Prison Motel

I think I am spoiled; spoiled in the sense that I like new, clean and modern hotels; spoiled in the sense that I expect a certain level of comfort, cleanliness and service when I stay in a hotel; so spoiled, in fact, that I have become a hotel snob. I can’t help it! I travel for work and when you travel for a larger corporation, you get to stay in nice hotels; hotels that might even have a concierge, a gym and a pool. Sometimes, I even get to stay in a place with a bar and restaurant, a home away from home, where someone else makes my bed everyday and replaces the towels and cleans up my mess.

Here is the problem with becoming a hotel snob. It means that Motels are officially on the “Will Not Stay Here” list. Motels (with a capital M) do not meet the standards to which I have become accustomed, which might be sad, except for the fact that Motels are usually pretty icky.

Two weekends ago, Dan, Bronwen and I made the 11 hour trek to Kerhonkson, NY for my friend Shannon’s nuptials. On her wedding website there was a list of local Motels, along with more expensive bed and breakfasts, spas, and resorts from which to choose. Wanting to keep the costs low, and knowing that it would only be for one night, I opted for the cheapest and easiest Motel, the Colonial Motel.

The there are only two things good about the Colonial Motel. One, it is cheap, and two, it is only half a mile from where the wedding was taking place. Let me describe the place. Clustered around a black top parking lot is four small poorly maintained buildings. There is a small house, labeled “Office” at the entrance to the parking lot where I checked in, got the key and was sent across the parking lot, up the rickety stairs to the second floor. There couldn’t have been more than 20 rooms in the whole place. Our room was #86.

I was skeptical before I ever even muscled open the door and peer through the gloom into the filthy room. Flies buzzed around the place like the buildings themselves were starting to rot in the hot sun.

I walked slowly in the room, and stood waiting for my eyes to adjust. In the dim light the room began to take shape. The filthy rug, stained black in places was not to be trusted, and I made a mental note to make sure that Bronwen kept her shoes on at all times. A peek into the bathroom revealed a clean but old toilet, sink and shower. The closets were huge, without doors, with burn holes in the floors, no hangers and coated on the inside with peeling paint/paper/paneling. The windows were not secure, the bedspreads were gross, the paint was peeled in some places scraped in others, the TV was hilariously small (we had HBO) and propped precariously on a stand in the corner, and some of the bare bulb lights didn’t work. Bronwen explored the drawer in the bedside table and found a huge stack of used scratch and win lottery tickets, an old package of wafer cookies and a joint stashed in the bible. Need I say more?

The next day, after attempting to shower under the trickle of cold water coming from the thoroughly limed-clogged shower head, we met up with the owners of the horse farm where the wedding was going to take place later in the afternoon. Cody asked us where we were staying and laughed when we replied the Colonial Motel.

“Oh, you’re staying at the prison the motel,” she informed us. “That’s where everyone stays when they come to visit their relatives in the prison down the road. They take the “prison bus” from Port Authority and end up there.”

Truthfully, the fact that it was called the prison motel almost made the whole experience a little better; at least we a got a good story out of it. And we got to watch cable TV.