After spending almost the whole day getting to Monticello and taking the tour, I started back to return up North. A little after supper I came across what would really be a couple of groups of wooden cabins, set up as a commercial motel. I stopped and went into the office to register. After I did this the owner tried to sell me some "homemade" cider. I said a didn't need a jug, but the owner gave a sample in a paper cup anyway. I then remembered, as it was summer and hot, I didn't ask about air conditioning. When I did, the owner said in reply to my question about air conditioning, "Nope, but there's a woolen blanket in the bottom drawer of the dresser."
Later after I put my stuff in the room, I went out to sit on the little porch that was formed by the extension of the top of the steps to the door. An elderly couple were sitting on their porch next door to my room, and we started talking. The husband said he was born on the same land that George Washington was! His family, it seemed, came to own the land that Washington's parents previously owned and was where George Washington was born.
Later that evening I went to sleep after opening all windows wide open. In the middle of the night I got up closed the windows most of the way and looked for and found the woolen blanket. Yes, I used the blanket. I guess the owner was right, you didn't need air conditioning!
From: Arnold Kiner
Meanwhile, I stayed at a swell old tourist cottage in Asheville, N.C. last month. It's a wonderful scene, with two tourist cabin/cottage places surviving one right next to the other, both just down the road from the former site of Col. Sanders' old motel. The cottage was pleasant, and reasonable priced. We actually tried to stay in a cabin, but two days were required, and we were there for only one....
From: Bill Swislow
From: afn32377@freenet.ufl.edu
Back in the 1950's my family (Mother, Daddy, my brother Mark and myself) always took a 2 week vacation in the summer. We usually headed West. We lived in Alabama and my Dad loved the west - Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado etc. My brother and I always looked for a motel with a pool and a TV. One of the criteria my parents looked for was if it was recommened by Duncan Hines. My parents still tell the story of the time I saw a motel with a big "swimming pool" sign and begged to stop there. I was only 5 or 6 years old but I knew a little about persuasion so I said "let's stop here - it's recommended by Duncan's Hind!
From: Carol Waid
For many years during the fifties and sixties my family travelled the summer vacation of lore. It took us to almost every state and a lot of Canada. Part of the memories of these vacations are of the motels we stayed in along the way. We rarely stayed in the Holiday Inns or Howard Johnsons partly because my father had a "scotch soul". This meant that we often stayed in the Mom-and-Pop motels around the country. Many of them are probably rubble by now, but a few are still there and I have seen them in the past few years while I was travelling for business.
From: Norman Stephan
My sister, four years my elder, and myself, always got to pick the places at which we stayed. Of course we always looked for the "color TV" and "heated swimming pool" signs, and screamed "stop...stop...we're here!"
I remember jumping into the pool and splashing around until I was completely exhausted. Then, we'd go to bed. I'll never forget the feeling of being tired from swimming and slipping into those clean crisp motel bed sheets. The best night's sleep I've ever had.
Now it occurs to me why my parents always let me and my sister pick the motels. We picked the ones that would exhaust us into a good, and quiet, night's sleep. I can't really blame them.[...]
From: Archie Miller
There is a town called Ceres immediately south of my place of birth, Modesto, California. The two towns were once quite separate, with acres and acres of almond (pronounced there as am-un) trees between their limits. But the state highway 99, which links them, brought in the end the demise of Ceres as a distinct entity as the burgeoning bedroom community of Modesto surrounded it from all sides.
When the building along 99 really picked up, back in the 50's, there was built a motel, horshoe shaped, hidden behind the oleander bushes which once bordered California's sleek highway system of the future. It was called the Blue-Light.
Seeing that motel as we would drive, at night, from Ceres back to Modesto would always be the height of the trip. It was so spooky. Surrounded in darkness, the courtyard was lit by, of course, a single blue bulb. It lent the scene a weird, underwater light. The blue was a Disney blue, like the nighttime skies in the cartoon fairy tales. Creepy.
This was in the late 70's to mid 80's, so the place had seen better days. As we sped past in the big, gold Buick or whichever car it was we were driving at the time, I was fasninated the notion of _who_ it was that would be staying there. In Ceres. My child mind would envision people there who had been there since the 50's, trapped in some Twilight Zone episode. Truly creepy.
From: Geoffrey Murry
As a child one of my family's greatest joys was traveling around on weekend trips. The New York Thruway had just been completed. Niagara Falls was now only 10 hours away, straight driving. My father loved to drive, so 10 hours behind the wheel for a New York cabbie was all in a days work. We would sit in the car, making only a few rest stops on the way. We never called ahead for reservations, because there was always room.
There were no large motel chains at that time either. The motels resembled little cabins with places to park the car in the front. My father picked out the rooms that only cost $10 or less, and the choices were huge. Niagra Falls was at that time the honeymoon capital and there were more motels per mile than McDonalds today. The rooms were always damp, had no air conditioners, and were done in the best motel tradition.. The beds were covered with a chintz floral material. The mattresses always sagged in the middle, and there were no t.v.'s. The pictures on the walls, in cheap frames were always of views of the falls. The motel owner was usually the person at the check in desk. He bent over backwards to please his guests, while his children milled around in the lounge area..where there was a television set...
From: Barbara Sonek
My family moved from Miami, Oklahoma to Clifton Park, New York the summer of 1979. I was eight years old, my brother was seven. We drove the distance in our wood-paneled station wagon, keeping ourselves occupied by playing miniature pinball games, hand-held video games, and reading books. We stayed at various motels along the way.
What I will never forget is playing frisbee with my brother in the small parking lot in front of our motel room the morning we left the Best Western. Up, up the yellow frisbee flew, soaring above our heads and landing on the motel roof top.
Peering out the back window of the station wagon as we drove away, we stared back at the motel, where we could see the solitary frisbee framed against a shingled backgroud. We knew we would never see it again, and looked back longingly at the lonely frisbee. Gone forever.
From: Michelle Henry
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