A Clean Well Lighted Place Is A Real Bargain At Any Price.
 

June 22, 2003

Cleveland, Ohio 

     Road Warrior.  We Maynard’s are now in our 9^th week away from Happy Valley.  That’s over two months of never sleeping in the same bed two nights in a row.  While the purpose of this trip has been a trans-continental bike ride it is also true the two of us have inadvertently become a walking volume of motel stories.

     In his delightful book Ciao, America: An Italian Discovers the US, Italian journalist Beppe Severgnni details the year he and his wife lived in the United States.  While there were a myriad of uniquely American events that Severgnni fell in love with, he was most drawn to yard sales and American motels.  Yard sales are a subject for another time.  But Severgnini, after years of squeezing himself and his family into miniscule European hotel rooms featuring bathrooms the size of broom closets, simply could not contain himself when discussing the motels of our land. 

    Beppe went on for pages detailing his amazement over the fact that all along the highways and byways of America there are spacious rooms for rent, usually costing less than a hundred dollars a night, that come complete with a king size bed, spacious bathroom, breakfast in the morning plus having more hot water at the twist of a faucet than any human being could use in a twenty four hour period.

     One cannot disagree with the thought that motels in America are a bargain.  Plus the kindness shown to me by motel employees, people I will most likely never see again, has been incredible.  Like the manager of the Red Roof Inn located in Coralville, Iowa (near Iowa City) who insisted on putting my bike, my bike trailer and me into his van and hauling us to a bike shop across town.  He saved me a fifteen-minute ride and a one-hour return walk.  The next day he was back knocking on my room door wanting to know when we should go get the bike.  These are services one has no reason to expect for less than sixty bucks a night.

     When service from one industry is so outstanding it becomes the unusual the sticks in your mind.  Like the under forty appearing lady owner of a motel in Harlan, Iowa.  I usually arrive from my day’s ride between two or three in the afternoon.  The average traveler usually checks in after five or six.  I must have surprised this owner/desk clerk because she came to the front desk not exactly in her meet the public clothes or so I assumed since she was in her bare feet and wearing faded shorts and a tank top, but what highlighted her ensemble was the fact her teeth were somewhere other than in her mouth.  A few moments later I was shocked to discover, after her husband walked into the lobby, that the lady in front of me was the looker in the family.  Trust me friends, Lurch is alive and well in Harlan, Iowa.

   In St. Paul, Nebraska, home of the Nebraska Greats Baseball Museum, (this must have been a very small museum as the only Nebraska baseball greats I could recall were Bob Gibson and Ritchie Ashburn) I stayed at a local motel.  It was one of three in St. Paul.  Or should I say near.  There was an in-town motel but it was next to the railroad track and adjoined a liquor store.  I passed on the in-town.  Another hostelry was a mile and a half north of St. Paul and I was heading south the next morning so I opted for the inn on my route a couple of miles south of St. Paul.  Upon checking in I asked if there was a continental breakfast.  “Here” said the desk clerk as she walked to a refrigerator standing at the rear of the lobby.  “These are Krispy Kreme donuts,” she continued while reaching into the freezer compartment and grabbing a package, which she clunked on the counter in front of me.  “They’re frozen so just set ‘em on the desk in your room and they’ll be thawed out by the time you get up in the morning.”

    In Pine Creek, Oregon, two miles from the Idaho border, we stayed in what was described in the brochure as a Hell’s Canyon Resort.  It was actually a small series of mobile homes that served as domiciles for a fishing camp.  Imagine our surprise when we opened the door of our assigned quarters only to see a hand printed warning tacked to the wall, “Don’t leave fish guts in the sink,” read the admonition, ”They go in the freezer between cabins one and two.”  Right off we knew this probably wasn’t going to be the Hells Canyon answer to the Ritz-Carlton.

    In Council, Idaho the family that owned the motel lived right behind the check-in desk.  When I walked into the office asking the location of the ice machine the desk clerk pulled himself away from the TV news and out of his easy chair, saying, “The ice machine is right here.”  He walked into the adjacent kitchen and went to the refrigerator hitting the ice button.  About four cubes dropped into the ice bucket he was holding.  Opening the freezer door and peeking in he mumbled, “Sorry, but that’s it.  I guess the kids used ‘em up with their after school Kool-Aid.”   So four ice-cubes for three people it was.

    White Bird, Idaho is a hamlet of approximately 150 souls.  Except on the Saturday night we were there.  White Bird was hosting a fiddler’s convention and no rooms were available.  But the local motel owner didn’t want to turn us away so he rented the spare bedroom in his home to Jan and I.  That left Jan’s brother room less.  Not to worry said the innkeeper and told Gere could bunk in the sauna out back, for free.  So Gere inflated his air mattress, unpacked his sleeping bag and settled into the sauna for the night.  Trust me he’ll never forget White Bird.  But then neither will I for a different reason.  There’s a bar in White Bird that shares their space with another business.  And that other business is a gun store.  Trust me, in White Bird, Idaho nobody leaves their fish guts in the sink.