Temporary Neighbors

Home is wherever you're too tired to keep on driving.

When I’m on the road in my van, I sleep in truck stops. Even better, I’ll hang out on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land or a national park. That’s not always possible, though, and I often have to spend the night in a motel. I always take notes. Here are some excerpts from over the years. Some of the identifying information has been changed to protect the guilty.

# # #

May 5, 2011

Best Western, Wickenburg, AZ

I took Elko out for a walk this morning and ran into one of those typical red-faced older guys I always seem to meet, especially in Arizona. Shirt tucked in. A big gut. Decent enough fellow. He was smoking a cigarette thoughtfully while he stood in the morning sun. I stopped there while Elko raised his leg and, within 30 seconds, this guy and I had somehow devolved into a conversation about mortality.

I guess he said it was a nice day. And I said something like, “It’s good just to be perpendicular.” But we both picked it up and ran with it. He told me about how people he knew were dying every day, including somebody he just heard about that morning. We then discussed the relative merits of a fast versus a slow death. We agreed that life was short and then Elko and I moved on to finish our walk. Happy Sunday morning in southern Arizona.

# # #

June 30, 2010

Motel 6, Amarillo, TX

Waking up at the Motel 6 in Amarillo, Texas. Pulled in late last night. I was in room 144. In room 143 was some tweaked-out dude and his girlfriend. They were already there when I arrived. She peeked out their door while I was unloading. Ten minutes later, they had a huge argument. She was screaming and shrieking. And then he said, “I don’t need you,” at which point she shrieked some more and walked off.

All was quiet for a while. He kept going out to his old Nissan pickup – shirtless - over and over. Ostensibly checking on stuff in the front seat, looking at stuff in the back, but mainly glancing down the corridor, the sidewalk, I guess waiting for her to come back, which she never did. I was worried that he might steal my catalytic converter.

Later, a guy drove up in a big pickup with no muffler. It was just roaring away. He checked into room 145. His truck made a ton of noise, but he shortly started making a lot more noise, as the dog – which he left off leash  - ran off. He went into his room for a while and then came out and started looking for the dog.  

And that began 20 minutes of coyote whistling and screaming. Finally, he got in his truck and drove around and found the dog. He came back and promptly let it off the leash again. He looked at the dog and said, “You should know better than to do that.”  

Then he stood outside, leaning with forearms on the hood of his pickup, having a loud, disgusting, sexually explicit phone conversation with a woman, during which he said, “I’m 38 years old.” Later he said, “You can kiss my ass,” a few times and hung up.

# # #

July, 2005

Days Inn, Roscoe, TX

Roscoe is not my favorite place. At least not the motel strip, which doesn’t really represent the town, I suppose. I went into three motels, maybe four, looking for a room. This was on a Saturday night and they were all booked. One of them, the Motel 6, was filled with people wearing t-shirts for a family reunion - “Raynor/Gomez 05 Family Reunion” - something like that, two names united. 

They had a couple of rooms left on the top floor, but I declined. This motel had stuffed animal heads  - a mountain lion head, a deer head, and some other taxidermy - in the lobby. Next, I went to the Home Ranch Motel, which also had stuffed animal heads, along with a big glass box counter, like a terrarium, that contained a stuffed rattlesnake. Two women were talking to the desk clerk about THEIR family reunion the previous year. 

I went back to the Comfort Inn, which was more modern. They had no good rooms either. They were all second floor.  I saw even more mounted animal heads. Finally, I made it to the Days Inn, which was the worst one of them all, way down the highway, probably the oldest motel in town. I’ll bet you the same family operated all of them. The air smelled vaguely of natural gas and the room had a huge spider in it, but I didn’t care at that point. Home is wherever you become too tired to keep on driving.

# # #

June, 1998

Victory Motel, Wells, Nevada

The old guy at the Victory Motel pointed to his pickup sitting out front and said it was a ‘73 Chevy. It looked like a rusted-up pile of junk, but I still complimented him on it and said, “They don’t make them like that anymore,” at which he grinned maniacally. He told me that one of the two young guys standing there wanted to buy the truck badly.

I told him what a good year that was, built right before all the pollution controls hit, and he said, “That’s it, EXACTLY.” I grinned and told him to make that young guy pay through the nose. He told me the motel was no longer operating, but he lived there with a bunch of folks and it was built from old railroad ties. “That thing is solid.” He told me, “They don’t build them like that anymore.”

# # #

1999

Near Glacier National Park, Montana

One nice thing about staying at an old-style cabin motel is that you get to have neighbors. And you get to wake up and see what it’s like to live next door to people that you would not ordinarily live next door to. They come out smoking and coughing, wheezing and hacking, lighting cigarettes, locking their girlfriends out of the cabin for fun, making noise and raising a ruckus. 

You get to experience ancient plumbing and notices on the wall that say the water doesn’t comply with local regulations, so you have to use the small bottle of water they provide. “More can be purchased at the main office.” 

