I recently returned from a short road trip that involved an overnight stay. The hotel we had wasn’t that great, and the experience jogged my memory of all the roadside dives I’ve ever stayed at. For fun, I’m gonna list a few here, which have been re-named to protect (somewhat) the establishments. Here we go, in no particular order:

Howard’s Johnson: Yes, there’s a reason I spelled it like that. Forget family-friendly; this HoJo in Madison featured condom machines in the lobby restrooms, and “adult entertainment” guides in the guest rooms. Advertisements included the reknown Geisha Bath House in Madison, along with an adult superstore and a strip club. The hallways had a funky smell, the mattresses were wore out ( from what, there’s no question) and a couple of the towels had stains on them. The good news is, it was cheap. The bad news – it was too cheap.

The Dirty Sock – this quaint mom & pop hotel was somewhere near Oblivion, Indiana. (That’s my name for the town, and it’s not far off the mark.) The place looked cute enough on the outside, and it was late and I was too tired to drive anymore. It was too dark to question the place much. Only after walking around on the carpet in my white socks did I realize how dirty the place was. The feet of my socks turned black. Not like, grey with a little fuzz, but asphalt black, as if I’d just run outside in them for two months.

The Gas Meter: This interstate bailout was found along a lonely stretch of Ohio. I’d been driving through bad traffic, and fatigue compelled me to stop for the night rather than push on further. There wasn’t much to pick from in this area, and I tried to pick the lesser of the two rat holes. This placed seemed ok, but the scent of natural gas from the furnace was strong. It was everywhere. The room was closed up enough that it wasn’t as bad in there, but all the same I left the room window open a crack, despite it being cold outside. I was grateful the place didn’t blow up while I slept.

The Rug Stain: Dried blood is dried blood, and if this old wooden motel was in the city I would have slept in the car instead. But it was “up north” in a very rural area, and it was another situation where there was nothing else for 70 miles around. The motel was a seasonal-use dive that appealed to fishermen and deer hunters. Outside of the rug stains, the cobwebs, and the errie, silent darkness, there was nothing wrong with the place.

The Crime Scene: Folks, the moral of this story is, don’t keep driving until you’re so desperate that you’ll stay somewhere truly awful. Well, we did just that, coming home from Michigan during a hellacious snowstorm. The interstate was a field of white, it was after 11 p.m., and we were unable to tell where the road was anywmore. There was no other traffic to speak of; even the semi’s were pulling off. We bailed out at the next exit and took the only motel we saw. It was a decrepit Super 8 and the hotel check-in cleck was behind bullet-proof glass. It had the signs of a drug hotel, but sleeping in the car would have meant freezing to death and the roads were impassible. This was the scariest damn hotel I’d ever been in. The room didn’t have a working heater. We slept with our clothes on, and barricaded the door. We could hear people walking past our door, back and forth, as if waiting for one of us to pop out for ice. Hell no, pop out for ice, and we’d be iced, I had a feeling. We got up at 4:30 a.m. , and seeing that the snow had stopped, we got the hell out.

The Fixer-Upper: A rainstorm in southern Illinios made driving through one-lane construction detours a living nightmare. We bailed out upon seeing a nice-looking Whatever Inn and booked a room. The place looked fine until we got to the hallway leading to our room, and found it tore up, no carpeting, and extension cords running the length of the hall. The place was in the middle of major renovation, but they didn’t tell you that at the check-in desk. The room itself was ok, but dated and musty. The worst thing was, the bare hallway had other hotel guests confused, and about 2:00 a.m. three drunk bikers were trying to use their key in our door, and were pulling and rattling on the doorknob. They finally figured out they had the wrong room and wandered off. The only reason I know that it was an honest mistake and not a deliberate attempt at robbery, was the fact that they could’ve busted the flimsy door off it’s hinges, if real determination had been in their minds.

Ah, travel. I enjoy it, but these days I’m a lot pickier about my hotels. Though sometimes I still get surprised to the negative, such as the Howard’s Johnson.

One of my favorite songs, for the lyrics. Enjoy this meaningful RUSH tune.