Award winning love stories

Motels

We have all been there. And the more you travel, the earlier is the likelihood that you have been there. After having made an extensive number of road trips, I have concluded that the size, quality, and décor of motel rooms vary considerably, placing them in several categories from low to high. The one in which I recently stayed during a summer, cross-country trip, however, deserves a category not year created. Therefore, I will create it now. It is called "model motel."

On a swelteringly-hot July night, I pulled into the antiquated Mustang Motel in the tiny town of Vomit, Iowa-or, at least that is what its name sounded like-and its wall and ceilings could have been more appropriately categorized as a huge pile of firewood than a place in which to sleep. Just under the "Welcome" sign one could make out the outline of the letters which spelled the word "Condemned."

How modern had the room's bed, dresser, and desk been? Let's put it this way: I had visited many, 200-year-old buildings in the country which had proudly boasted that "Washington slept here." This one should have read, "Washington died here."

I guess this furniture's exposed nails could have been considered "decorations," belonging to a unique, Early American (referred to the age of those who had built it) style labeled "failing grade workshop projects."

There was, however, a generous "walk-through" closet-three hangers of sufficient rust to suggest the dawn of the Iron Age dangling from the ceiling and giving the eye something to do every