The Scariest Motel Ever

Being of Dutch stock, we’re unnaturally frugal, and even now that we could probably afford to shell out an extra $40 for a Best Western, it’s sort of a demented game we play, trying to find the cheapest imaginable motel in a given area.

We stayed in a several crummy motels during our ten-day trek from Michigan to California eleven years ago (some day I’ll blog about that nightmare journey. Suffice to say it took us ten days, three of which were spent in Rapid City, South Dakota). After paying for a room at one place that had delusions of respectability, the clerk noticed that our luggage included a large plastic case with air holes in it. Luther, our big black cat, was traveling with us. “We don’t allow cats,” she said.

“Well, we’ve already paid for the room, and we can’t leave him in the car.” I said.

After some grumbling, she said we could have the cat in the room. “But don’t let him sleep on the bed,” she said.

We spent the night watching tv in bed, with Luther between us. Whenever he would close his eyes, we’d snap, “Hey, wake up! No sleeping on the bed!”

In Reno, we once stayed at a motel that was on top of a convenience store. It was $15 cheaper than the second crummiest motel in town. Then there was the place in Yreka, California with the mismatched bedspreads that clashed with the garish orange wallpaper which, in turn, clashed with the red shag carpet. The surreal climax was when we opened the closet door and found a hidden stash of volleyball trophies. Just go ahead and try to envision a scenario in which six volleyball trophies end up in the closet of a motel room. I’ll meet you in the next paragraph when you get back.

Astoundingly, despite this string of brushes with the low end of the hospitality industry, our worst motel experience occurred just a few days ago, on our way back from Michigan. We were scheduled to fly out of Chicago’s Midway airport at 7:30am, so we drove to Chicago the night before. We pulled in at a suitably crummy motel called the Aloha – presumably because for any sane person pulling into this place, hello would also be goodbye. If there was a Hawaiian theme, I didn’t notice – unless the toilets in Hawaii make a horrific screeching sound that sounds like a hippopotamus gasping for air through a saxophone.

Of course we didn’t know about the screeching hippo at first. Our first sign that something was wrong – other than the fact that the motel had a sign advertising 4 hour “naps” for $20 – was when we opened the door to our room and flipped on the light switch, and no lights came on. This was probably a blessing, because what we could see by the light in the bathroom was not encouraging. I support the hiring of handicapped people as much as the next guy, but blind retarded people really shouldn’t be cleaning motel bathrooms.

Next I tried turning on the TV. That didn’t work either, indicating that maybe a circuit breaker had been tripped. Wires dangled from the smoke alarm, unconnected to a battery -- always a good thing in a room that has electrical problems.

Fortunately the toilet did work – though at the age of 37 I’m no longer so proud of doing my business that I need the toilet to announce it to the folks six doors down from us. Seriously, it was that loud. I don’t know what you have to do to a toilet to cause it to make that noise, but it can’t be healthy for either the perpetrator or the toilet.

My parents ran a motel for ten years, so I know better than to touch a motel bedspread without a hazmat suit, but the sheets at least looked clean. Even the yellow marks around the cigarette burns had been bleached almost white. And really, clean sheets are all I require in a motel room. Well, clean sheets, working lights, a TV and a toilet that isn’t possessed by evil spirits.

I went to the office to ask if we could get a different room. The clerk was a young woman of Iranipakafghanindian descent, so she had a hard time understanding what my problem was. It wasn’t until I managed to communicate, through a variety of complex gesticulations, that our toilet was possessed by Flushscreemi, the Iranipakafghanindian goddess of the maelstrom, that she agreed to have the maintenance guy come and “fix all of the problems.” Five minutes, she said.

Ten minutes later we were still in our room, entertaining ourselves by not watching tv in the dark. I headed back to the office and told the kids to come with me. “We’re going to play a game,” I said. “It’s called ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can.’” The kids happily complied by yelling back and forth to each other in the lobby until the maintenance guy showed up.

After twenty minutes of the maintenance guy calling us periodically on the phone to ask us whether the lights were working yet, we were finally offered another room. The alternate room was right next to the lobby, which would have been a drawback if we could have heard anything over the roar of the traffic. There was no problem with the TV in this room, because there was no TV in this room. One of the two lights worked, and we were blessedly free of the tormented wails of Flushscreami. A massive crack running down the bathroom mirror had been repaired with what looked like strawberry yogurt. We had the maintenance guy move the TV from the other room, not so much because we wanted to watch TV as because we wanted to watch him carry a TV down a flight of stairs.

But other than a few games of ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can’ played in the lobby by participants of varying skill levels over the next several hours, and the incessant chirping of a smoke alarm that refused to go quietly into that good night, our stay was relatively undisturbed. And when it comes down to it, all you really need in a motel is clean sheets and a comfortable bed. And at least one light. And a non-screeching toilet. And maybe some twine to tie up the seven year old in bed next to you who seems to be dreaming about falling from trees.

I looked forward to getting some sleep on the plane.