 12 or 13 when my folks and I decided to visit Uncle George for two days.
We didn't go back to the BOOM-BOOM! place but, instead, decided to stay at an old hotel in Greencastle.
When we got in our room, we noticed that, right in the center of it, there was the bathroom.
It wasn't a separate room.
Instead, it was all enclosed in this large stall.
Since my folks had been married for almost 20 years by then and kept each other company in the bathroom, this wasn't any big thing for them.
But I was at an age when I wanted more privacy, and I couldn't believe that a bathroom in a motel room would be like this.
I said that this was the stupidest bathroom I'd ever seen in a motel room and said I could just imagine what it would be like if we had been somewhere where we'd met The Beatles or Herman's Hermits and had brought them back to whatever hotel room we might have been staying in and it had a bathroom like that!
What if somebody had to go to the bathroom at that time!?!
Anyway, my folks agreed with me that this wasn't the best bathroom in the world and they also wondered why it would be set up like that.
But they wondered even more about how clean the room was--and we all decided that this wouldn't be our choice for staying at in the future!
12. The Three-Bear Bedroom
Back in 1969, my folks and I stayed at this wonderful motel in Laguna Beach, California called (if I remember right) The Riviera.
We'd had this wonderful room overlooking the Pacific Ocean--CORRECTION!!! Make that this wonderful SUITE!!!
We had a sleeping area, a living room area, a bathroom (of course), and a wonderful patio area where we could sit outdoors and enjoy the panoramic view!!!
Because no standard motel rooms (e.g. two double beds; one double bed and one rollaway; one double bed and a hideaway) were available, we'd gotten to have this suite for a motel room price.
We had decided that, if we ever were by that way again, we would pay the suite price to stay in the same wonderful apartment. After all, it wouldn't be that much.
One thing you could do there would be to write on this one special wall in crayon to let people know that you had stayed there.
This wall would remain the same until it was full, after which it would be painted over and the process started again.
Only exception to that rule was that the crayon creation of a certain Dick & Pat Nixon was there to stay and would never be painted over (Does that mean no cover-up in their case!?!).
We returned there in 1973, but our suite wasn't available. In fact, no ocean-view rooms were available. In fact, there was only one room left vacant, and it had one double bed in it.
So we all slept in it--or tried to!
It was rather cramped for a good night's rest, and there was also somebody in a near-by yard lighting one firecracker after another until about midnight or so.
Still, we had the wonderful pool area (very spalike--and had been the first place where Mama Bear, Daddy Bear, & Baby Bear had first experienced a whirlpool back in 1969, and repeated again in 1973), and continental breakfast, and a trail where we could walk along and look at the ocean, so ending up with the worst room in the house didn't make the stay anywhere close to a total bust.
Besides, there was that wall--where I made a picture of three bears on it and said that somebody had been sleeping in our beds so we had all been put into one bed for the night and didn't get much sleep but had fun anyway!
Although it ended up always being full when we'd returned on a few other occasions, we were able to go read the wall--and it was amazing how many years went by before it all got painted over again!
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Epinions.com ID:
AinsleyJo
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Member: Ainsley Jo Phillips
Location: Anderson, Indiana
Reviews written: 270
Trusted by: 221 members
About Me:
I'm hosting a write-off: http://www.epinions.com/content_5362983044
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