You get to experience the ancient electric heater built flush into the wall. You get to have one electrical outlet for the entire room. People didn’t have so many electrical devices when this place was built. Most of the motel rooms in this town don’t have phones. I tried a few before I settled on this place, since it was too cold to set up the tent in Glacier tonight.

# # #

January, 2014

La Quinta Inn, Panama City, Florda

I spent the night in Panama City, Florida at the La Quinta, which was a decent hotel. Earlier, I had checked in at the Quality Inn, across the street, even though I had a bad feeling about the place. It looked too fluorescent and run-down. It was the kind of motel that was built in the 1970s and 1980s. Each room had a big glass panel with a curtain on it next to the door. Motels from this era have not aged well.

I went in and the desk guy was pleasant enough. They double-checked to make sure the room was ready. He asked some big, tall, broken-down maintenance guy, “Is 153 ready?” They looked at each other for a second too long and then the maintenance guy took off. Five minutes later, he called on his walkie-talkie and said, “One fifty-three is ready.” Trust is a funny thing and I lost my trust in that moment.

I got in the van and drove down to the room. It looked okay at first, a bit worn out, but I was exhausted from 700 miles that day. I went into the bathroom, flicked on the light and saw a huge roach, which I quickly stepped on. This roach was so fat he could not move fast. That’s a bad sign.

It means that they’re not doing enough exterminating. I went and ripped off the bed covers. Everything looked okay, but I remained suspicious, so I lifted up a corner of the mattress to see if there were any bedbugs.

I lifted it a bit higher than usual because of the roach and there - in the middle of the box spring - were dozens and dozens of small black bugs crawling around. I’m no entomologist and I did not examine them closely enough to see if they were bedbugs but, at that point, I just backed out of the room with Elko and left. I did not even want to go and get my money back, but I did.

We went across the street to the pricier La Quinta Inn, where the trees in the parking lot had a thick bedding of long pine needles, which made Elko really happy.

# # #

January, 2015

Magnuson Lodge, Hammond, Louisiana

At 9:00 p.m. somebody began to pound violently on my motel door. The proper thing to do in that situation is to hunker down, call the front desk, and not answer the door. But I did answer it. Actually, I didn’t at first, but I did engage with the potential murderer. 

It was some guy with a heavy southern accent screaming about laundry.  Was I doing my laundry? Did I have clothes in the dryer? I kept saying no, I didn’t. He acted as though he did not even hear my answers. I was screaming through the door and he was screaming through from the other side. He pounded on the door as he screamed.

He kept asking me how tall I was and I finally realized that he was accusing me of stealing his clothes. I should have never said anything, but it was too late for that, so I said, “Wait a minute.” 

I got dressed and then opened the door, thinking it would be better and would project a more respectable front if I spoke with him face-to-face. In retrospect, it was probably stupid for me to have done that.  I would have told anybody else to not engage and just call the front desk. I would have also told them to drag something in front of the door.

Outside were two very young guys. They had a white pick-up truck and were both dressed in hunting camo, with camo caps, and they seemed drunk, as well as angry.

The first guy kept asking me if I was sure I didn’t have clothes in the dryer. It was a threat more than a question. Finally, I said, “Listen: maybe there’s a security camera in the laundry room or in the hallway. Let’s see if the front desk can check the videotape.” I took a step forward and made it clear that I wanted to go ask the desk clerk about camera footage.

I was simply going into rational mode, but that gave them pause. They both shut up and one of them - suddenly quiet - said, “We don’t want to do that.”  And I think they realized in that moment that I was not the guy they were looking for. The whole situation evaporated quickly.

Off they went, saying, “Well, whoever did it, we’ve got THEIR clothes.” They seemed grim, determined - resolute. And angry. A righteous anger. It struck me that they were probably not staying here, but just doing laundry.

Five minutes later, I heard more talking outside my door. Once again, like an idiot, I opened the door and they were standing there, but they did not even notice me. They were absorbed in a heavy conversation with another guy. He was sober and shorter than any of us. He was trying to be calm and reasonable with them. He was wearing shorts and a polo shirt. 

He had an affected, calm voice, like a TV dad talking to his bad kids. He was saying, “Who knows?” Then he said, “Let’s go back to my room and look at MY clothes,” which I thought was a truly insane statement.  

They all walked off and that was the last I heard of them. I worried for a few minutes that they were going to do the usual things I worry about - slash my tires or steal parts off my van – but, when I woke up the next day, all was intact. 

---

All photos by Paul Vlachos.

---

This piece appeared in EXIT CULTURE: WORDS AND PHOTOS FROM THE OPEN ROAD. You can purchase the book on Amazon HERE.

---

If you enjoyed this post, hit the ♡ to let us know.

If it gave you any thoughts, please leave a comment.

If you think others would enjoy it, hit re-stack or share:

If you’d like to read more:

And if you’d like to help create more Juke, upgrade to a paid subscription (same button above). Otherwise, you can always help with a one-time donation via Paypal or Venmo.